Minutes interim-2022-iab-31 2022-11-08
minutes-interim-2022-iab-31-20221108-00

Minutes of the 2022-11-08 IAB Business Meeting, London

1. Attendance

Present:

Jari Arkko

Deborah Brungard

Lars Eggert (IETF Chair)

Wes Hardaker

Cullen Jennings

Mallory Knodel

Mirja Kühlewind (IAB Chair)

Cindy Morgan (IAB Executive Administrative Manager)

Karen O’Donoghue (ISOC Liaison)

Colin Perkins (IRTF Chair)

David Schinazi

Russ White

Jiankang Yao

Guests:

Harald Alvestrand (ICANN Board Liaison)

Vittorio Bertola (ICANN NomCom Liaison)

Gonzalo Camarillo (3GPP Liaison)

Sofia Celi (HRPC Chair)

Russ Housley (IEEE-SA Liaison)

Peter Koch (ISO/TC46 Liaison)

Barry Leiba (M2AAWG Liaison)

Scott Mansfield (ITU-T Liaison)

Alexandre Petrescu (ISO/TC204 Liaison)

Jim Reid (ICANN GWG Liaison)

David Sinicrope (Broadband Forum Liaison)

Regrets:

Warren Kumari (IESG Liaison)

Zhenbin Li

Tommy Pauly

Qin Wu

2. Meeting with Liaison Managers

The IAB met with several of the IETF liaison managers to discuss the best ways to communicate, and how the IAB can provide support.

Lars Eggert thanked the liaison managers on behalf of the IESG, noting that the work the liaison managers do is very important.

Wes Hardaker agreed, saying that one of the most important things is to make sure that the IETF is not conflicting with other organizations.

Barry Leiba said that it would be helpful, when the IAB sends emails announcing liaison positions, to include some background information about the liaison relationship.

Wes Hardaker agreed that was a valid point. He also noted that the IAB has started inviting liaison managers to give presentations about their organizations during the IAB Open Meeting. At IETF 114, Scott Mansfield gave a briefing on ITU-T. At IETF 115, Russ Housley will give a briefing on IEEE.

Mirja Kühlewind said that updating the liaison pages on the website to include more information about the individual relationships is on the liaison coordinators’ to-do list.

Scott Mansfield said that education and awareness between the organizations is very important. He has given many presentations to the ITU about how the IETF works. He added that one challenge is that IETF BOFs don’t really have a mechanism to send liaison statements until they are chartered as Working Groups.

Lars Eggert replied that the IETF can send a liaison about a BOF, but it would come from an Area Director instead of a Working Group. He added that if there are any BOFs that would benefit from liaison statements to other organizations, they should let the IESG know.

Wes Hardaker noted that it might be helpful to send a report on the BOFs out to the community after the IETF meetings.

Lars Eggert said that such reports would need to be careful in what they say, because at the BOF stage there is not IETF consensus yet and they don’t want to make any premature statements.

Scott Mansfield said that he will talk to the ADs sponsoring a BOF about sending appropriate liaison statements.

Lars Eggert said that it would be helpful to the IESG if each liaison relationship had an easily memorable email alias.

Wes Hardaker briefly reviewed the different ways to send liaison statements. Liaison statements need to be recorded in the Datatracker, and the receiver should be aware that the liaison statement and any potential reply is publicly archived.

1. Liaison managers can directly send liaison statements via the Datatracker
2. Liaison managers can send liaison statements to statements@ietf.org (IETF Secretariat) and ask them to send it via the Datatracker
3. Liaison managers can send liaison statements directly to recipients (e.g. if Datatracker formatting might be confusing) and either cc statements@ietf.org or record the liaison statement in the Datatracker themselves afterwards (without sending it)

Lars Eggert added that the liaison managers are the main users of the Datatracker’s liaison tool, so if changes are needed to the tooling, please let the IAB know.

Scott Mansfield said that one important thing to understand is that with some organizations, just sending a liaison statement is not enough; there needs to be someone present who can represent the points made in the liaison statement, or else it will have little impact.

Gonzalo Camarillo said that one thing that is often missing is whether a liaison statement is for information or for action, and if it is for action, when the deadline is. For 3GPP, making the “deadline” field in the Datatracker a required field would be helpful.

Gonzalo Camarillo noted that he is planning to step down as 3GPP liaison soon, and he will be talking to people during IETF 115 to help provide context and also possibly find candidates to replace him.

Wes Hardaker said that the liaison coordinators have been trying to find other people who have knowledge of the liaising organizations for exactly this reason.

Jim Reid asked whether there is anything in the Datatracker to remind people that an incoming liaison requires a response.

Wes Hardaker replied that it is up to the liaison managers to nudge people to respond.

Wes Hardaker thanked the liaison managers for the discussion, and the IAB thanked the liaison managers for all that they do.

3. IRTF Review: Human Rights Protocol Considerations (HRPC) Research Group

Mallory Knodel and Sofia Celi provided the IAB with an overview of the HRPC’s current activities.

HRPC is currently working on two documents:

• draft-irtf-hrpc-association-11 (Internet Protocols and the Human Rights to Freedom of Association and Assembly)
  • Approaching Last Call
• draft-irtf-hrpc-guidelines-16 (Guidelines for Human Rights Protocol and Architecture Considerations)
  • Currently in IRSG review

Sofia Celi said that there are two other documents that are not in the Datatracker yet. The first is about “Intimate Partner Violence Digital Considerations” and was presented at IETF 114. The second is about designing protocols that consider climate change.

Mallory Knodel noted that HRPC requests a 2-hour slot during in-person IETF meetings because they invite speakers to give longer presentations (generally 20-minute presentations with a 10-minute Q&A session afterwards). Two such talks are planned for IETF 115, “In defence of freedom of expression and association online” with Dmitri Vitaliev, and “Human Rights at the IETF: what happened and where do we go next?” With Corinne Cath. HRPC tries to invite local speakers when possible, and uses these talks to try and build a better understanding of the human rights threat model in the IETF community.

HRPC looks at the impact in both directions between human rights and the Internet. The current HRPC charter explicitly mentions freedom of expression and freedom association. HRPC is considering a recharter to do more policy-like work on content moderation.

Lars Eggert said that the IRTF did consider a policy research group at one point, but it never came together. He said that he sees the policy question as being part of a separate RG, outside of HRPC, in order to give it more visibility and create more energy.

Mallory Knodel said that policy makers and protocol designers need to have more conversations. The idea of providing guidance to intermediaries on how to deal with content moderation issues at lower layers has been happening for years, and adding it to the HRPC charter would not preclude the IAB from spinning up other groups around policy.

Wes Hardaker noted that he recently wrote a report on the prevalence of abusive material behind CDNs, and that the push towards privacy has implications for law enforcement. He asked whether the question on how to battle that is in scope for HRPC.

Mallory Knodel replied that it is in scope. There is a tradeoff between privacy and security.

Sofia Celi added that sometimes privacy does not take into consideration the content of the users, and having standards on this would be incredibly helpful.

Colin Perkins said that HRPC is a Research Group and can discuss research-related policy, but he is slightly concerned about a perception that the IRTF is setting policies. It would need to be clear what such a RG would do.

Lars Eggert replied that a RG can’t do standards, but it can do everything else if the messaging is done carefully.