Subject: Re: [hrpc] draft-tenoever-hrpc-association-02

From: Gisela Perez de Acha <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 23 Nov 2017 18:09:59 -0600

Hey everyone,

Great discussions over the association draft at IETF100. I wanted to
respond to this thread to address some of Farrell's comments, also
because putting together what Sandra and Andrew said --> I if we give
more definition to assembly and association I think the conclusion that
actually holds up is that “the Internet” is an assembly NOT an
association. Question: does it have different consequences in terms of
human rights?

First ----
1. The OSCE-ODIHR Guidelines on Freedom of Peaceful Assembly  define
assembly as an intentional and temporary presence of a number of
individuals in a public place for a common expressive purpose. ( Source
https://www.osce.org/odihr/73405?download=true). Is this definition
enough? Can “machines” or “nodes within an AS” can be considered as an
individual for this purpose?
2. I loved Andrew’s definition of “the Internet” because I think it
talks about an assembly: an emergent-process-driven thing that is born
from the collections of the ASes that happen to be gathered together at
any given time. The fact that they tend to interact at any given time,
it’s an emergent property that happens because they use the protocols
defined at IETF.

What does everyone think about both comments put together? Do they solve
some issues?

Secondly, to Stephen ---

>  It's IMO an error to not include analysis of FB or
> other closed systems. There has been an ongoing tension
> between those and open protocols (jabber etc) in which
> the latter have so far always lost out. I think looking
> at that could be useful.

Is this useful for IETF itself? Does it make sense to discuss it here? I
mean, I thought we were only limiting to architecture, but I'm new here
so I might be wrong as well.
> - I think section 6.3 needs a lot of work and has some
> errors that need fixing - I just don't buy the filter
> bubble argument, as presented.

Bortzmeyer has also counter-argued that topic. Let us give it a second
look to improve it. But I have to say, I'm starting to agree. Niels,
what do you think?
> 
> - 6.3.2 should be deleted. DDoS is only an attack.
> (I seem to recall saying similar before:-)

Sandra said the same: it's not an assembly, but let me ask: not even a
forced one? I like making the emphasis on freedom (as I stated several
times during my intervention)

> - Section 7 is pretty bare - what's the intent for
> this going forward or do the authors think it's done?

Going forward!!! Not done at all.

> - I'd like to have seen some examples and references
> to how various folks have used the Internet to freely
> assemble, in both more and less threatening situations.
> I think that kind of information might be useful to
> protocol developers, if presented well.

I agree. Any suggestions are welcome. But definitely, happy side is cool
too.

--

Sorry for the long email. And thanks to everyone for contributing to
this. I have learned a lot. And the discussions are super rich. Cheers
to all this research group!!!!

<3

Gisela Pérez de Acha - derechosdigitales.org

P.S. I thought the broad legal definitions were going to bore everyone
at IETF, so thanks Sandra for pointing out the socio-technical
importance of them!!!

---

From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 23 Nov 2017 18:58:41 -0800

> On Nov 23, 2017, at 4:09 PM, Gisela Perez de Acha <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 

Between us, I don't this AS's are people, and we're discussing *human* rights.

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 23 Nov 2017 21:23:00 -0900

> Between us, I don't this AS's are people, and we're discussing *human* rights.

+1 - I was not that comfortable with this document or discussion
for that reason.  There may be an argument to be made that having
a fully-connected (?) internet is necessary to support freedom
of association (although I'm not sure about that, either), but
I'd be a bit more circumspect about conflating routing and the human
right to freedom of association.

Melinda

-- 
Software longa, hardware brevis

PGP fingerprint: 795A 714B CD08 F996 AEFE
                 AB36 FE18 57E9 6B9D A293

---

From: Niels ten Oever <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2017 09:45:32 +0100

I don't think it is argued that ASes are people, but that the way people organize on the Internet is shaped by ASes, which encodes certain characteristics which arguably make it an assembly or association. 

Just like the IETF is not made up of mailinglist and RFCs, but the people using them. But the IETF would not be the IETF without mailinglists and RFCs (and the people for that matter).

Best,

Niels

> _______________________________________________
> hrpc mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.irtf.org/mailman/listinfo/hrpc

-- 

Niels ten Oever
Head of Digital

Article 19
www.article19.org

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                   643A 0ED8 3F3A 468A C8B3

---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2017 10:46:59 +0100

I think you'd do better to focus on peering relationships, without
bothering with even using the term "autonomous system".  Also, you have
text in the document that a bank thief would salivate over if he had the
right to make use of an unfiltered bank network.  You also seem to be
meandering into a net neutrality discussion (we also call this The Pit
of Despair).

Eliot

---

From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2017 10:12:41 -0800

> On Nov 24, 2017, at 12:45 AM, Niels ten Oever <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 

I'm not convinced I agree with that assertion. There are AS's that are in places that make it more difficult to freely associate, such as behind the Great Firewall of China, but in the general case the organization of the underlying routing is invisible to the human user.

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 26 Nov 2017 23:04:02 -0900

On 11/23/17 11:45 PM, Niels ten Oever wrote:
> I don't think it is argued that ASes are people, but that the way
> people organize on the Internet is shaped by ASes, which encodes
> certain characteristics which arguably make it an assembly or
> association.

I think that may be a mischaracterization (or possibly a
layering violation [that's a joke, mostly]).  I think that
to support that assertion it would be helpful to describe
specifically how you believe that works.  I can see where
arguing that connectivity provides the basis for freedom
of association makes sense, but I think I'd talk about
connectivity more broadly rather than framing it in terms
of a specific routing construct.

Melinda

---

From: Niels ten Oever <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2017 11:25:54 +0100

On 11/27/2017 09:04 AM, Melinda Shore wrote:
> layering violation [that's a joke, mostly]).  

Interesting. The assumption here is that the structure, ordering and
design of layer three has a direct impact on layer eight. In other
words, the experience of layer eight would be very different if layer
three looked differently.

> I think that

The argument is that the structuring of the Internet as a network of
networks creates a power relation between ASes and the end-user and thus
introduces dependencies and power-relations that might have not been
intended.

Also this structuring makes the Internet look more like a more
association than for instance when end-user would make more ephemeral
routes, in which it would probably look more like an assembly (or a swarm).

Hope this helps!

Best,

Niels

---

From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2017 11:49:10 -0800

> three looked differently.

And I still find the assumption troubling.

Let me recast in a presumably-analogous model, that of continental land masses with air or sea travel, and electronic mail, connecting them. In my experience, I associate with pretty much whomsoever I please, with the only real limiters being the expense and time requirements of travel. I have participated in several conversations this morning that included people from South America, the Caribbean, and Europe, and (oh by the way) people from my native North America; one of those conversations touched on a meeting in London and people from SE Asia that are relevant to it. In this email, I connect a person from Alaska, a person from the Netherlands, and myself from California, not to mention whoever else is on the mailing list. I am more likely to show up in a city with a major airport on a different continent than a city without one on my own continent. So arguing that the apparent organization of continental land masses visibly impacts freedom of association (which I assert is analogous to saying that L3 connectivity impacts L8 connectivity) doesn't appear to be supported; if anything, it says that such underlying infrastructure is less relevant than the cost and time of travel.

---

From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2017 13:16:04 -0500

Hi,

On Thu, Nov 23, 2017 at 06:09:59PM -0600, Gisela Perez de Acha wrote:

> it’s an emergent property that happens because they use the protocols

I am not sure that's quite what I said, but I do think it's not quite
what I meant.  Nevertheless, there's something you're tugging on that
is in line with my point.

> individual for this purpose?

The problem this raises is that "the Internet" is an ongoing
phenomenon, and "assembly" in that definition is not.

This was the point I was trying to make about "the traffic".  When I
say, "The traffic is heavy on the 401, and never drops below 60% or
70% of road capacity," what I'm saying is that there's this ongoing
phenomenon of vehicles being in relation to one another, without any
of the individual vehicles staying the same.

This is _not_ the definition of assembly you're using: assembly is
_this group_ of individuals, and they're gathered temporarily.

So, you might say that the nature of freedom of the Internet arises
out of a freedom of assembly that is internetworking: any arbitrary
set of network operators (you don't need ASes for this, I think) can
network their networks together, and get an internet.  The totality of
that behaviour together in the world is the emergent thing called
_the_ Internet.  Any given member or set of members can refuse or fail
to participate to some extent, which means that the Internet is fuzzy.
The individual network operators who are internetworking might meet
the definition of "assembly" you've been using, but the Internet does
not get that even transitively.

Does that make sense?

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]