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From: Ted Lemon <mellon@fugue.com>
In-Reply-To: <20131205072546.2740.2142915422.0@crow>
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2013 07:27:09 -0500
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Message-Id: <8B3C975C-2287-4A7B-969D-9C8568E5CEAB@fugue.com>
References: <20131205072546.2740.2142915422.0@crow>
To: Elijah Sparrow <elijah@bitmask.net>
Cc: perpass <perpass@ietf.org>
Subject: Re: [perpass] politics and the ietf
Precedence: list

Elijah, the IETF is well aware of politics, and has been for a long =
time.   Google "OSI layer 9" for a review.   But what we mean by =
politics is something very specific.   You might get quite a few answers =
from IETFers if you asked what "politics" is, but most of them would =
boil down to this: a political argument is one where a person or group =
of people bloviate loudly about some position they hold, but cannot or =
will not expose the rationale for that position to the light of public =
criticism.

And the IETF has a strong, and I think important, tradition of trying =
not to make decisions based on such bloviations.   When we do, we =
produce crap.   When we stick to arguments that can be openly stated and =
agreed upon, we produce goodness (at least often enough that people keep =
coming).

As for the question of great power and great responsibility, that's a =
lovely sentiment, but it can mean whatever you want it to mean.   We've =
heard at least one person say that we should be careful not to do too =
good a job, for fear of unstated but clearly bad consequences.   I =
personally think we should do a better job, because I know people who =
have been victimized by 419 scams that couldn't have been perpetrated if =
we had done a better job with SMTP.   I also know people who have been =
victimized and lost businesses because we didn't get security right in =
HTTP.

Bruce Schneier has a term that I really like, "movie plot threat," which =
I think applies here.   The reason the IETF insists on making decisions =
in the open, and not accepting peoples' word that something really bad =
might happen if we do X, but we can't say what it will be, is that  =
these arguments invariably boil down to "put these real people, with =
real problems, here in the real world, at risk so that we can avoid a =
movie plot threat scenario."

This is actually a classic example of what we mean by "politics."