Human Rights Protocol Considerations Research Group N. ten Oever
Internet-Draft ARTICLE 19
Intended status: Informational A. Sullivan
Expires: January 21, 2018 Oracle
July 20, 2017
On the Politics of Standards
draft-tenoever-hrpc-political-01
Abstract
This document aims to outline different views on the relation between
protocols and politics and seeks to answer the question whether
protocols are political.
Status of This Memo
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Vocabulary Used . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. Literature and Positions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3.1. Technology is value neutral . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3.2. Some protocols are political some times . . . . . . . . . 4
3.3. The network has its own logic and values . . . . . . . . 4
3.4. Protocols are inherently political . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4. Examples and approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
5. Competition and collaboration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
6. More legacy, more politics? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
7. Infrastructure studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
8. Layers of politics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
9. How voluntary are open standards? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
10. The need for a positioning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
11. The way forward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
12. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
13. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
14. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
15. Research Group Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
16. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
16.1. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
16.2. URIs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
1. Introduction
"we shape our tools and thereafter they shape us"
-John Culkin
The design of the Internet through protocols and standards is a
technical issue with great poltical and economic impacts [RFC0603].
The early Internet community already realized that it needed to make
decisions on political issues such as Intellectual Property,
Internationzalization [BramanI], diversity, access [RFC0101] privacy
and security [RFC0049], and the military [RFC0164] [RFC0316],
governmental [RFC0144] [RFC0286] [RFC0313] [RFC0542] [RFC0549] and
non-governmental [RFC0196] uses, which has been clearly pointed out
by Braman [BramanII].
Recently there has been an increased discussion on the relation
between Internet protocols and human rights [hrpc] which spurred the
discussion on the political nature of protocols. The network
infrastructure is on the one hand designed, described, developed,
standardized and implemented by the Internet community, but the
Internet community and Internet users are also shaped by the
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affordances of the technology. Companies, citizens, governments,
standards developing bodies, public opinion and public interest
groups all play a part in these discussions. In this document we aim
to outline different views on the relation between protocols and
politics and seek to answer the question whether protocols are
political, and if so, how.
2. Vocabulary Used
Politics (from Greek: Politika: Politika, definition "affairs of the
commons") is the process of making decisions applying to all
members of a group. More narrowly, it refers to achieving and
exercising positions of governance or organized control over a
community. Furthermore, politics is the study or practice of the
distribution of power and resources within a given community as
well as the interrelationship(s) between communities. (adapted
from )
3. Literature and Positions
While discussion the impact of protocols on human rights different
positions could be differentiated. Without judging them on their
internal of external consistency they are represented here.
3.1. Technology is value neutral
This position starts from the premise that the technical and poltical
are differentiated fields and that technology is 'value free'. This
is also put more explicitly by Carey: "electronics is neither the
arrival of apocalypse nor the dispensation of grace. Technology is
technology; it is a means for communication and transportation over
space, and nothing more." [Carey] In this view technology only
become political when it is actually being used by humans. So the
technology itself is not political, the use of the technology is.
This is view sees technology as instrument; "technologies are 'tools'
standing ready to serve the purposes of their users. Technology is
deemed 'neutral,' without valuative content of its own.'" [Feenberg].
Feenberg continues: "technology is not inherently good or bad, and
can be used to whatever political or social ends desired by the
person or institution in control. Technology is a 'rational entity'
and universally applicable. One may make exceptions on moral
grounds, but one must also understand that the "price for the
achievement of environmental, ethical, or religious goals...is
reduced efficiency." [Feenberg]
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3.2. Some protocols are political some times
This stance is a pragmatic approach to the problem. It states that
some protocols under certain conditions can themselves have a
political dimension. This is different from the claim that a
protocol might sometimes be used in a political way; that view is
consistent with the idea of the technology being neutral (for the
human action using the technology is where the politics lies).
Instead, this position requires that each protocol and use be
evaluated for its political dimension, in order to understand the
extent to which it is political.
3.3. The network has its own logic and values
While humans create techologies, that does not mean that they are
forever under human control. A technology, once created, has its own
logic that is independent of the human actors that either create or
use the technology.
Consider, for instance, the way that the very existence of the
automobile imposes physical forms on the world different from those
that come from the electric tram or the horse-cart. The logic of the
automobile means speed and the rapid covering of distance, which
encourages suburban development and a tendency toward conurbation.
But even if that did not happen, widespread automotobile use requires
paved roads, and parking lots and structures. These are pressures
that come from the automotive technology itself, and would not arise
without that technology.
Certain kinds of technology shape the world in this sense. As Martin
Heidegger says, "The hydroelectric plant is not built into the Rhine
River as was the old wooden bridge that joined bank with bank for
hundreds of years. Rather the river is dammed up into the power
plant. What the river is now, namely, a water power supplier,
derives from out of the essence of the power station." [Heidegger]
(p 16) The dam in the river changes the world in a way the bridge
does not, because the dam alters the nature of the river.
In much same way, then, networking technology once created makes its
own demands. One of the most important conditions for protocol
success is that the protocol is incremental deployability [RFC5218].
This means that the network already deployed constrains what can be
delployed into it. Moreover, one interpretation of [RFC7258] is that
pervasive monitoring is an "attack" in the narrow sense precisely
because of the network's need not to leak traces of online exchanges.
A different network with a different design might not have been
subject to this kind of attack.
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3.4. Protocols are inherently political
On the other side of the spectrum there are the onces who insist that
technology is non-neutral. This is for instance made explicit by
Postman where he writes: 'the uses made of technology are largely
determined by the structure of the technology itself' [Postman]. He
states that the medium itself 'contains an ideological bias'. He
continues to argue that technology is non-neutral:
(1) because of the symbolic forms in which information is encoded,
different media have different intellectual and emotional biases; (2)
because of the accessibility and speed of their information,
different media have different political biases; (3) because of their
physical form, different media have different sensory biases; (4)
because of the conditions in which we attend to them, different media
have different social biases; (5) because of their technical and
economic structure, different media have different content biases.
[Postman]
More recent scholars of Internet infrastructure and governance have
also pointed out that Internet processes and protocols have become
part and parcel of political processes and public policies: one only
has to look at the IANA transition or global innovation policy for
concrete examples [DeNardis]. Similarly one can look at the Raven
process in which the IETF after a long discussion refused to
standardize wiretapping (which resulted in [RFC2804]. That was an
instance where the IETF took a position that was largely political,
although driven by a technical argument. It was similar to the
process that led to [RFC6973], in which something that occurred in
the political space (Snowden disclosures) engendered the IETF to act.
This is summarized in [Abbate] who says: "protocols are politics by
other means". This emphasises the interests that are at play in the
process of designing standards. This position holds further that
protocols can never be understood without their contextual
embeddedness: protocols do not exist solely by themselves but always
are to be understood in a more complex context - the stack, hardware,
or nation-state interests and their impact on civil rights. Finally,
this view is that that protocols are political because they affect or
sometimes effect the socio-technical ordering of reality. The latter
observation leads Winner to conclude that the reality of
technological progress has too often been a scenario where the
innovation has dictated change for society. Those who had the power
to introduce a new technology also had the power to create a consumer
class to use the technology, 'with new practices, relationships, and
identities supplanting the old, --and those who had the wherewithal
to implement new technologies often molded society to match the needs
of emerging technologies and organizations.' [Winner]
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4. Examples and approaches
5. Competition and collaboration
The driving force behind voluntary standards is interoperability
between different parties. If the development of technical standards
does not lead to interoperability, there is no practical use in the
standard, because the standard is not in use. One of the examples in
which open standards are unlikely to prevail is in the case of
monopolies. When one player has exclusive control over an activity
there is no internal incentive for the monopolist to offer
interoperability with competitors.
The basis of the Internet can be traced back to the existence of
open, non-proprietary standards. This does not mean that all
standards that are being deployed on the Internet are open, or that
all technologies are standardized. In the development of the
Internet collaboration and competition have gone hand in hand and
follow each other up in lockstep. The standards process is
explicitly aimed at facilitation competition (often dubbed
permissionless innovation) while building on the common basis of
interoperability.
Competition has led to long and intense debates on IETF mailinglists,
in IETF session, and through patents and propietary standards. These
processes of contestation are inherently interwoven with power; the
power or argumentation, of resources, of credibility, of support in
the community, of occupying the positions that better an individual
or organization better make their claim.
The IETF has sought to make the standards process transparent (by
ensuring everyone can access standards, mailinglists and meetings),
predictable (by having clear procedures and reviews) and of high
quality (by having draft documents reviewed by members from its own
epistemic community). This is all aimed at increasing the
accountability of the process and the quality of the standard. At
the same time these processes are driven by individuals who
inherently have specific interests and worldviews. These can lead to
different insights and motivations. These motivations can be
economical, financial, intellectual, ethical, technical, personal and
sometimes inter-personal. All of these motivations can also be
translated into tactics that are being employed in the standards
process. This is what makes the standards process inherently
political from a process perspective.
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6. More legacy, more politics?
Roman engineers complained about inadequate legacy standards they
needed to comply with, which hampered them in their engineering
excellence. In that sense not much has changed in the last 2100
years. When starting from a tabula rasa, one does not need to take
other systems, layers or standards into account. The need for
interoperability, and backward compatability makes engineering work
harder. And once a standard is designed, it does not automatically
means it will be broadly adopted at as fast pace, examples of this
are IPv6, DNSSEC, DKIM, etc. The need for interoperability means
that a new protocol needs to take into account and much more diverse
environment than early protocols, and also be amendable to different
needs: protocols needs to relate and negotiate in a busy agora, as do
the protocol developers. This means that some might get priority,
whereas others get dropped.
7. Infrastructure studies
Ironic loss in political and economical triumph of certain
applications, because it becomes ossified and easier to attack.
8. Layers of politics
There is a competition between layers, and even contestation about
what the borders of different layers are. This leads to competition
between layers and different solutions for similar problems on
different layers, which in its turn leads to further ossification,
which leads to more contestation.
9. How voluntary are open standards?
Coordinating transnational stakeholders in a process of negotiation
and agreement through the development of common rules is a form of
global governance [Nadvi]. Standards are among the mechanisms by
which this governance is achieved. Conformance to certain standards
is often a basic condition of participation in international trade
and communication, so there are strong economic and political
incentives to conform, even in the absence of legal requirements
[Russell]. [RogersEden] argue: As unequal participants compete to
define standards, technological compromises emerge, which add
complexity to standards. For instance, when working group
participants propose competing solutions, it may be easier for them
to agree on a standard that combines all the proposals rather than
choosing any single proposal. This shifts the responsibility for
selecting a solution onto those who implement the standard, which can
lead to complex implementations that may not be interoperable. On
its face this appears to be a failure of the standardization process,
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but this outcome may benefit certain participants-- for example, by
allowing an implementer with large market share to establish a de
facto standard within the scope of the documented standard.
10. The need for a positioning
It is indisputable that the Internet plays an increasing and
increasingly important role in the lives of citizens. Those who
produce interoperability standards for the Internet infrastructure
are to some extent automatically implicated in that development.
That said, the IETF is not the protocol police. It cannot, and
should not, ordain what standards are to be used on the networks.
The RFC producing community should not go outside of its mission to
advocate for a specific use of protocols. At the same time, it may
be useful for those producing Internet standards to take into account
the political aspects or implications of that work. Some structure
for doing so may be helpful both to authors of standards documents
and for the IETF.
The risk of not doing this is threefold: (1) the IETF might make
decisions which have a political impact that was not intended by the
community, (2) other bodies or entities might make the decisions for
the IETF because the IETF does not have an explicit stance, (3) other
bodies that do take these issues into account might increase in
importance on behest of the influence of the IETF.
This does not mean the IETF does not have position on particular
political issues. The policies for open and diverse participation
[RFC7706], the anti-harassment policy [RFC7776], as well as the
Guidelines for Privacy Considerations [RFC6973] are testament of
this. But these are all examples of positions about the IETF's work
processes or product. What is absent is a way for IETF participants
to evaluate their stance with respect to the wider implications of
that IETF work.
11. The way forward
There are instruments that can help the IETF develop an approach to
address the politics of protocls, part of this can be found in draft-
irtf-hrpc-research as well as the United National Guiding Principles
for Business and Human Rights [UNGP]. But there is not a one-size-
fits-all solution. The IETF is a particular organization, with a
particular mandate, and even if a policy is in place, its success
depends on the implementation of the policy by the community.
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12. Security Considerations
As this draft concerns a research document, there are no security
considerations.
13. IANA Considerations
This document has no actions for IANA.
14. Acknowledgements
15. Research Group Information
The discussion list for the IRTF Human Rights Protocol Considerations
working group is located at the e-mail address hrpc@ietf.org [1].
Information on the group and information on how to subscribe to the
list is at: https://www.irtf.org/mailman/listinfo/hrpc
Archives of the list can be found at: https://www.irtf.org/mail-
archive/web/hrpc/current/index.html
16. References
16.1. Informative References
[Abbate] Abbate, J., "Inventing the Internet", MIT Press , 2000,
<https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/inventing-internet>.
[BramanI] Braman, S., "Internationalization of the Internet by
design: The first decade", Global Media and Communication,
Vol 8, Issue 1, pp. 27 - 45 , 2012, <http://dx.doi.org.pro
xy.uba.uva.nl:2048/10.1177%2F1742766511434731>.
[BramanII]
Braman, S., "The Framing Years: Policy Fundamentals in the
Internet Design Process, 1969-1979", The Information
Society Vol. 27, Issue 5, 2011 , 2010, <http://dx.doi.org.
proxy.uba.uva.nl:2048/10.1080/01972243.2011.607027>.
[Carey] Carey, J., "Communication As Culture", p. 139 , 1992.
[DeNardis]
Denardis, L., "The Internet Design Tension between
Surveillance and Security", IEEE Annals of the History of
Computing (volume 37-2) , 2015, <http://is.gd/7GAnFy>.
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[Feenberg]
Feenberg, A., "Critical Theory of Technology", p.5-6 ,
1991.
[Heidegger]
Heidegger, M., "The Question Concerning Technology and
Other Essays", Garland: New York, 1977 , 1977,
<http://ssbothwell.com/documents/ebooksclub.org__The_Quest
ion_Concerning_Technology_and_Other_Essays.pdf>.
[hrpc] ten Oever, N. and C. Cath, "Research into Human Rights
Protocol Considerations", 2017,
<https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-irtf-hrpc-research-13>.
[Nadvi] Nadvi, K. and F. Waeltring, "Making sense of global
standards", In: H. Schmitz (Ed.), Local enterprises in the
global economy (pp. 53-94). Cheltenham, UK: Edward
Elgar. , 2004.
[Postman] Postman, N., "Technopoly: the Surrender of Culture to
Technology", Vintage: New York. pp. 3-20. , 1992.
[RFC0049] Meyer, E., "Conversations with S. Crocker (UCLA)", RFC 49,
DOI 10.17487/RFC0049, April 1970,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc49>.
[RFC0101] Watson, R., "Notes on the Network Working Group meeting,
Urbana, Illinois, February 17, 1971", RFC 101,
DOI 10.17487/RFC0101, February 1971,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc101>.
[RFC0144] Shoshani, A., "Data sharing on computer networks",
RFC 144, DOI 10.17487/RFC0144, April 1971,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc144>.
[RFC0164] Heafner, J., "Minutes of Network Working Group meeting,
5/16 through 5/19/71", RFC 164, DOI 10.17487/RFC0164, May
1971, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc164>.
[RFC0196] Watson, R., "Mail Box Protocol", RFC 196,
DOI 10.17487/RFC0196, July 1971,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc196>.
[RFC0286] Forman, E., "Network Library Information System", RFC 286,
DOI 10.17487/RFC0286, December 1971,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc286>.
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[RFC0313] O'Sullivan, T., "Computer based instruction", RFC 313,
DOI 10.17487/RFC0313, March 1972,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc313>.
[RFC0316] McKay, D. and A. Mullery, "ARPA Network Data Management
Working Group", RFC 316, DOI 10.17487/RFC0316, February
1972, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc316>.
[RFC0542] Neigus, N., "File Transfer Protocol", RFC 542,
DOI 10.17487/RFC0542, August 1973,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc542>.
[RFC0549] Michener, J., "Minutes of Network Graphics Group meeting,
15-17 July 1973", RFC 549, DOI 10.17487/RFC0549, July
1973, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc549>.
[RFC0603] Burchfiel, J., "Response to RFC 597: Host status",
RFC 603, DOI 10.17487/RFC0603, December 1973,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc603>.
[RFC2804] IAB and IESG, "IETF Policy on Wiretapping", RFC 2804,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2804, May 2000,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2804>.
[RFC5218] Thaler, D. and B. Aboba, "What Makes for a Successful
Protocol?", RFC 5218, DOI 10.17487/RFC5218, July 2008,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5218>.
[RFC6973] Cooper, A., Tschofenig, H., Aboba, B., Peterson, J.,
Morris, J., Hansen, M., and R. Smith, "Privacy
Considerations for Internet Protocols", RFC 6973,
DOI 10.17487/RFC6973, July 2013,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6973>.
[RFC7258] Farrell, S. and H. Tschofenig, "Pervasive Monitoring Is an
Attack", BCP 188, RFC 7258, DOI 10.17487/RFC7258, May
2014, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7258>.
[RFC7706] Kumari, W. and P. Hoffman, "Decreasing Access Time to Root
Servers by Running One on Loopback", RFC 7706,
DOI 10.17487/RFC7706, November 2015,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7706>.
[RFC7776] Resnick, P. and A. Farrel, "IETF Anti-Harassment
Procedures", BCP 25, RFC 7776, DOI 10.17487/RFC7776, March
2016, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7776>.
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[RogersEden]
Rogers, M. and G. Eden, "The Snowden Disclosures,
Technical Standards, and the Making of Surveillance
Infrastructures", International Journal of Communication
11(2017), 802-823 , 2017,
<http://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/5525/1941>.
[Russell] Russell, A., "Open standards and the digital age: History,
ideology, and networks", Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press , 2014.
[UNGP] Ruggie, J. and United Nations, "United Nations Guiding
Principles for Business and Human Rights", 2011,
<http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Publications/
GuidingPrinciplesBusinessHR_EN.pdf>.
[Winner] Winner, L., "Who will we be in cyberspace?", 1995,
<iwcenglish1.typepad.com/iwc_media_ecology/Documents/
Who_will_we_be_in_cyberspace.doc>.
16.2. URIs
[1] mailto:hrpc@ietf.org
Authors' Addresses
Niels ten Oever
ARTICLE 19
EMail: niels@article19.org
Andrew Sullivan
Oracle
EMail: andrew.s.sullivan@oracle.com
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