--On Tuesday, September 24, 2024 09:46 +0100 Jay Daley <exec-director@xxxxxxxx> wrote: > Bob > >> On 23 Sep 2024, at 22:45, Bob Hinden <bob.hinden@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> >> To follow up on Ross's response, what are the sites that are >> considered illegal? > > I'm not aware of any government that releases the list of sites > they filter. I have verified that 1) this filtering will in no way > interfere with the mandatory criterion "utilize the Internet for > all their IETF, business, and day-to-day needs"; and 2) VPN servers > will not be included in this list and therefore anyone can use a > VPN of their choice whenever they wish. Jay, That seems quite correct with two caveats. The first derives from Ole's note a few days ago: we are in the uncomfortable position of having to make a decision relatively soon about a meeting that is well over a year away. In the interval between when we make commitments --both to the location and to our community-- and the beginning of the meeting (maybe even during the meeting) things can change. That is true of any venue and the country in which it is located but some, including China, are probably of particular concern because of a history of policies that put constraints on international communication. That concern is not about PRC government actions alone: given some possible outcomes of the elections in the US in November, it is conceivable (although I hope not likely) that, by March 2026, either deliberate policy measures or the result of tit-for-tat escalations could largely block network traffic between China and the US or US-based cloud providers. Without anything nearly that drastic, if some of us worked for a particular company that China decided was problematic and decided, in the future, to block and our work required access to company-maintained servers (e.g., mailboxes), such a decision would certainly interfere with their business and day-to-day needs. Second, my understanding is that the PRC has, in the past, made serious efforts to block VPN access for some portions of their population. I have no reason to believe that would be an issue for a meeting with many foreign attendees but I wonder where the assertion "anyone can use a VPN of their choice whenever they wish", especially since many of us can and do run individual VPN servers rather than depending on some large-scale VPN provider. And, again, I don't see any way to guarantee things won't change. I hope the risks in both cases are small and, fortunately from my standpoint, I'm not the one to has to decide whether they, and the tradeoffs, are acceptable. I'm just concerned about decisions being made on the basis of what I believe are very high confidence statements about the present situation and the future and your phrasing implies. best, john
