Re: I-D ACTION:draft-palet-ietf-meeting-venue-selection-criteria-04.txt

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So, could people please review it for errors and omissions?

My biggest concern is in sections "2.3.  Freedom of Participation"
and "2.5.  Attendance Limitation and Visas", in that I'm not sure
how realistic they are.  Without getting overly into politics (let's
please not), I think they reflect a somewhat naïve view of some of
the political realities.  Specifically...

   Meetings should not be held in countries where some attendees could
   be disallowed entry or where freedom of speech is not guaranteed for
   all participants.

The United States certainly cannot be assumed to allow ALL attendees
entry.  It's well known that we have lists of people we won't allow
in, and lest we think that's limited to the sort of nasty folk who
wouldn't be attending the IETF anyway, I'll point out that a plane
carrying Yusuf Islam -- the singer formerly known as Cat Stevens --
was landed in Maine so that the singer could be removed and sent home
before the plane continued to New York.  Individuals do get on these
lists unreasonably, or by mistake.

Ignoring the issue of individuals, whole groups may have difficulty.
The US has a list of "restricted countries", which includes Iran and
North Korea, and a longer list of countries to which exports of software
or technology are controlled (this list includes Russia and China,
for example).  There's certainly no guarantee at any time that attendees
from these countries won't have a difficult time getting visas, or might
not be able to get them at all.

As to freedom of speech:  We could argue about the reality of that
for a while, but even apart from that, our government has made it
clear that it considers those constitutional rights to apply to US
citizens only, and not to foreign nationals who may be visiting.

OK, all that said, I don't think the US is a bad country in which to
have IETF meetings.  Which is, really, my point: I think the text
needs to be changed to better express the intent, which is that we
want to avoid countries that are unduly restrictive, without trying
to limit things to utopian -- and non-existent -- lands of complete
freedom.

--
Barry Leiba  (leiba@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx)
http://www.research.ibm.com/people/l/leiba
http://www.research.ibm.com/spam

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