Re: [hrpc] draft-irtf-hrpc-association-02

[Joseph Lorenzo Hall <[e-mail]>]

I'm just going to share my own comments now, without having de-duped across
Avri. Happy to clarify and let me know if I'm being brain-dead anywhere:


   - https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-irtf-hrpc-association-02
   -
      - Abstract:
      -
         - "causal”? That’s a pretty surprising claim to be making here…
         maybe I’m missing something?
         - It feels like the first sentence should be last, or that a final
         sentence should be added specific to association, or the
entire abstract
         redrafted to focus more clearly on the specific right --
association -- the
         document addresses.
         - Intro:
      -
         - Could be edited to be a bit more concrete, and make the very
         good points it does make more clearly.
         - Define "epistemic community"
         - Typo: "As the Internet grows, decisions made about its
         architecture are become more important"
         - I would probably change “established” here to “described”:
         "[RFC8280] established the relationship between human rights
and Internet
         protocols."
         - Section 2:
      -
         - might be good to have colons (“:”) after each term to
         distinguish the term from the definition?
         - can’t distributed systems have their behavior coordinated by
         other things than message passing? (e.g., a global clock).
         - The Infrastructure definition could benefit from being more
         concrete… I would think modifying a more standard definition
first — e.g.,
         "the basic physical and organizational structures and facilities (e.g.
         buildings, roads, power supplies) needed for the operation of
a society or
         enterprise.”) — and then extending it would be better.
         - Internet seems to be a cluster of definitions… is the reader
         supposed to pick one, consider them all, or?
         - 4. Methodology:
      -
         - Again, I would say “describe” instead of “establish” in "an
         initial effort to establish the relationship between human
rights and the
         Internet architecture"
         - again with the “causal”: “it ultimately established either
         causal or deterministic relationships between aforementioned concepts
         through a series of case studies."
         - this is uncited… I’m not sure this document can claim anything
         further about 8280-like work without referencing something to show how
         individuals using 8280 have confirmed research in 8280:
"further validated
         through confirmatory research in the form of Human Rights
Protocol Reviews"
         - This definitely needs elaboration within the document! I know
         what these words mean methodologically-speaking, but I’ve
never seen them
         composed like this and that may just be me being not familiar
with this
         strain of research (despite being a qualitative methods geek): “we
         therefore aim to test the causal relationship through a case-selection
         method, where we have adopted a purposive sampling approach,
aimed at the
         typicality and paradigmatic nature of the cases
[SeawrightGerring] to help
         us achieve an attempt at an an ethnography of infrastructure [Star]."
         - Section 5, Lit review:
      -
         - I’d like to believe this but it’s not immediately obvious that
         the reference here supports the assertion made in this
sentence: "The IETF
         itself, defined as a 'open global community' of network designers,
         operators, vendors, and researchers is also protected by freedom of
         assembly and association [RFC3233]."
         - Section 6, cases and examples:
      -
         - I really really like the clarity of the analysis in 6.1.1 in the
         third paragraph where each of the elements of free
association are examined
         in that case… I see that other sections try to do this but
aren’t nearly as
         clear and lucid as this first case. It would be great to try
and tighten up
         the other cases analyses here.
         - wondering if the list at the end of each subsubsection might
         better be comma-delimited rather than dash-delimited.
         - 6.1.2: hmmm, WebRTC is basically a two-party protocol, while
         PERC is the multi-party conference mixing version… so maybe
“multi-party”
         should be modified here: "Multi-party video conferencing
protocols like
         WebRTC [RFC6176][RFC7118]..."
         - 6.2, certainly people share “proprietary” information via
         peer-to-peer tools and services… I think the point here is
that peers don’t
         themselves encumber downstream recipients with additional
terms that would
         make it hard to share further (but that the object being
shared may have
         other proprietary interests such as copyright…). Not sure if
we need to do
         anything here it was just a subtlety that might be confusing to some
         readers.
         - 6.2.2: this should be modified to reflect the new GIT WG and
         drafts? "There have been two efforts to standardize the
workflow vis a vis
         these third party services, but these haven't come to fruition: [Wugh]
         [GithubIETF]."
         - Section 7: Discussion: Establishing the relation
      -
         - can we find a different way to say “juridically”?
         - s/These preliminary finding suggest/These preliminary findings
         suggest/
         - I really like this section, although I think it is a bit
         overclaiming in that it seems to imply an exhaustive case set
that would
         allow us to say things more definitively. E.g., I think this is a bit
         stronger than the draft can support in its current form: "The
case studies
         show that the Internet infrastructure, the combination of
architecture and
         protocols, facilitates freedom of association and assembly,
by allowing
         groups of people to converse, collaborate, exchange, and
build and maintain
         identities in both structural and occasional manners.” I
guess we could try
         and think of more cases or just qualify this text a bit more
that "these
         cases heavily support the assertion that…"
         -
            - The conclusion words this better, IMO (i.e., “some
            protocols”): “we established the relation between some
protocols and the
            right tofreedom of assembly and association."
            - Section 8:
      -
         - I think this section is good, but I think it could benefit from
         a summary of what the cases showed to lend support that despite the
         *capacity* of the Internet to support association, it’s
complicated and can
         be very fractured and increasingly proprietary.


On Thu, Mar 28, 2019 at 7:03 AM Avri <[e-mail]> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Again apologies for the last minute comments.
>
> Abstract: saying that something establishes  ‘the causal link’ is a very
> strong claim.  Are we sure we want to make that strong a claim?  Can we
> really prove a causal link and can we prove that it is ‘the’ causal link. I
> personally do not see this draft as establishing any causal links, though
> it does point toward where they might be found.
>
> Introduction: “by investigating the exact impact of Internet protocols on
> specific human rights,” again a very strong claim.  Can we ever really know
> the exact impact in some possible causal chain?  An even if we want to
> position a possible impact, we need more definitive illustrations and
> argumentation.
>
> There is an ambiguity between  allowing a right to prosper meaning a right
> is enabled, and what looks like a claim to a ‘right to prosper’. This is
> just a language nit, and I have avoided commenting on those for the most
> part, but this jumped out at me.
>
> 4. Methodology
>
> “been further validated through confirmatory research in the form of
> Human Rights Protocol Reviews.” I think this is the primary reason for the
> HRPC to do reviews, but I do not beleive we have established a methodology
> for doing those yet.  At this point some people are doing reviews and
> delivering them to responses that vary from happy acceptance to irritation
> to shock and awe. As far as I can tell we have not yet developed a
> systematic methodology for measuring the impact of the considerations in
> test reviews. Nor are we yet studying the reviews to see how they apply the
> considerations.  We have not yet established a rigorous method for testing
> our ethnographically established hypothesis.
>
> “Even though the present work does not seek to create new guidelines, the
> conclusions could inform the development of new guidelines such as is done
> in draft-irtf-hrpc-guidelines.” I think we need a tighter binding between
> the discussion in this draft and anywhere in the guidelines where a
> consideration is said to be relevant to freedom of Expression/Assembly.
>
> Perhaps this is a personal academic prejudice, but while I think
> ethnography is extremely useful in hypothesis formation, I do not see how
> it can also serve to test and verify relevance and usefulness. Seems
> circular process to me. I think we need to find other methods for testing
> and measuring.
>
> 6.  Cases and examples
>
> Seems like a loose collection of internet features that may or may not
> have a positive or negative affect on expression & assembly.  I do not see
> the persuasive argument that shows the possibility of a causal chain.
> Perhaps I am just not seeing it and others do, I accept.  Even in the two
> discussion sections, 7 & 8, the draft seems to jump from assertion to
> assertion without the rigor of argument that makes the conclusions
> inescapable.  I do not see the arguments that show why consideration in
> general or why specific considerations would be significant in enabling or
> disabling the freedom of association and assembly, though the guidelines
> does make those sorts of claims.
>
> Re considerations:  While I understand that the authors do not want to
> introduce new considerations related to assembly and association - there
> may not be any new considerations or changes to existing considerations, I
> still think the draft needs to show a mapping between internet protocols
> and features and existing considerations.
>
> Note: I have not called them out, but the draft needs a spelling and
> grammatical scrubbing.
>
> Thanks for continued efforts on this draft.
>
> Avri
> _______________________________________________
> hrpc mailing list
> [e-mail]
> https://www.irtf.org/mailman/listinfo/hrpc
>


-- 
Joseph Lorenzo Hall
Chief Technologist, Center for Democracy & Technology [https://www.cdt.org]
1401 K ST NW STE 200, Washington DC 20005-3497
e: [e-mail], p: 202.407.8825, pgp: https://josephhall.org/gpg-key
Fingerprint: 3CA2 8D7B 9F6D DBD3 4B10  1607 5F86 6987 40A9 A871

Don't miss out! CDT's Tech Prom is April 10, 2019, at The
Anthem. Please join us: https://cdt.org/annual-dinner/