hrpc charter.txt

Background
The Human Rights Protocol Consideration Proposed Research Group is
chartered to research whether standards and protocols can enable,
strengthen or threaten human rights, as defined in the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) [0] and the International Covenant
on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) [1], specifically, but not
limited to the right to freedom of expression and the right to freedom
of assembly.

The research group takes as its starting point the problem statement
that human-rights-enabling characteristics of the Internet might be
degraded if they're not properly defined, described and sufficiently
taken into account in protocol development. Not protecting these
characteristics could result in (partial) loss of functionality and
connectivity.

As evinced by RFC 1958, the Internet aims to be the global network of
networks that provides unfettered connectivity to all users at all
times and for any content. Open, secure and reliable connectivity is
essential for rights such as freedom of expression and freedom of
association. Since the Internet's objective of connectivity makes it
an enabler of human rights, its architectural design converges with the
human rights framework.

The Internet was designed with freedom and openness of communications 
as core values. But as the scale and the industrialization of the 
Internet has grown greatly, the influence of such world-views started 
to compete with other values. This research group aims to explore the 
relations between human rights and protocols and to provide guidelines 
to inform future protocol development and decision making where protocols 
impact the effective exercise of the rights to freedom of expression 
or association.

Objective
This research has two major aims:
- to expose the relation between protocols and human rights, with a
  focus on the rights to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly,
  and

- to propose guidelines to protect the Internet as a human-rights-
  enabling environment in future protocol development, in a manner
  similar to the work done for Privacy Considerations in RFC 6973.

- to increase the awareness in both the human rights community and the
  technical community on the importance of the technical workings of the
  Internet and its impact on human rights.

Outputs
The research group plans on using  a variety of research methods to
create different outputs including (but not limited to):

- Internet drafts - (some of which may be put on IRTF RFC stream)
These would concern progress of the project, methodology, and would
define any possible protocol considerations.

- Policy and academic papers
For in depth analysis and discussion on the relationship between human
rights and the Internet architecture and protocols.

- Film and textual interviews with a diverse set of community members, 
to give an accessible insight into the variety of opinions on this
topic represented in the IETF.

- Data analysis and visualization
To research and visualize the language used in current and historic
RFCs and mailinglist discussions to expose core architectural
principles, language and deliberations on human rights of those
affected by the network.

- Protocol analysis
Data analysis and visualization of (existing) protocols in the wild to research their concrete impact on human rights. 


Membership
Membership is open to any interested parties who intend to remain
current with the published documents and mailing list issues.

[0] http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/
[1] http://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CCPR.aspx