Re: [hrpc] HRPC recharter

[Michael Rogers <[e-mail]>]

Hi all,

For what it's worth, my take as a protocol developer is that when I see 
the name "Human Rights Protocol Considerations", it's immediately clear 
to me that this group's research is relevant to my work.

Even if I were a protocol developer who didn't think that human rights 
*should* be considered as part of protocol development, I think I'd 
understand that this working group was somewhere that opinion could be 
discussed.

On the other hand, the name "Human Rights Policy Considerations" doesn't 
make it clear that the group's research is relevant to protocol 
developers. Personally, if I saw that name I'd assume this was a place 
for governance discussions. I think it's a pretty common shorthand among 
protocol developers that "policy" is something we leave deliberately 
unspecified so that someone else can worry about it. I might almost 
mentally expand the name to "Human Rights Somebody Else's Problem 
Considerations". I'm not defending this way of using the word, but I 
think it is used in that way, and language usage has a lot of inertia.

I think this speaks to a wider issue of engagement between "human rights 
people" and "protocol people", if that's not too crude a way of putting it.

As a lurker on this list for the last couple of years, it seems to me 
that the RG has participants with a wide range of political, legal and 
technical expertise, but it hasn't always managed to produce substantial 
engagement between these groups. If that impression is right then I'm as 
much to blame as anyone, as I haven't taken an active part in the 
discussions. Still, the point stands, and I think that if the group were 
to shift its self-presentation away from "protocol" and towards "policy" 
then there would be a risk of further reducing engagement by "protocol 
people" - which would be a lost opportunity for producing research that 
effectively engages and influences the wider community of "protocol 
people", if that's one of the RG's aims.

Cheers,
Michael

On 30/12/2022 19:09, Mallory Knodel wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> We aren't conceptually replacing protocol with policy, we are just 
> adding in policy and leveraging the existing P in the acronym. It should 
> be implied that we work on protocols because we are in the IRTF.
> 
> If we change the acronym we have to completely re-create the entity in 
> the datatracker it seems.
> 
> -Mallory
> 
> On 12/23/22 10:40 PM, Adrian Gropper wrote:
>> The difference between protocol and policy is the difference between 
>> engineering and law. IETF is engineering.
>>
>> For example, engineers build a tunnel that can work for both cars and 
>> buses. Policy may preference one or the other but the engineers have a 
>> duty to avoid tilting that choice unless it has direct economic impact.
>>
>> The GNAP example I have brought to this group is asking the engineers 
>> to stay out of the decision of whether the resource server or the 
>> resource owner has a stronger privacy interest. The GNAP protocol can 
>> and therefore should treat both as equally important and let 
>> constraints be a matter of policy and law.
>>
>> Adrian
>>
>> On Fri, Dec 23, 2022 at 5:18 PM Niels ten Oever 
>> <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>
>>     Der all,
>>
>>     I hope this email finds you all really well. I think I like the
>>     aim in this recharter and I think it can help to make hrpc more
>>     relevant to more audiences, so a lot of appreciation for that to
>>     the chairs.
>>
>>     There are some questions I have with regards to the new charter,
>>     so I hope you'll bare with me. Most boil down to: what do you mean
>>     with policy impact, policy concerns, public interest policy, etc.
>>     This just to ensure we don't end up in the weeds later when we
>>     have the charter.
>>
>>     # 1
>>     [quote1]
>>     Moreover it is widely accepted that technical design decisions
>>     about the Internet are not value neutral [RFC3935] and can have
>>     lasting impacts on public policy and individual rights.
>>
>>     [/quote1]
>>
>>     I am not sure whether the nature of the impact of technical design
>>     decisions on rights is the same as the impact on public policy,
>>     since rights belong to people and policy is an instrument of the
>>     state. So I see how technical design decisions can impact people
>>     and their rights, and how it can impact the state, but state
>>     instruments might be different? I think this is more a question of
>>     wordsmithing than ontology though.
>>
>>     Furthermore I would not refer to "individual rights", but rather
>>     to "human rights". Or if you really want to "individual and
>>     communal rights".
>>
>>     A fix could be:
>>
>>     [proposal1]
>>
>>     Moreover it is widely accepted that technical design decisions
>>     about the Internet are not value neutral [RFC3935] and can have
>>     lasting impacts on human rights and affect public policy.
>>
>>     [/proposal1]
>>
>>     # 2
>>
>>     This seems quite a long sentence that is hard to parse:
>>
>>     [quote2]
>>
>>     This research group aims to explore the relations between Internet
>>     architecture and human rights and to provide guidelines to inform
>>     future protocol development and decision making where protocols
>>     impact or are informed by policies that serve the public interest
>>     and protect human rights.
>>
>>     [/quote2]
>>
>>     May I suggest the following:
>>
>>     [proposal2]
>>
>>     This research group aims to explore the relations between Internet
>>     architecture, protocols, and human rights. Furthermore the
>>     research group aims to provide guidelines to inform future
>>     protocol development and decision making to align protocols with
>>     human rights and the public interest.
>>
>>     [/proposal2]
>>
>>     # 3
>>
>>     I am not sure the research question is really covering the work of
>>     the group, I think that is better covered under objectives. If we
>>     really want a research question to be in there we need to workshop
>>     it a bit more.
>>
>>     # 4
>>
>>     [quote]
>>
>>     The Human Rights and Policy Considerations Research Group is
>>     chartered to research of protocol development that is responsible
>>     towards and mindful of the human rights of others [RFC3271] and
>>     whether standards and protocols can enable, strengthen or threaten
>>     human rights, as defined in the Universal Declaration of Human
>>     Rights (UDHR) [1] and the International Covenant on Civil and
>>     Political Rights (ICCPR) [2].
>>
>>     [/quote]
>>
>>     I think this sentence is a bit convoluted, especially where it
>>     comes to: "research of protocol development that is responsible
>>     towards and mindful of the human rights of others"
>>
>>     # 5
>>
>>     RFC3271 does not mention the human rights of others.
>>
>>     # 6
>>
>>     [quote]
>>
>>     Furthermore HRPC researches how protocols can influence policy
>>     concerns
>>
>>     [/quote]
>>
>>     It might be me, but what are 'policy concerns'? Do we simply mean
>>     'concerns of policy makers' with this? If so, probably better to
>>     spell it out?
>>
>>     # 7
>>
>>     [quote]
>>
>>     This research group is a discursive resource for the community to
>>     ensure the development process fully recognizes these potential
>>     public policy impacts, addresses those impacts adequately, and
>>     builds evidence and guidance for policy makers on the necessary
>>     design tradeoffs that should be made.
>>
>>     [/quote]
>>
>>     what do you mean with "a discursive resource"?
>>
>>     You refer to "these potential public policy impacts", which policy
>>     impacts do you mean?
>>
>>     Happy to discuss.
>>
>>     Niels
>>
>>
>>     On 22-12-2022 18:30, Mallory Knodel wrote:
>>     > Dear RG,
>>     >
>>     > Hope everyone is well.
>>     >
>>     > At the 115 meeting HRPC was reviewed by the IAB [0], notes of
>>     which are forthcoming from the IAB.
>>     >
>>     > Partially as a result, though this activity predates the review
>>     itself, Sofia and I have been reviewing the HRPC charter. In
>>     particular we are keen to expand HRPC slightly, though arguably
>>     our area of work will remain the same (more on that later), to
>>     explicitly welcome policy discussions.
>>     >
>>     > The recharter text is available in GitHub [1] where you can view
>>     a diff [2]. It is also in a plaintext format with more visual
>>     indications of where the changes have been made [3].
>>     >
>>     > My view on the proposed change to include "policy" as a
>>     replacement for "protocol" in the name and charter text have been
>>     shaped by both of the past chairs of HRPC and Colin's feedback,
>>     which is that the human rights framework can apply to virtually
>>     any policy discussion and therefore HRPC has all along according
>>     to its charter had a mandate to talk about these issues. However I
>>     do think that the slight rephrasing in places gives us necessary
>>     updates that reflect the current political moment as well as
>>     learning from past lessons since the group was chartered the first
>>     time. Additionally I think there is value in the group name and
>>     its charter text being written so as to explicitly attract
>>     researchers and research that discuss policy, as a "place to land"
>>     in the IETF/IRTF.
>>     >
>>     > We welcome any comments on the proposed changes.
>>     >
>>     > Happy new year and best wishes to everyone,
>>     >
>>     > -Chairs, Mallory & Sofia
>>     >
>>     > [0] https://www.iab.org/wiki/index.php/RG_Reviews
>>     >
>>     > [1] https://github.com/IRTF-HRPC/IRTF-HRPC/blob/main/hrpccharter.md
>>     >
>>     > [2]
>>     https://github.com/IRTF-HRPC/IRTF-HRPC/commit/1a029b31ab3521e8da1490924c94397a99497d19
>>     >
>>     > [3] https://pad.riseup.net/p/Qgq2TJuWLbFSY1Jrcxgm
>>     >
>>     >
>>
>>     -- 
>>     Niels ten Oever, PhD
>>     Postdoctoral Researcher - Media Studies Department - University of
>>     Amsterdam
>>     Affiliated Faculty - Digital Democracy Institute - Simon Fraser
>>     University
>>     Non-Resident Fellow 2022-2023 - Center for Democracy & Technology
>>     Associated Scholar - Centro de Tecnologia e Sociedade - Fundação
>>     Getúlio Vargas
>>     Research Fellow - Centre for Internet and Human Rights - European
>>     University Viadrina
>>
>>     Vice chair - Global Internet Governance Academic Network (GigaNet)
>>
>>     W: https://nielstenoever.net
>>     E: [e-mail]
>>     T: @nielstenoever
>>     P/S/WA: [phone]
>>     PGP: 2458 0B70 5C4A FD8A 9488 643A 0ED8 3F3A 468A C8B3
>>
>>     Read my latest article on network ideologies and how 5G reshapes
>>     the internet
>>     https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308596122001446
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> 
> -- 
> Mallory Knodel
> CTO, Center for Democracy and Technology
> gpg fingerprint :: E3EB 63E0 65A3 B240 BCD9 B071 0C32 A271 BD3C C780
> 
> 
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