Subject: [hrpc] I-D Action: draft-irtf-hrpc-association-00.txt

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 05 Sep 2018 01:59:50 -0700

A New Internet-Draft is available from the on-line Internet-Drafts directories.
This draft is a work item of the Human Rights Protocol Considerations RG of the IRTF.

        Title           : Freedom of Association on the Internet
        Authors         : Niels ten Oever
                          Gisela Perez de Acha
	Filename        : draft-irtf-hrpc-association-00.txt
	Pages           : 22
	Date            : 2018-09-05

Abstract:
   This document scopes the relation between Internet protocols and the
   right to freedom of assembly and association.  Increasingly, the
   Internet mediates our lives, our relationships and our ability to
   exercise our human rights.  As a forum, the Internet provides a
   global public space even though it is built predominantly on private
   infrastructure.  Since Internet protocols play a central role in the
   management, development and use of the Internet, the relation between
   protocols and the aforementioned rights should be documented and any
   adverse impacts of this relation should be mitigated.

The IETF datatracker status page for this draft is:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-irtf-hrpc-association/

There are also htmlized versions available at:
https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-irtf-hrpc-association-00
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-irtf-hrpc-association-00

Please note that it may take a couple of minutes from the time of submission
until the htmlized version and diff are available at tools.ietf.org.

Internet-Drafts are also available by anonymous FTP at:
ftp://ftp.ietf.org/internet-drafts/

---

From: Tony Rutkowski <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 5 Sep 2018 14:12:38 -0400

It's nice to see the updates to the two drafts, political and
association.  There are substantive improvements.  There are additional
steps for improvements that could improve further.  The citations are
pretty much to self-similar secondary sources, and the material comes
across as a political group lobbying effort, but the drafts are getting
a little better.

The political ID is still rather DARPA Internet/IETF centric in a world
of copious internets and associated industry standards venues of many
flavours that have existed and evolved over long historical/technical
arcs.  Standards and politics have always existed.  It's part of the
game everywhere.  There are several million papers, books, and graduate
thesis out there.   The internet/institutional flavour you tend to favor
in the draft only emerged in the late 90s and prior to that was highly
controlled by U.S.G. agencies on many levels.  The public international
law for global communication is completely ignored, and the draft is
also really "North Atlantic" centric.  The fundamental transition now
underway to virtual instantiations is omitted.  All of this history,
diversity, and the fundamental transition from private to public are
simply ignored.  Maybe these dimensions could be treated going forward.

The association ID is also improved, although largely subject to the
same inadequacies as the political ID.  An existential query - if a
network doesn't use IP (presumably you mean the IETF's version of IP),
is it an internet?  And, how does one control those implementations
among a very large number of networks?  Or do you imply the existence of
the CAIDA IPv4 topology as the basis for your treatment?  See
http://www.caida.org/research/topology/as_core_network/2017/

The association ID seems a bit disingenuous in the abstract where you
wax poetic about human rights and finally fess up in the introduction
that you are only treating two human rights - freedom of assembly and
association - to the exclusion of all other human rights.  This is OK,
but inquiring minds would ask how in the real world, one could possibly
focus on only these two human rights, when they are inherently in
tension with many others.    Those two rights may be great, for example,
for white supremacist groups,  but what about the collateral damage to
other human rights such as mitigation of racism and xenophobia?

Even within the rights compartmentalization of only freedom of assembly
and association, there is no treatment of how IETF protocols could be
used to undermine those rights.  For example, last year, IETF protocols
were allegedly used by hostile actors to assist white supremacist to
mount attacks on those assembling and associating in Charlottesville,
Virginia, to protest racism.  More balance and "red teaming" would be
great additions to future evolution of the draft.

--t