[hrpc] Politics, representation, and the charter (was Re: HRPC recharter)

[Andrew Sullivan <[e-mail]>]

Hi,

Disclaimer still in effect.

On Mon, Apr 17, 2023 at 11:57:54PM +0100, Sofía Celi wrote:
>everyone) and I don't see it there either. We try to be careful when 
>making the slides, hence why I was asking ;)

I didn't go through the entire recording, but in the parts that I did I have not found confirmation of what I recall, so I hereby withdraw my claim and apologize for making the claim.  But, I ran into a part of the discussion that illustrated my point nevertheless.

In the discussion of rechartering, starting about 07:20, Mallory talks about talking to the human rights community and in particular about being in Geneva talking to the UN about what HRPCRG is doing.  If you are a deep insider of the IETF and IRTF, it's possible to understand that discussion entirely within the distinctions that we all understand, though I'm not sure the distinctions were as clear as one might like.  If, however, you come from a government or intergovernmental agency, the framing that Mallory gives it will sound something very like, "The IETF is doing something about human rights and that work is going on in the HRPC group."  This creates an expectation _of the IETF_ on the part of policy-makers.  The IETF has not actually agreed to that expectation, however, which means that the IETF is being forced into a situation where it may need to defend itself against accusations of having failed to live up to an expectation it has not committed to.

As I already noted, I have heard this message repeated back from policy-makers (some of them were in Yokohama but others were not), so this is a rhetorical effect that the RG's output is having in the world even if not intended.  Whatever that is, it is not clear to me that it is "research", and that's part of the reason I'm uncomfortable with the proposed charter text and indeed the scope of the RG.  As a general matter, it seems to me that the IETF has worked hard to build protocols and not policy, though it is not always effective at this.  I am not too convinced that creating a RG that includes "policy" in its name will, therefore, lead policy-makers to grasp the right handle when they attempt to impose policy preferences in an Internet context.

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
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