Subject: [Raven] Re: IETF chair Fred Baker says wiretap debate "definitely not over"

From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 13 Nov 1999 17:08:10 -0800

At 05:29 PM 11/13/99 -0500, Declan McCullagh wrote:
>debate: Didn't IETF resolve this with the overwhelming vote Wednesday 
>evening?

If there is such a debate, it is among those who don't understand the IETF.

We don't vote, and any discussion of votes is therefore missing the point.
If we did vote, we would have to determine first who is a member, and many
who were in the meeting Wednesday evening would not have qualified. We
would also have to decide what percentage was required to win - 50%+1, 2/3,
3/4? We would also have had to count the votes, and there would have been a
discussion of whether a secret ballot was required.

We use straw polls to help determine whether a consensus has been reached,
but we work on the basis of consensus. Yes, in a straw poll, more than 50%
of the room said they didn't want the IETF standardizing protocols
explicitly designed for wiretap. But there was in no sense a consensus, not
even a very rough consensus.

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From: "Thomas Junker" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 13 Nov 1999 20:53:33 -0600

> If there is such a debate, it is among those who don't understand the IETF.
[reduced to key words and phrases]
> If we did vote...who is a member...many...would not have qualified...
> ...would also have to decide what percentage...have had to count the votes... 
> discussion of...secret ballot...We use straw polls...but we work on the 
> basis of consensus. 

Fred,

Some of us understand all that, even if some others don't. 
The issue is not the word "vote" or anything that word may 
imply.  It is the varied perceptions and reports of the 
straw poll that seem to differ more than human 
subjectivity would seem to explain.

> Yes, in a straw poll, more than 50%

I fail to see anything in the private email made public 
that should cause you such consternation, unless it is 
that eyewitnesses to the straw polls seem to tell it very 
differently than you did in the email at issue.

The only part of what you wrote above that bothers me is 
the huge disparity between your last words and the reports 
of several eyewitnesses in whom I have great confidence 
that they can tell the difference between consensus and 
"in no sense a consensus, not even a very rough 
consensus," nomenclature such as "vote" entirely 
notwithstanding.  This is profoundly disturbing.

Are you saying that in the second, rephrased straw poll 
question there were substantially *more* than the reported 
25 or so in favor of supporting wiretapping, or are you 
describing the result of the first, apparently confusing 
question?  If the former, it would seem we may have 
serious politics going on.  If the latter, I think an 
explanation is warranted of why the results of the 
rephrased question would be ignored in favor of the 
confusing question.  Something is not right here.

Regards,

Thomas Junker
[email-masked]

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From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1999 17:50:27 -0800

At 08:53 PM 11/13/99 -0600, Thomas Junker wrote:
>question?

in both cases, 25 is not a very accurate number.

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From: Ed Stone <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1999 22:53:22 -0500

>in both cases, 25 is not a very accurate number.

And a "very accurate number" would be?

--
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Ed Stone
[email-masked]
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From: "Thomas Junker" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 01:57:17 -0600

> in both cases, 25 is not a very accurate number.

I get the impression this is Twenty-Five Questions and 
rather like pulling teeth.  I think that in not being more 
forthcoming you have provided the real answers to most of 
my questions, both the ones I asked and the ones I had not 
yet asked.

I think that what is going on is now quite clear.  Thank 
you.

Regards,

Thomas Junker
[email-masked]

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From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 11:41:16 -0800

>And a "very accurate number" would be?

Consistent with our practice of not making decisions, but of taking the
temperature of a room, in straw polls, we didn't count. Estimates range
from 25 at the lowest to about 10% of the room at the highest; I would
guess it was on the order of 100 hands. I would guess that the "abstain"
count was on the order of 150 hands, and the body-count in the room were on
the order of 1000, perhaps more, at that point. [After writing this note, I
read Declan's notes from the meeting, in which he reports about 1000 people
in the room at that point, about 10% in the "yes" camp, 10% in the
"abstain" camp, and 80% in the "no" camp. For the record, another set of
numbers, Bradner's, puts them at about 15% and about 20% respectively.]

But debating that particular point misses the fundamental point that the
IETF doesn't make complex decisions by a show of hands on a one-sentence
question, and never has. To do so would violate our own usual procedures,
which are posted for all to read in http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2026.txt,
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2418.txt, and related documents, which we are
trying to follow an adapted version of in this discussion. It would also
fail to do anything similar to justice to the question.

Expect an Internet draft representing a more comprehensive position on IETF
practice to be posted for discussion, and for that discussion to follow
usual IETF procedure.

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From: Declan McCullagh <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 17:43:32 -0500

Minor correction: Not my notes. I simply forwarded them.

-Declan