Re: [hrpc] new title for draft-tenoever-hrpc-political

[Tony Rutkowski <[e-mail]>]

Hi Bill,

[You will need to join this hrpc list or your emails will bounce.]

You came to mind when I discovered this IRTF group dealing with politics
and human rights and standards.  My sense is that most of the people in
the group are (in our terms) the 3rd or 4th generation of a community we
have intersected with since we were much younger.  It is also good to
see a new generation - seemingly largely in Europe - who are focussing
on issues that were once part of a vibrant community that once existed
in the States.  One could almost trace the demise of the Airlie House
events as in indicator of depreciation since the 1970s.    You are about
as experienced and networked as anyone in the world in dealing with
these matters, and perhaps could help with the dialogue.

With that said, as someone who spent much of my life promoting the DARPA
internet platform - like many of my contemporaries who played similar
roles - we are dismayed at how that platform has become perhaps the
principal medium of massive destruction of human rights today.  Every
time one opens the NY Times  or Wash Post, there are cringe-worthy
examples.  Arguably, at least part of the problem - as Morozov notes -
can be laid at the feet of those (including myself) who fostered the
DARPA internet's unfettered proliferation for pure monetary gain, market
share, personal aggrandizement, and national hegemony - with the IETF as
one of the principal instrumentalities.  So as a kind of personal "mea
culpa," perhaps we can help encourage larger, alternative perspectives
based on the long arc of history in this sector - as we seem to be
largely replicating a period from a  hundred years ago.

As all of these platforms move toward NFV-SDN/5G instantiations, a
significant policy-political component can be added that is largely
missing.  What passes for politics today is an insane drive toward
anti-globalism, jingoism, and xenophobia that represents a human rights
nightmare.

--tony

best,
tony

On 21-Jul-18 7:46 AM, William Drake wrote:
> Hi everyone
>
> Thanks Tony.  Not sure I fully understand what the debate you’re
> having here is but since I’m packing for travel will have to live with
> the uncertainty.  But if the question is do standards have a politics,
> sure.
>
> BTW the contact details you had on me are a decade out of date and I’m
> at U. Zurich now.
>
> Cheers
>
> Bill
>
>> On Jul 20, 2018, at 19:08, Tony Rutkowski <[e-mail]
>> <mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
>>
>> Hi there,
>>
>> Technology, protocols, and standards are almost never neutral.  Nor
>> are the venues used to pursue them.  They are almost always carefully
>> chosen to meet institutional or personal strategic objectives,
>> biases, or proclivities.  Even at layer 1 - the physical interface
>> has been profoundly "political."  Indeed, the very structure that is
>> used to differentiate protocol layers is political.   It is what
>> motivates the actors to choose different courses of action.
>>
>> As suggested before, it is useful to "take the red pill" (using "The
>> Matrix" terminology) and watch Evegny Morozov's lecture at
>> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1yJ8eeI2js>  [There is a certain
>> irony here as for some years during the 1980s - to deal with the
>> challenge of all the internets which existed - the term "Matrix" was
>> popularized by John Quarterman  to describe the ensemble. ]
>>
>> Over the years, countless reports, groups, conference, and papers
>> have been dedicated on this subject.   I'm adding Bill Drake who is
>> probably the best know "doyen" in this area who now teaches this
>> topic at the Geneva Graduate Institute and has spent many decades
>> researching and writing about this topic.  Bill remembers when the
>> progressive communications community was raising the same issues for
>> "the ISDN."
>>
>> It always seemed that the French had the best term for this -
>> politique.  There are a great many venues of all kinds of flavours
>> generating internet protocol standards these days.  That includes
>> proprietary standards.  With everything rapidly moving to NFV-SDN
>> instantiations, it is getting even more diverse.  A great many if not
>> most of them "mediate many aspects of modern life, and therefore
>> contributes to the ordering of societies and communities" as noted in
>> the draft, On the Politics of Standards,
>> https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-tenoever-hrpc-political/
>>
>> The current draft could benefit from a broader perspective and
>> healthy skepticism, e.g., Morozov's and the enormous body of material
>> written on this subject over the decades rather than the somewhat
>> self-similar ones referenced.  If  you really want to shape future
>> implementations - you need, for example,  to comment on 3GPP as a
>> venue and its internet standards.  It is bigger than all the other
>> public standards bodies put together, and its standards are mandatory
>> for the global mobile internet.
>>
>> There is also the quadrennial treaty conference coming up in Dubai in
>> a few months where the world's nations will be assembling to consider
>> these same topics and develop or amend treaty provisions and
>> resolutions.  You can assess and read all the current provisions and
>> input contributions at <https://www.itu.int/md/S18-PP-C/en>  Are
>> standards really biased to disadvantage developing countries?
>>
>> Another fundamental challenge that is ignored, is the reality that
>> all these standards are incorporated into overwhelmingly privately
>> owned equipment, networks, cloud data centers, running code, service
>> offerings, and operational practices.  How exactly are these all to
>> be shaped??  To answer my own question - it is found in the "Human
>> Rights as a Service" Internet-Draft.  Let everyone analyse their work
>> and characterize their products with actual human rights tags! 
>> <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-rutkowski-hrpc-hraas/>
>>
>> best,
>> tony
>>
>> On 20-Jul-18 4:33 AM, Corinne Cath wrote:
>>> I like a.) Notes on networking standards and politics part of this
>>> whole process imho is to get people to read the doc to begin with,
>>> which seems most likely with a clear and recognizable title. my 2
>>> cents, corinne 
>>>
>>> On Fri, Jul 20, 2018 at 1:19 AM, Mark Perkins
>>> <marknoumea=[e-mail]
>>> <mailto:marknoumea=[e-mail]..org>> wrote:
>>>
>>>     'Notes on networking standards and politics'
>>>
>>>     get my vote!
>>>
>>>     Mark Perkins
>>>
>>>     On Friday, July 20, 2018, 10:10:27 AM GMT+11, Niels ten Oever
>>>     <[e-mail] <mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>     Off-list discussion with Stephen resulted in a new option:
>>>
>>>     'Notes on networking standards and politics'
>>>
>>>     That gives us a few options:
>>>
>>>     a) Notes on networking standards and politics
>>>     b) On Value Neutrality and the Politics of Standards
>>>     c) Notes on Value Neutrality and the Politics of Standards
>>>     d) ?
>>>
>>>     Curious to hear what the RG thinks sounds best, new suggestions
>>>     ofc also
>>>     welcome.
>>>
>>>     Best,
>>>
>>>     Niels
>>>
>>>     On 07/20/2018 12:43 AM, Niels ten Oever wrote:
>>>     >
>>>     >
>>>     > On 07/20/2018 12:38 AM, Stephen Farrell wrote:
>>>     >>
>>>     >> Hiya,
>>>     >>
>>>     >> On 19/07/18 23:33, Niels ten Oever wrote:
>>>     >>> Hi all,
>>>     >>>
>>>     >>> Thank you all very much for the spirited discussion at the
>>>     session. To
>>>     >>> resolve the issue with draft political and remove the last
>>>     issue mention
>>>     >>> blocking adoption I would like to propose to rename the draft:
>>>     >>>
>>>     >>> On Value Neutrality and the Politics of Standards
>>>     >>
>>>     >> Meh:-)
>>>     >>
>>>     >> How'd something more like "Some background on networking
>>>     standards
>>>     >> and politics" work? That seems to describe the content of the
>>>     draft
>>>     >> better to me, (modulo not having carefully read the latest
>>>     rev, as I
>>>     >> admitted at the mic, so don't take me too seriously.)
>>>     >>
>>>     >> My reason for suggesting that is to try end up with something
>>>     that
>>>     >> would be less surprising for an IETF (or IEEE 802 or W3C...)
>>>     reader.
>>>     >>
>>>     >
>>>     > Exactly that audience is saying time and again that 'technology is
>>>     > neutral' / 'protocols are neutral' / 'standards are neutral'.
>>>     That is I
>>>     > would like to address that in the title (and the draft).
>>>     >
>>>     > Following work can then address how we could come up with
>>>     approaches to
>>>     > address that.
>>>     >
>>>     >
>>>     >> Cheers,
>>>     >> S.
>>>     >>
>>>     >>
>>>     >>>
>>>     >>> Would that work for you all? I also added a few mentions of
>>>     value
>>>     >>> neutrality (and the lack thereof) for consistency in the
>>>     abstract,
>>>     >>> introduction, conclusion and the way forward.
>>>     >>>
>>>     >>> Changes can be seen here:
>>>     >>>
>>>     https://github.com/nllz/IRTF-HRPC/commit/03826cd73959e692bb1f7aa305f9fbdee325dbd2#diff-fb9d617868a367dd946ef225cc5e6de1
>>>     <https://github.com/nllz/IRTF-HRPC/commit/03826cd73959e692bb1f7aa305f9fbdee325dbd2#diff-fb9d617868a367dd946ef225cc5e6de1>
>>>     >>>
>>>     >>> Happy to discuss.
>>>     >>>
>>>     >>> Best,
>>>     >>>
>>>     >>> Niels
>>>     >>>
>>>     >
>>>
>>>     -- 
>>>     Niels ten Oever
>>>     Researcher and PhD Candidate
>>>     Datactive Research Group
>>>     University of Amsterdam
>>>
>>>     PGP fingerprint      2458 0B70 5C4A FD8A 9488
>>>                       643A 0ED8 3F3A 468A C8B3
>>>     _______________________________________________
>>>     hrpc mailing list
>>>     [e-mail] <mailto:hrpc@irtf..org>
>>>     https://www.irtf.org/mailman/listinfo/hrpc
>>>     <https://www.irtf.org/mailman/listinfo/hrpc>
>>>
>>>     _______________________________________________
>>>     hrpc mailing list
>>>     [e-mail] <mailto:[e-mail]>
>>>     https://www.irtf.org/mailman/listinfo/hrpc
>>>     <https://www.irtf.org/mailman/listinfo/hrpc>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> -- 
>>> Corinne Cath
>>> Ph.D. Candidate, Oxford Internet Institute & Alan Turing Institute
>>>
>>> Web: www.oii..ox.ac.uk/people/corinne-cath
>>> <http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/corinne-cath>
>>> Email: [e-mail] <mailto:ccath@turing..ac.uk> &
>>> [e-mail] <mailto:[e-mail]>
>>> Twitter: @C_Cath
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> hrpc mailing list
>>> [e-mail]
>>> https://www.irtf.org/mailman/listinfo/hrpc
>>
>
> ***********************************************
> William J. Drake
> International Fellow & Lecturer
> Department of Communication and Media Research
> University of Zurich, Switzerland
> [e-mail]
> <mailto:[e-mail]> (direct), [e-mail]
> <mailto:[e-mail]> (lists)
> www.williamdrake.org <http://www.williamdrake.org>
> ***********************************************
>