Subject: [Mtgvenue] Fwd: Re: If Muslims are blocked by the U.S., should the IETF respond?

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2017 12:02:57 -0800

Folks,

G'day.

> Subject: Re: If Muslims are blocked by the U.S., should the IETF respond?
> Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2017 14:43:24 -0500
> From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
> To: [email-masked]
>
> Dear colleagues,
>
> On Fri, Jan 27, 2017 at 02:29:01PM -0500, Dave Burstein wrote:
>> Some might also think that we should move the July 2018 meeting from San
>> Francisco to a location accessible to more of our members, perhaps to
>> Mexico or Canada.
>
> I note that there is a WG, MTGVENUE, that is working on criteria for
> meeting venues.  It seems to me that discussing the overall question
> of specific exclusions at a venue for individuals on the basis of some
> set of class properties (whether it be nationality, religion, choices
> in emotional relationships, or whatever) would be appropriate in that
> WG.  Moreover, since the WG hasn't finished its work perhaps the WG
> list would be better to explore the issue than the IETF list.

Andrew's response, on the IETF list, suggests a discussion thread for 
this working group that I'd like to see pursued.

I'm a fan of test cases and it could be useful to take advantage of the 
current concerns, to see how the concepts and procedures in the working 
group draft will handle those concerns.

So it would be worth having you look at the latest draft:

https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-mtgvenue-iaoc-venue-selection-process/

And see whether there are more/different values/concepts/goals and/or 
more/different procedures that the draft should have.

d/

---

From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2017 14:49:58 -0800

> Francisco to a location accessible to more of our members, perhaps to

We have literally done that in the past, primarily because our Chinese colleagues have had issues with the US Embassy, getting visas. 

While the IETF doesn't have "membership" per se, I think an important part of Dave's comment is the impact on "members". To my knowledge, our muslim colleagues are far more interested in making the Internet work in their countries than in attacking the US (or anyone else). Our reasoning on moving away from US venues a decade ago had to do with people that wanted to actively participate, and who were interested in more wholesome activities.

In the particular case, I might suggest we find out what the issues are and how we are impacted before making changes; the important thing in this document isn't specific venues, but the process by which they are chosen. Whatever the rhetoric has been, I suspect that a ban against a religion will not stand, as it directly violates the US first amendment ("Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."). What could stand (and is largely in place today) is a ban on travel of people associated with organizations known to have issues with the US government or its citizens.

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From: Seun Ojedeji <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 29 Jan 2017 17:50:00 +0100

FWIW, I think it may be good to present this accurately as the IETF
shouldn't flow with media captions. What has happened is that some
countries has been banned from entering USA for certain period of time
(even though yes, these countries are dominated by Muslims).

So the question of the present is whether IETF should react to this,
especially as it concerns upcoming IETF meetings in the USA. I think IETF
should respond in the manner she has been doing when they get complain
about people not been able to acquire visa due to certain restrictions
placed on their country by USA (or by any other country where IETF is
meeting).

When a nation govt blocks specific religion from entering their country,
IETF can also address that in a different manner but that is not what has
happened in this instance.

On a lighter note and even though this list is somewhat for meeting related
issue, I think a bigger issue that the IETF needs to be vigilant about is
the continued internet shutdown/censorship happening across the globe. It
should be reacted to proactively irrespective of the country affected.

Regards
Sent from my LG G4
Kindly excuse brevity and typos

On Jan 27, 2017 9:03 PM, "Dave Crocker" <[email-masked]> wrote:

> Andrew's response, on the IETF list, suggests a discussion thread for this
> working group that I'd like to see pursued.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Mtgvenue mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/mtgvenue
>

---

From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 29 Jan 2017 13:12:40 -0500

Hi,

> placed on their country by USA (or by any other country where IETF is

Let us be very careful here.  I think there is a distinction that
Alissa and I at least were trying to capture (I can't decide whether
-04 adequately captures this, which is why I haven't sent a response
to Melinda's query).

On the one hand are explicit formal restrictions on particular classes
of participants.  The recently-imposed executive order in the USA
would be one such explicit formal restriction, but there are other
cases we can think of without very much work.

On the other hand are widely-reported difficulties for some class of people
entering a country.  This has been a problem also, and it is something
that ought to be taken into consideration; but we must treat it as a
different case because, since the policy is not a formal one, it is
difficult for the IAOC to defend a formal policy in response.

My understanding is that in most cases the visa problems are actually
the second of these, though there are cases where certain nationals or
prior visitors to a given place cannot, as an official policy, enter
some other country.

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]

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From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 29 Jan 2017 09:34:15 -0900

On 1/29/17 7:50 AM, Seun Ojedeji wrote:
> shouldn't flow with media captions.

Hi, Seun:

Questions like that are out of scope of the working group.  We're
just trying to establish a policy to provide guidance to the IAOC
and processes to follow when making decisions about meeting
location.

Melinda

---

From: Seun Ojedeji <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2017 05:57:50 +0100

That's fine but that was what the subject of this thread implied. It should
have been clear from the first message that it is out of scope. Wonder
though why it's being discussed if it's out of scope but I think Andrew's
response captures things well and provides clarifications.

Thanks

Sent from my LG G4