Re: [hrpc] [irsg] Review of draft-irtf-hrpc-guidelines-13

[Jane Coffin <[e-mail]>]

Apologies from me as well for not replying sooner.
The diff version addresses comments and edits that I had.  I appreciate the
work that went into this.
I, too, am satisfied that the guidelines are ready for publication.

Best,
Jane

On Fri, Nov 25, 2022 at 11:56 AM Brian Trammell (IETF) <[e-mail]>
wrote:

> Apologies for missing the reply on the 10th (left the meeting in London
> and kind of forgot about the IRTF for a couple of weeks :) ) thanks for the
> ping, Mallory!
>
> And many thanks Gurshabad and Niels for addressing my comments, and the
> edits to the document; having reviewed the diff I’m satisfied that the
> guidelines are ready for publication.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Brian
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On 25 Nov 2022, at 17:30, Mallory Knodel <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
> Thanks to Brian and Jane for these reviews!
>
> Gurshabad and Niels have taken those suggestions as per the thread and
> issued a new version.
>
> Brian and Jane, please can you give us an indication you are satisfied or
> further advice on how to better resolve your issues?
>
> Latest version:
> https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-irtf-hrpc-guidelines/
>
> Thanks everyone,
> -Mallory
>
> On Thursday, November 10, 2022, Gurshabad Grover <[e-mail]>
> wrote:
>
>> Thank you for this detailed review! The new versions (-15 and -16) of the
>> drafts address your feedback. Comments in-line.
>>
>> On 9/8/2022 4:00 PM, Brian Trammell (IETF) wrote:
>>
>>> The abstract and introduction state that the document has been
>>> "reviewed, tried, and tested" by the RG. "Reviewed" I accept at face value,
>>> though it is unclear how the document was "tried and tested". Have each of
>>> the review categories in section 3 been run at least once by the RG/review
>>> team? Should the document link to some instance of each of these kinds of
>>> reviews (whether within the RG, or without)?
>>>
>>>
>> The document has been used for several reviews, yes. Added a line in the
>> introduction to link to a repository of such reviews.
>>
>> Section 3 seems to be missing a recommendation about who reviewers should
>>> be. Is this the shepherd, someone appointed by the WG chair, a cross-IETF
>>> group of interested people, people with more or less familiarity with the
>>> specifics of the context the protocol is developed in, all or none of the
>>> above?
>>>
>>>
>> Section 3 now clarifies this.
>>
>> - Sections 4.1 and 4.2 are points on a continuum, basically stating that
>>> "if your protocol doesn't work in all contexts in which the Internet might
>>> be deployed, then you're disadvantaging people"... which is true, and
>>> stronger IMO if stated more directly. Section 4.1 is entitled
>>> "connectivity" but mixes the end-to-end principle with reliability under
>>> bandwidth and latency challenges (though Reliability is the title of
>>> section 4.2).
>>>
>>>
>> I think we're reading this a bit differently. Connectivity is currently
>> addressing two (distinct, I agree) topics:
>>
>> (1) end-to-end design
>> (2) connectivity in low bandwidth and high latency situations
>>
>> Reliability is addressing a separate topic: fault tolerance and graceful
>> failure.
>>
>> - Sections 4.4 and 4.5 seem like they were originally a single section
>>> named Internationalization and Localization, and then were split. I'd merge
>>> them again, because many of the points made in one apply to the other and
>>> vice versa. Accessibility (section 4.18) also seems like it's following the
>>> same general principle -- internationalization and localization deal with
>>> application/presentation barriers tied to language, while accessibility in
>>> a protocol context deals with application/presentation barriers tied to
>>> mostly-nonlinguistic aspects of user experience, though in an Internet
>>> context accessibility generally applies to application layer protocols
>>> payload presentation (and the applications above them). Please consider
>>> treating them together.
>>>
>>>
>> Have arranged the sections so that Internationalization appears before
>> Localization. Have also added a sentence that clarifies the distinction:
>> "Internationalization is related to localization, but they are not the
>> same. Internationalization is a necessary precondition for localization."
>>
>> - Sections 4.6, 4.7, and 4.17 overlap quite a bit -- adaptability goes
>>> hand in hand with openness of standard and implementation, and adaptability
>>> and support for heterogeneity are also intrinsically linked. Perhaps these
>>> are third-level subsections of an overarching second-level subsection?
>>>
>>>
>> Have moved Adaptability to be up with Openness and Heterogeneity Support
>> now. Answer to the broader question about subsections below.
>>
>> - Similarly, sections 4.8-4.10 cover properties of communications
>>> security protocols, and then we come to section 4.11, entitled Security,
>>> and section 4.12 on privacy (which overlaps with Confidentiality as a
>>> property), followed by sections 4.13 and 4.14 on Pseudonymity and Anonymity
>>> (themselves privacy preserving techniques). These sections also cover
>>> ground covered by existing formal and informal practices in the IETF, on
>>> security and privacy considerations within documents. As a user of this
>>> document, I'd prefer this entire set of considerations to be split out into
>>> their own section, since unlike the other sections they do cover properties
>>> of the protocol and its description already covered by existing practice
>>> and process. What I'd like to know as an HRPC reviewer is what I need to
>>> look for in existing security and privacy considerations sections to find
>>> gaps in human rights considerations that might need to be addressed. What's
>>> the delta between existing S&P guidelines and th
>>>
>> ose in this document?
>>
>>>
>>>
>> The RFCs on security considerations and privacy considerations are much
>> more comprehensive than the exercise here, and we're primarily pointing to
>> readers to those. We've just summarised some important questions in this
>> draft.
>>
>> To be clear, I'm not suggesting that the authors and the RG restructure
>>> the document from a document usability standpoint; rather, I'm pointing out
>>> what appear to be structural issues in the document in case these are an
>>> indication that the RG's thinking on these points might be incomplete. Or,
>>> in other words, the RG did not set out to build a taxonomy, but having
>>> almost done so, is it worth finishing the job?
>>>
>>>
>> I think we're open in acknowledging that this research is not done and
>> dusted. Doing human rights reviews in standard-setting environments is
>> still an evolving practice, therefore we cannot claim we have a full
>> taxonomy. In previous iterations, we've restructured the draft so that
>> similar concepts appear together (as far as possible). We chose to
>> dis-aggregate topics as much as possible to stay as close to
>> implementations and stay away from abstractions, especially because this
>> document aims to provide practical guidance. It's also usually suggested in
>> evaluations to stick to concrete questions, and avoid high-level
>> concepts/groupings.[0]
>>
>> Since reviewers may only look at certain sections, the modularity makes
>> them self-contained pieces of advice on different topics. Overall, at this
>> point, we're hesitant to combine sections or create subheadings, because we
>> see benefit in keeping even related sections separate.
>>
>> - Section 4.16 Outcome Transparency asks what appears to me to be an
>>> impossible question. I'm of course aware of the harms of unintended
>>> consequences, but I'm not sure how I, as a protocol designer, could
>>> usefully apply this question to my work. The only wise answer to "are the
>>> effects of your protocol fully and easily comprehensible...?" is "no", and
>>> no action I can take not involving a time machine will flip it to "yes". So
>>> this observation probably belongs in the frontmatter of section 4, as
>>> opposed to being a guideline itself. Section 4.21 is similarly difficult to
>>> actually apply: it seems to reduce to "have you thought of anything you
>>> haven't thought of yet?", which is tautologcially "no".
>>>
>>>
>> Thank you. You're right, we've fixed the phrasing as now encouraging
>> folks to document expected outcomes instead.
>>
>> - Section 4.20 points to an unsolved (and at first glance very difficult
>>> to solve) problem in providing recourse to remedy, which is an interesting
>>> point, but maybe not a guideline per se.
>>>
>>>
>> Yes, this was a contentious one in the group. We have no concrete
>> guideline, but believe that the current text represents the rg consensus.
>>
>> Throughout section 4, I found the choice of which rights were impacted by
>>> which consideration to be mostly arbitrary, in that in most cases I
>>> couldn't come up with a convincing argument for why the impacts listed were
>>> tied to the guideline at hand, or a good reason why a missing impacted
>>> right was missing. The most glaring of these: section 4.12 "Privacy" does
>>> not list the "Right to Privacy" as impacted, which seems... incorrect. It's
>>> not clear to me that the Impacts sections are all that useful, though,
>>> unless someone is trying to pick and choose which human rights not to care
>>> about (not a use case we should optimize for, IMO), so might be painlessly
>>> omitted.
>>>
>>>
>> The objective of this exercise was to also clearly establish that these
>> properties are linked to specific human rights. Given that human rights are
>> not atomic, but individisble and interrelated, we admit that it is
>> difficult to be comprehensive in those sections though. Happy to correct
>> obvious mistakes, like the one you pointed to.
>>
>> and as promised, one editorial nit: section 3.1 appears to incorrectly
>>> cite section 3.3 as the source of guidelines; this should point to section
>>> 4.
>>>
>>>
>> Thanks for catching that, fixed!
>>
>> Again, many thanks for an informative, well-written, and useful document,
>>> and I hope these comments are similarly useful to you.
>>>
>>>
>> We found this review quite useful. Thanks again, and please let us know
>> if the changes are to your satisfaction.
>>
>> -Gurshabad and Niels
>>
>> [0]
>> https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1071581910000972?casa_token=TjtLihpb6iMAAAAA:_I6AtjHcLtQch3-tyB0tzJTgT_3iV_zqaJ8_Tec2wFh5lz86gWklnoBeAbXDqx8V9pZwKhoczw
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>>
>
>
> --
> Mallory Knodel
> CTO, Center for Democracy and Technology
> gpg fingerprint :: E3EB 63E0 65A3 B240 BCD9 B071 0C32 A271 BD3C C780
>
>
>