[TLS] WG chair impartiality re: draft-usama-tls-risks-of-mlkem

[Nadim Kobeissi <[e-mail]>]

Deb,

Moving [1] to a separate thread, per your request. 

You're right about several things: chairs keep their own lives and opinions, there is no requirement for separate identities, and the guidelines for conduct carry no machinery for policing what anyone does on a personal platform. I am not asking you to monitor anyone's account.

I do want to push back, with respect, on one part of the principle as stated, that what a chair does on a personal platform is, for that reason alone, none of the IETF's concern. I don't think that can be the rule, and the cleanest way to see it is the limiting case: if a chair posted an overt racial slur about participants in this group, none of us would say "personal platform, not our business." What makes such a post the IETF's concern is not where it was typed; it is its effect on the environment for the people in this group, and its bearing on whether that person can still hold a role that depends on their trust. Location is not the test. Effect, and the requirements of the role, are. I am not equating a "go work at Whole Foods" jab with an overt slur, I raise the extreme only to locate the line, because once we agree the line is not "personal platform = off-limits," what remains is the proportionate question actually in front of us.

Furthermore, on a personal note, I absolutely feel less safe participating in the TLS WG if I know that I stand to be publicly ridiculed with the chairs endorsing statements that I leave cryptography and go find other work (or worse kinds of personal attacks; I can think of a few), if I post something that they disagree with. There is no question in my mind that I would at this point actively and strongly discourage all of my Lebanese students from ever participating in the TLS WG.

And at its far lesser magnitude, there is a different question here: not whether the chair is entitled to a personal opinion (they plainly are) but whether a chair who publicly endorses ridicule of a participant in an active dispute can be seen to rule impartially on that participant's draft, and on any FATT review requests originating from them. RFC 2418 makes working group chairs accountable to the responsible AD and charges them with managing the group's business fairly and even-handedly. The impartiality of the chair is not a personal matter; it is a property of the role, and it is the one thing the role cannot function without.

So I am not asking for any sanction, and certainly not for removal. I am asking you, as the AD who appoints and oversees the chairs, to weigh two proportionate things:

1. Whether the appearance of impartiality has been affected enough that recusal of the chair concerned from procedural rulings on draft-usama-tls-risks-of-mlkem (and from any FATT requests originating with the same author) is warranted, so that those calls are visibly made by someone with no stake in how the author has been characterized.

2. A brief acknowledgment to the group that endorsing personal attacks on contributors is inconsistent with the neutrality the chair role requires independent of platform, and without anyone needing to monitor personal accounts.

If the chair concerned chose, on her own, to reconsider the public endorsement, I think that would go a long way toward restoring confidence. But I take your point that that is hers to decide, not something to be compelled through the conduct guidelines.

[1] https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/tls/hmZH_Rkibo55nS62hQeo3Lx-TqQ/

Nadim Kobeissi
Symbolic Software • https://symbolic.software