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

[Sofía Celi <[e-mail]>]

Hi, Andrew and all,
>> 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. 

Thank you.

> 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.

Several corrections here:

1. The discussion did not happen during any discussion of rechartering 
(Mallory showed a slide about what a new name for HPRC will look like 
and then moved to the current objectives of HRPC, which is the timestamp 
you refer to). We didn't have time at IETF116 to talk about in depth 
about recharting, so that context that you start with is not the correct 
one. The timestamp you point out to at 7.20 is about what the HPRC 
objectives are.
2. The UN didn't only invite people from HRPC but also from the IAB and 
IETF, and I think, in general, researchers. How they chose to invite 
people and in which framing is something that I guess only they know, 
and I will not like to speculate on this as I don't like to pretend to 
know what organizations and/or people intend or not ;)
> 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.  

I will like to see data about this. Again, I personally don't like 
speculation and, as this is a research group, I prefer to see 
quantifiable and representive data that backs up claims. I haven't heard 
this from any policy marker, in fact many of them don't seem to know 
what the IETF is (which is sad).

I do think that sometimes for people considered "new" to the IETF/IRTF, 
like myself, when speaking and being nervous, can confuse different 
acronyms (I tend, for example, to forget how to pronounce PEARG). I 
think that if we want a community that embraces new-comers and is open 
for them, we should help them instead of publicly stating if they made a 
mistake or not. We can also create more templates on chairs slides or 
agendas (which I'm happy to start some work on). I think a degree of 
that is needed or else less and less new people will be joining 
IRTF/IETF. But I do see that when speaking about HRPC is good to always 
frame it in the IRTF setting (which again we try hard to do).

Thank you,

-- 
Sofía Celi
@claucece
Cryptographic research and implementation at many places, specially Brave.
Chair of hprc at IRTF and anti-fraud at W3C.
Reach me out at: [e-mail]
Website: https://sofiaceli.com/
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