Re: [hrpc] HRPC recharter

[Vittorio Bertola <[e-mail]>]

 

> Il 12/04/2023 07:57 JST Eric Rescorla <[e-mail]> ha scritto:
>  
>  
> > ## Objectives
> >
> >  * To expose the relations between protocols and values, with a focus
> >    on the human rights framework, such as the policy implications of
> >    technology choices and the technical implications of policy
> >    choices.
> >    
> >  * To suggest guidelines to protect the Internet as a
> >    human-rights-enabling environment and a global public good in
> >    future protocol development.
> 
> I'm having trouble parsing this because I am not sure what
> "future protocol development attaches to". Do you mean?
> 
>      To suggest guidelines for future protocol development that
>      protect the Internet as a human-rights-enabling environment and a
>      global public good.
> 
I am also troubled by a fundamental uncertainty that, I think, underlies the entire charter: is this meant to be a research group, or is this meant to be a policy advisory group?
 
If it is a research group, then it will just do research, documenting how these problems are addressed or which human rights issues were affected by some technical innovations. But if it "suggests guidelines for future protocol development" on issues that clearly are not technical, then it is providing policy advice to protocol developers; and in this case, I think that this group is severely lacking representation of many, I'd say most, of the affected stakeholders.
 
Policy is not a matter of true or false, but a matter of dialogue between multiple viewpoints, interests and interpretations of the same issues, so that a satisfactory compromise is found. You don't "research" policy advice via the scientific method, you discuss it, possibly in a democratic way. Research is useful as a data point for those who discuss, but it is not what defines the outcome.
 
I think that before rechartering we should make sure that we understand and have consensus on basic issues like the above. Honestly, I was already a bit puzzled by the meeting agenda in Yokohama: we spent most of the time in listening to long presentations, one of which was by the way completely unrelated to protocol development, and when we came to doing actual work, i.e. advancing drafts, there was almost no time left and the discussion needed to be shut down. This made me think that - even if I have been spending time to raise the importance of policy consequences in technical Internet venues for 20+ years, so I do not dismiss these issues as unimportant, at all - I do not understand the current objectives of this group and how they fit within the broader IRTF/IETF work. I hope that the rechartering discussion will make this clear.

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Vittorio Bertola | Head of Policy & Innovation, Open-Xchange
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