Subject: [hrpc] questions about draft-varon-hrpc-methodology

From: Stephen Farrell <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 06 Jul 2015 09:09:31 +0100

Hi Joana/Corinne,

I just had a quick read of draft-varon-hrpc-methodology which
is, like this proposed RG, intriguing:-)

I have two questions and a comment mostly about section 3.2. [1]

- Later on you say that the HTTP protocol has been important
for freedom of expression, and I don't doubt that at all.
However, it's not clear to me how in general one can know that
it's only/mainly HTTP that's relevant for freedom of expression.
TCP or IP or DNS or DHCP or ARP or Ethernet were arguably all
needed before HTTP could have an interesting effect on freedom
of expression. So my first question is how one figures out or
describes the relative contributions of all of the protocols in
the stack(s) necessary for the HR effects (positive or negative)
with which one is concerned?

- Similarly, for the same example, it's not clear to me how or
if one can assign the freedom of expression importance to the
HTTP protocol, or if one ought really pay more attention to
implementations (e.g. perhaps Mosaic & NCSA's HTTPd) or to
deployments, e.g. perhaps early popular web sites or companies
like Yahoo that provided early web catalog content. My 2nd query
is how one differentiates between protocols, implementations,
deployments and business models in considering HR?

- The comment is that, as may be obvious from the web example,
there's a possibly important temporal issue here - on the Internet
things mostly evolve, so deployments that are important for HR
today probably achieved that importance at some earlier time. I
guess one ought therefore consider protocols, implementations and
deployments at the various time(s) at which the HR importance became
apparent or changed significantly, or at least one needs to consider
the history and not only today's deployments and business models.

BTW, I don't think these questions or answers to them are likely
to mean the overall methodology being proposed is right or wrong
or has utility or not. It maybe would mean that applying your
methodology is more complex than is implied by the current draft,
but then the draft is a -00 and it's early days for this overall
work, so that's not a giant surprise:-)

Cheers,
S.

[1] https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-varon-hrpc-methodology-00#section-3.2

---

From: Joana Varon <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 06 Jul 2015 06:39:22 -0300

Dear all,

Unlike the glossary, we were only able to finish the -00 of the
methodology [1] this morning. And, as it was already by the deadline, we
had to submit it as draft without further ado. We wouldn't have time to
incorporate our comments and we needed a draft to start the discussions
for the next meeting.

I apologize for not being able to be so inclusive in this first -00
version, but, please, feel free to criticize so we can improve it. Your
questions, suggestions, inputs, contributions and any debate that we
will have here will definitely be considered for version -01.

Stephen, thanks a lot for already considering our document and pointing
our Achilles' heel. You are right to say that there is  a fundamental
problem we haven't clearly addressed yet: the differences between
protocol, implementation and deployment. That was indeed a question that
pop-ed up a few times in both our interviews and during our panel in
Dallas. I might be wrong, or other colleagues might have a different
approach, but my take to this query, for the moment, is first to collect
all the cases/examples we can get so we can start classifying them in
this time perspective that you've mentioned and better understand common
characteristics in every one of these three moments.

The issue about how to isolate and understand the influence to HR in of
all the different layers in the stack of protocols is also definitely
tricky. Perhaps do you have insights from these in the work developed
for privacy? My first call would be also start to understand our
examples separating the different layer..

Once again, thanks for the inputs, it is already a lot of food for
thought in this challenge... I also think that we are still in an early
stage to check if the methodology is right or wrong.. for the moment it
is mostly meant to work as a guide for next steps and it shall evolve
while we walk and make discoveries or correlations. Let's see.

Finally, unfortunately, I had no funding nor possibility to attend
Prague, but will follow the debates remotely and here in the list, of
course. 

Thanks once again for your time and inputs.

cheers

joana

[1] https://www.ietf.org/id/draft-varon-hrpc-methodology-00.txt

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Joana Varon
@joana_varon
https://antivigilancia.org
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On 06-07-2015 05:09, Stephen Farrell wrote:
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