Re: why exactly is HRPC for, was Diversity and offensive terminology in RFCs

[Spencer Dawkins at IETF <[e-mail]>]

On Avri's point ...

On Fri, Sep 21, 2018 at 11:18 AM Avri <[e-mail]> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> HRPC is not an IETF WG that is on a direct path toward some specific
> engineering goal.  The group is exploring, and occasionally annealing on,
> some points of consensus. Part of our exploration will look at the impact
> of decisions made in the IETF, but the results of those explorations are
> just food for thought and not in any way binding on anyone anywhere about
> anything. We cannot destroy a consensus.
>

Part of my time on the IAB (2010-2013) was spent being surprised at
differences between the IETF (which I thought I understood) and the IRTF,
and I found enough other people in the IETF who also didn't understand the
differences, that Lars Eggert , who was IRTF Chair before Allison, approved
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc7418/, which is "An IRTF Primer for
IETF Participants".

If you're an IETF person who hasn't spent much time in the IRTF, you might
find it useful, and not just about HRPC.


> It would be a pity to have this research group, which I thought was just
> beginning to find its stride and getting into the tough discussions,
> censored for its occasionable disagreeableness or touchy subjects.  And
> while I am not quite sure how the IETF goes about closing an IRTF RG, I do
> hope no such thing happens as I beleive it would reflect quite badly on the
> IETF. One value I hope we can continue to strive for is the ability to
> discuss the difficult without becoming difficult.
>

I can't speak for any of the people I'm about to mention, but I suspect the
IETF closing an IRTF RG would be a surprise to the IRTF Chair, and to the
IAB who are chartered with oversight of the IRTF, and who typically reviews
an RG at every IETF meeting (the honor of a specific RG being reviewed
rotates). At least in the past, it hasn't worked that way.

Make good choices, of course.

Spencer

Thanks
> Avri
> (Co-chair HRPC RG)
>
> On Sep 21, 2018 at 10:49, <John R Levine <[e-mail]>> wrote:
>
> >  I strongly agree, and would go further.
> >
> >  As I see it, the HRPC suffers fundamental problems from both
> >  participation and its charter.
>
> Thanks.  I was going to write something like that but you said it better.
>
> There are inherent tensions among different human rights.  Free speech is
> great, but it enables trolling, phishing, and swatting.  Censorship is
> bad, but most of us would prefer to censor phishes to our parents and
> tweets of porn photos with our daughters' faces pasted in.  The
> traditional assertion is that the response to bad speech is more speech,
> but that was from an era when printing presses were expensive, and there
> weren't million-bot armies of screaming trolls.  It is possible to think
> productively about this tension, as Dave Clark did in his terrific plenary
> talk at IETF 98, but unfortunately, he is an outlier.
>
> I have spent over a decade arguing with people who imagine themselves to
> be human rights advocates and are unwilling to consider the implications
> of their narrow focus on speech and anonymity.  (This month in the ICANN
> WHOIS debate, a well known professor in Georgia is spluttering that every
> security researcher who says that they use WHOIS data to shut down malware
> and catch crooks is lying.)  I am not interested in joining HRPC because,
> like Eliot, I see no evidence of willingness to engagem with the real
> range of human rights issues.
>
> In the IETF, yesterday on the regext list, "Human Rights Review of
> draft-ietf-regext-verificationcode" contains a long complaint that
> security features could be used to discriminate against people.  Well,
> yes, that's what they're for.
>
> https://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/regext/current/msg01768.html
>
> In anything like its current form HRPC is harmful to the IETF because it
> gratuitously undermines our security efforts.
>
> R's,
> John
>
>