Subject: Re: [Mtgvenue] Merging in ideas from draft-sullivan-mtgvenue-decisions

From: Alissa Cooper <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 6 Jan 2017 11:18:26 -0500

Hi Bob,

> On Dec 28, 2016, at 5:03 PM, Bob Hinden <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> Alissa,
> 
>> On Dec 23, 2016, at 6:55 AM, Alissa Cooper <[email-masked]> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>>> On Dec 14, 2016, at 11:30 AM, Yoav Nir <[email-masked]> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> On 13 Dec 2016, at 17:21, Alissa Cooper <[email-masked]> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> One thing I was wondering when we wrote this is whether this would be more useful if it focused on treatment of individuals in-country. There is already a separate, generic requirement about travel barriers to entry. So we could deal with the issue of entry there, and just have this focus on the practice of discrimination against individuals within the jurisdiction. Do you think that would help?
>>> 
>>> I think so. Perhaps focus it even further to discrimination that has any chance of affecting our participants during a short stay. I don’t think issues related to tax laws, marriage, adoption and land ownership should figure into these decisions.
>> 
>> Here is a stab at re-writing the relevant mandatory requirement from the alt-04:
>> 
>> o  Authorities within the Venue's jurisdiction do not engage in formal legal exclusions or differential treatment on the basis of age, gender or gender identity, sexuality, marital status, political views, racial background, or religious belief or practice such that individuals in-country for a meeting may be affected.
>> 
>> And the two trade-off-able or “Important” requirements (adding back in the generic “travel barriers to entry” language since barriers could come in forms other than visa requirements and the requirement around discrimination has been narrowed not to include entry into the country):
>> 
>> o  Informal but widely-experienced (or widely-announced) persistent discrimination by authorities on the basis of age, gender or gender identity, sexuality, marital status, political views, racial background, or religious belief or practice such that individuals in-country for a meeting may be affected should be treated as an extremely negative consideration.
>> 
>> o  Travel barriers to entry, including visa requirements that can limit participation, are minimized or the cost and difficulty associated with such requirements is spread among active participants.
> 
> I have read this over a few times and think I support this approach, but could you cite some examples of what places would or would not be OK for meetings.

I think doing so would require reviewing the local laws, customs, and travel entry practices in particular countries, so I hesitate to cite a bunch of examples without doing that first. E.g., my lay person understanding is that women in Saudi Arabia (including visitors) are legally prohibited from interacting with men in public without having male relatives present. If that is true then it would seem Saudi Arabia would not meet the first bulleted requirement above. But if considering Saudi Arabia I would expect the first step to be a review of local law.

Alissa

> Thanks,
> Bob
>> Alissa
>>> Yoav

---

From: Bob Hinden <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 6 Jan 2017 15:02:52 -0800

Alissa,

> On Jan 6, 2017, at 8:18 AM, Alissa Cooper <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> Hi Bob,
> 

I agree Saudi Arabia wouldn’t be a good place to hold an IETF meetings.  I think it also fails the second bullet about visas.  BTW, I found:

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/04/02/saudi-arabian-religious-police-lift-bicycle-ban-women-veil-male-relative_n_2999576.html

:-(

But back to the proposed text, I think it’s important we have text in the document that is workable.  I am not sure if having to "review [all] local laws” is going to be practical.  I worry that if we did that, and even ignoring the difficulty to do that, we might find that many countries have some sort of laws that don’t meet that.  Even if it is not enforced against visitors.

Bob

---

From: Ole Jacobsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 06 Jan 2017 18:11:08 -0800 (PST)

I am still unsure about having "general principles" vs "practical 
considerations." Let me explain by way of a couple of examples:

1. We have held a meeting in a place where the Internet is heavily 
   filtered, but did so because we were able to negotiate an open 
   Internet in the meeting venue. We could of course have refused to 
   meet in a place with such restrictions *on principle*, but that 
   would seem to me to venture into the realms of taking a political 
   stance which we don't do (according to the document).

2. Let's pretend that we were considering a venue in which women are 
   not allowed to drive cars. I would expect us to have a healthy 
   debate about the wisdom of such a choice, but I am hard pressed to 
   imagine that this would actually affect any of our attendees 
   (in-country or otherwise). Of course, if driving to and from the 
   venue was in any way a common requirement, this could easily become 
   a show-stopper, but again that's a practical consideration, not a 
   "principled" one. If, on the other hand, the requirement is that
   all women wear a headscarf I would certainly expect that this issue
   be debated and most likely become a show-stopper.

3. Without wishing to re-open the debate about Singapore, it seems to 
   me at least that having explored the actual implications of the 
   laws and practical experiences from visitors, there seems little 
   reason to avoid this country/city based on those considerations, 
   --- unless again we want to make a political statement.

By having a lengthy list of general principles that must be passed
before any practical requirements are considered, I fear that we will
severely limit our choices for venues going forward. That's not to say
that such common sense considerations aren't taken into account, but
not in a decision-tree manner as some of the comments have suggested.

Ole

Ole J. Jacobsen
Editor and Publisher
The Internet Protocol Journal
Office:  +1 415-550-9433
Cell:    +1 415-370-4628
Docomo:  090 3337-9311
Web: protocoljournal.org
E-mail: [email-masked]

---

From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 6 Jan 2017 21:35:10 -0500

Hi,

On Fri, Jan 06, 2017 at 03:02:52PM -0800, Bob Hinden wrote:
 
> we might find that many countries have some sort of laws that don’t
> meet that.  Even if it is not enforced against visitors.

This issue keeps coming up (it's implicit in Ole's recent message to
the list too), and I think it's something that we're going to need to
face squarely as an open issue, even if we don't resolve it right now.

It seems to me that there are different approaches here, and we are
going to need to decide which we're going to pick.

Let us assume that there is some class of laws in some countries that
require differential treatment of indivuduals (the list Alissa
presented is a good one), under which some of our participants would
fall.  In all cases, of course, anyone who actually lives in the
country is already affected by the law, so I've left consideration of
that out.  There are still multiple possible cases:

    1.  The laws apply only to resident nationals of that country.  In
    this case, anyone who might visit as part of the meeting would not
    be affected.  (I do not know whether this ever happens.)

    2.  The laws are on the books, but are rarely enforced or are
    enforced selectively, and only ever against locals.  In this case,
    someone who no longer lives there and participates in the IETF
    might be negatively affected by the treatment.

    3.  The laws are on the books, but are rarely enforced or are
    enforced selectively.  In this case, any participant meeting the
    criteria might be affected.

    4.  The laws are on the books, and are regularly enforced but only
    for certain classes of attention-drawing behaviour.  (An example
    is strong speech-control laws that turn out actually to be used
    only against certain kinds of activists or something like that.
    We actually faced something like this case, except that the law
    wasn't apparently discriminatory in the way we're discussing.)  In
    this case, any participant could be subject to the law, depending
    on their behaviour.

    5.  The laws are on the books and are regularly enforced.  In this
    case, any participant in the affected class would be affected.

I _think_ people agree that (1) would be just ok and that (5) would be
unacceptable.  It seems to me that (4) would be a very difficult
question to tackle, and I hope everyone would agree that for the
sanity of the organization we would therefore not go to such a venue.
So the hard cases are (2) and (3) (which I think effectively boil down
to the same thing involving the meaning of "selective" anyway).

Some in the discussion appear to think that the answer to this must be
evaluated empirically, because it's a practical question of risk and
it is to be traded off among other risks.

Others in the discussion appear to think that the answer to this must
be evaluated in terms of the acceptability of the law in the first
place, and that if the affected class of people face any chance
(i.e. in a logical possibility sense) of prosecution under the law
then the venue is unacceptable.

I myself don't know which answer I prefer, but I hope that making this
distinction starker at least helps us to discuss the options before us
(and to make that choice plain in the draft).

Please note that all of this is _entirely different_ to the case where
there is not actually a law, but the country is manifestly selective
in its visa-approval policies and so on.  That is also a problem, but
it is different than the one of laws that remain standing.

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]

---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 7 Jan 2017 10:04:22 +0100

Hi Andrew,

Thanks again for seeking clarity.  Please see below.

> (and to make that choice plain in the draft).

To a first approximation I agree with your groupings.

I think your use of the term "risk" in the first group is ... broad. 
There are risks to individuals, and then there are risks to the
organization as a whole, one such risk being that the set of venues
meeting the criteria laid down in this document evaluates to nil or
close to nil so as to not meet other organizational objectives.  And so
I might restate your first group slightly as:

Those who believe that the answer to this must be evaluated empirically,
because it's a practical question of evaluating and trading of various
types of risks, including both those to individuals and to the IETF as a
whole.
> it is different than the one of laws that remain standing.

It's probably worth just saying that this is one such risk to be
considered by the first group.

Eliot

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2017 17:46:51 -0900

Hi, all:

In the interest of moving this document towards publication
at a somewhat more lively pace, Jonne and I are going to be
a little more active in managing discussion than we have been.

This issue received considerable discussion but didn't come
to closure.  I'm quoting Andrew's message here at the bottom
because it does a good job of summarizing the options.  From
discussion it seemed as if there was agreement that the right
place to draw the line would be with having 2 and/or 3 just
over the line of "acceptable," and 4 and 5 would be
unacceptable.  The context for this would be effects during a
brief (meeting-length) stay, rather than having this be applicable
to entry into a country.

Alissa proposed some draft text regarding mandatory policies,
which follows this paragraph.  Bob Hinden asked for several
examples, and I believe that was the end of the discussion.
So, the question is: Is there agreement that this text is
correct with regard to mandatory considerations?

Alissa wrote:

o  Authorities within the Venue's jurisdiction do not engage in formal
legal exclusions or differential treatment on the basis of age, gender
or gender identity, sexuality, marital status, political views, racial
background, or religious belief or practice such that individuals
in-country for a meeting may be affected.

And the two trade-off-able or “Important” requirements (adding back in
the generic “travel barriers to entry” language since barriers could
come in forms other than visa requirements and the requirement around
discrimination has been narrowed not to include entry into the country):

o  Informal but widely-experienced (or widely-announced) persistent
discrimination by authorities on the basis of age, gender or gender
identity, sexuality, marital status, political views, racial
background, or religious belief or practice such that individuals
in-country for a meeting may be affected should be treated as an
extremely negative consideration.

o  Travel barriers to entry, including visa requirements that can limit
participation, are minimized or the cost and difficulty associated with
such requirements is spread among active participants.

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 14 Jan 2017 17:24:11 +1300

Hi,

> In the interest of moving this document towards publication

Er, which is "this" document? I will assume you mean the existing WG draft
for the purposes of this message.

>>> then the venue is unacceptable.

I believe that the second option -- strict principle -- is a valid option
for individuals deciding whether to attend a meeting, but really is not
a practical option for the IETF as a whole.

I also believe that the first option -- pragmatic decision case-by-case --
is viable for the IETF and is already covered in the WG draft, specifically
in section 2.1 "Core Values", especially by the word "effectively" below:

      2.  Avoid meeting in countries with laws that effectively exclude
          people on the basis of race, religion, gender, sexual
          orientation, national origin, or gender identity

and of course by the requirement for the IAOC to consult with the
community about potential venues.

> correct with regard to mandatory considerations?

Do you mean 'mandatory policies' or 'mandatory considerations'?
They are very different. I think Alissa's first two points are
very valid as matters to be considered as part of the process of
consulting the community. I don't think they can possibly be
mandatory policies - how can we put the IAOC in the position of
making such judgments? But those two points could be worked
into the text as a sort of appendix to point a) in Section 5.2
"Consultation": Matters to be considered by the community include
etc. etc.

As far as I can see, Alissa's third point is already completely
covered in the WG draft, in different words.

    Brian

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