Re: [hrpc] Review of draft-irtf-hrpc-political-01

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

Heya, I want to thank Michael for this review and I just reviewed the
document this week myself (sorry so close to the HRPC meeting... I'm fresh
off of sabbatical and focusing on the iasa2 work for a few years).

Here are my comments, let me know if they make sense:


   - draft-irtf-hrpc-political-00
   -
      - Abstract:
      -
         - s/standards developing process/standards development process/
         - s/reflect was is considered/reflect what is considered/
         - "ordering of societies and communities" I don't think this will
         be clear to an engineering audience; we say this not just in
this draft but
         elsewhere too (-guidelines). There has to be a more
understandable way to
         say this if we're talking to IETF engineers.
         - "the consideration of the politics and (potential) impact of
         protocols should be part of the standardization and development
         process." This seems overly prescriptive and not a research
result, but a
         normative claim on changes to the IETF process; I think this
is out of line
         for an RG.
         - Intro
      -
         - This provides a useful list of past IETF RFCs that had to
         struggle with non-engineering factors in standards setting,
but then says,
         "Recently there has been an increased discussion on the
relation between
         Internet protocols and human rights [RFC8280]", pointing to
the HRPC IRTF
         RFC... I think this needs to qualify that this discussion had
happened in
         the IRTF and not ubiquitously across the IETF.
         - Would be great to find a more plain language way of saying
         "affordances". I'm not convinced the definition in the
terminology section
         is comprehensible to engineers. ("The possibilities that are
provided to an
         actors through the ordering of an environment by a technology.")
         - Terminology: there's no IETF-based document that defines
      "protocol"? I would swap with one or zap both protocols and
standards using
      the rationale Michael Rogers put forward (IETFers know what those are).
      - Research Question:
      -
         - It seems like the second part of the research question is
         getting close to stepping on IETF territory... And the
document doesn't
         *research* this question: "If so, should the politics of
protocols need to
         be taken into account in their development process?"
         - Section 4:
      -
         - This needs to be clear this discussion has happened at IRTF, not
         IETF or needs to cite more evidence: "Nonetheless there has been a
         recent uptick in discussions around the impact of Internet protocols
         on human rights [RFC8280] in the IETF and more general about
the impact of
         technology on society in the public debate."
         - This section is unclear in terms of if these are all academic or
         IETF-external views... the intro to this section seems to
overclaim about
         what the reader should expect. E.g., 4.2 and 4.3 have no
references; are
         any of these themes from community interviews or solely from the
         literature?
         -
            - This doesn't seem to reference interviews at all, so maybe
            clarify this is from academic and other literature?
            - Would be great to find a more simple term than "conurbation".
         - 4.3: this is perhaps a minor point, but even horse-powered
         vehicle culture at scale would require these things, so it's not
         self-evident this claim is true: "But even if that did not happen,
         widespread automobile use requires paved roads, and parking lots and
         structures.  These are pressures that come from the
automotive technology
         itself, and would not arise without that technology." (I
don't think this
         undermines the point being made here, but it's distracting.)
         - 4.5: the entire paragraph about the numbered Postman arguments
         is pretty opaque and needs the authors to unpack that or is
not relevant to
         engineers. I think you can delete this graph without much effect.
         - Again, this is a bit too abstract and could be stated more
         simply and concretely: "Finally, this view is that that protocols are
         political because they affect or sometimes effect the socio-technical
         ordering of reality."
         - Section 5:
      -
         - We either need to find a new way of saying "epistemic community"
         or define it.
         - 5.1: not sure what's going on here: "The next subsection will
         ---"
         - 5.1: is "economy studies" different from economics?
         - The ref to draft-arkko-ietf-finance-thoughts-00 is broken
         somehow
         - Agora? What is that?
         - Section 6:
      -
         - s/its standards output reflect was is considered by the
         technical community/its standards output reflect what is
considered by the
         technical community/
         - This is where the draft makes a leap that I think is too far:
         "This calls for providing a methodology in the IETF community
to evaluate
         which routes forward should indeed be feasible, what
constitutes the "good"
         in "good practice" and what trade-offs between different
feasible features
         of technologies are useful and should therefore be made
possible. Such an
         analysis should take societal implication into account." Only IETF
         consensus can get us to this and that's not going to come from an RG.
         -
            - While I agree that it's inevitable that these factors will
            affect and need to affect IETF work, I'm not sure it needs
to be done in
            the IETF (it can be an external body or some other entity
that concentrates
            expertise) and I'm not convinced that the IETF
participants will be on
            balance very good at this, given their collective
expertise is largely
            engineering.
            - I think this could be substantially elaborated/expanded and
         then be very useful: "The risk of not doing this is
threefold: (1) the IETF
         might makedecisions which have a political impact that was
not intended by
         thecommunity, (2) other bodies or entities might make the
decisions forthe
         IETF because the IETF does not have an explicit stance, (3)
otherbodies
         that do take these issues into account might increase
inimportance to the
         detriment of the influence of the IETF."
         - Section 7:
   -
      - s/United National/United Nations/
      - Unclear what this means, reword: "The complexity of the work
      inscribes a requirementof competence in the work in the IETF, which forms
      an inherentbarrier for end-user involvement."


On Wed, Mar 6, 2019 at 11:58 AM Michael Rogers <[e-mail]>
wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Neils and Mallory asked me to review the current draft of "Notes on
> networking standards and politics".
>
> I'm afraid I went a bit overboard and recommended that it should be
> rewritten as a musical about a plucky kid lost in the big city and her
> scruffy dog sidekick, so please take my comments with plenty of salt.
>
> The review's attached, along with a diff against the markdown source
> containing some minor edits to spelling, punctuation and wording.
>
> Cheers,
> Michael
> _______________________________________________
> hrpc mailing list
> [e-mail]
> https://www.irtf.org/mailman/listinfo/hrpc
>


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Joseph Lorenzo Hall
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