Re: [hrpc] I-D Action: draft-irtf-hrpc-political-04.txt

[Ted Lemon <[e-mail]>]

On Sep 17, 2019, at 11:45 AM, Paul Wouters <[e-mail]> wrote:
>> What is the good outcome here?
> 
> "This document aims to bring about a better understanding on the political nature of standards and protocols.”


To whom?

>> Is it being heard, or is it being influential?
> 
> It is a bit early to say that, as the document is still in the draft
> stage. The question to ask is more "can this document in the current
> form, positvely influence or shape future IETF developments". I think
> the answer is yes. If you have suggestions of making this document
> even better, I'd love to hear those specific suggestions.

That’s the question I was asking.  Sorry for being unclear.

> I would love to have this document as a reference for document authors
> to think about their specific IETF work impacts the global internet, and
> via the internet, society. That is, this document would be a great
> starting point for a document author to consider if their document needs
> a Human Rights Consideration section. Writing such a section has as goal
> to confirm (or perhaps improve) the protocol described causes no
> unintentional harm to society.

This was my understanding as well.  I think it’s currently not going to succeed at meeting that need.

> Yet, some remote communities
> that relied on proxy/caching servers to be able to have affordable
> internet are now seeing a prohibitively expensive internet bill since
> nothing can be cached anymore. Worse, some hacked up solutions now to
> run the browser remotely in the cloud and only show a graphical output,
> which can be strongly compressed and sometimes even largely cached,
> to the client. This is resulting in a significantly reduced security
> for those users, the equivalent of giving companies or nation states
> administrative access to your personal laptop or mobile phone which
> full surveilance powers. The opposite of what TLS was supposed to
> accomplish.

These are great examples.  I wonder if this document as it is at present could have helped to avoid this problem.  I think the answer is no.  It would be fantastic if this document could be written in such a way that it could help to avoid problems of this type.

The bottom line is that I agree completely with all the aspirations that you have stated.  I just don’t see how this document helps to bring us closer to achieving them.

The canonical answer to that is “send text.”  However, when I have commented in the past, my comments have seemed not to be heard.  If I were to send text, it would almost be a complete rewrite.  I’m certainly not willing to undertake that sort of effort without some notion that it would be useful.