Re: [hrpc] Protocol/Architecture consideration of Attribution & right of legal remedy (was: Re: I-D Action: draft-irtf-hrpc-guidelines-03.txt)

[John Curran <[e-mail]>]

On 12 Jun 2019, at 2:49 PM, farzaneh badii <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> Thanks John. That now makes better sense to me. We can discuss whether it should be documented and how it should be documented.

Agreed. 

> But we need to consider many more aspects of it. 
> We need to understand what  "security" and "legal remedy"  means in IP. What is "harm"? Harm is a very controversial term which can be interpreted in various ways.

Even if we had perfect and globally recognized political norms for harms from communications, we couldn’t ignore the potential need for attribution to support legal remedy. 

For example, protection of whistleblowers is widely recognized as an important element necessary to underpin the right of freedom of expression (and access to information), yet it often results in loss of personal privacy and/or security for the individuals involve – most would agree that using communication technology to disclosure an officials embezzlement of public funds is reasonable and yet disclosing their spouse's serious medical condition is not appropriate.  The communication protocols are agnostic on content, and so we need to be intellectually honest and document if a protocol’s attributes preclude support for legal remedy.   It doesn’t mean that such a protocol is “bad” but simply means that there’s a conscious tradeoff that’s been made on prioritization of functionality in favor of certain human rights (in that case freedom of expression over legal remedy.) 

> I suggest we have more discussion about the nuances before arguing about the inclusion of your text. 

I actually don’t feel particularly strongly about the inclusion or omission of the “attribution” attribute text, but would prefer not having the final document characterized as guidelines for assessment of “select" human rights – the offered text is simply the best I’ve come up with in order "round out" the overall effort. 

Best wishes,
/John

p.s.  Disclaimer: my views alone, and produced under the influence of excessive caffeine - no warranty assumed or implied.