Re: [Pearg] I-D Action: draft-irtf-pearg-censorship-04.txt

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

Thank you, Juliana. I'll see if I can draft some good text this weekend along these lines. best, Joe
________________________________
From: Pearg <[e-mail]> on behalf of Juliana Guerra <[e-mail]>
Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2020 13:48
To: [e-mail] <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: [Pearg] I-D Action: draft-irtf-pearg-censorship-04.txt

Hello everyone,

Following the discussion, I think that even if the draft is technical it
has a political impact that need to be addressed by a clear use of
language in the description of techniques, including the reference to
censorship. The fact that the word "censorship" as a category can be
understood as politically charged does not prevent its usefulness for
describing the scope of the techniques described in the draft. Providing
a working definition of how some terms will be understood through the
document could be useful to understand the functional reference to the
term censorship, and in there particularly acknowledge how sensitive
these terminology can be perceived and what is the purpose of using it
in the draft.

In that sense, I suggest to include in this description that even if in
many cases some authors understand the term "censorship regime", as
referred to the actions taken by a government without democratic
legitimacy, this is not the intended use provided to the word in this
draft, but rather clearly stating that this is a technical approach to a
political issue that makes reference to a diferential of power between
who makes the decision and is in control of execution of a technique
that has human rights implications. It is also important to clearly
mention that the discussion about human rights implications, or even the
legitimacy of the actions described are totally out of scope of what is
covered by this draft. The reference of consent to account for the
differential of power in this situation does not seem to quite fit to
put this issue in a better direction to be solved, so I suggest to avoid
it in this context (there are other topics where I think it's necessary
to open a discussion on that).

In this way, as Stephane pointed out in his last message the attempt is
not to ignore the meaning of words, but neither providing them a reach
that goes beyond the scope of the technical analysis provided by the
draft that refers, as Mallory pointed out a few messages ago, to the
impacts of the techniques themselves nor the legitimacy or intent of who
executes them.

Regards!

Juliana

On 06/08/20 14:37, Stephane Bortzmeyer wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 05, 2020 at 09:40:41AM +0200,
>  Vittorio Bertola <[e-mail]> wrote
>  a message of 20 lines which said:
>
>> So I don't think you can expect everyone to agree on this approach.
>
> Well, this entire I-D is about a political issue (even if the draft
> takes care of discussing only techniques) and it is common in politics
> that not everyone agrees. As Mallory reminded us, IRTF does not
> require consensus.
>
>> If an employer blocks access to Facebook from the office to prevent
>> employees from wasting their paid time, I don't see how that could
>> be considered an attack on human rights.
>
> You are talking about something different. I said "this is censorship"
> and you replied "it is not an attack on human rights". As was
> discussed here, censorship is a fact (unless one wants to rewrite
> language into NewSpeak). Its legitimacy is an opinion. Taking down
> nazi Web sites is censorship. IMHO, it is legitimate. We should not be
> afraid of words.
>

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