Request for community guidance on issue concerning a future meeting of the IETF

[Marshall Eubanks]

Greetings;

We have received numerous suggestions and requests for an IETF meeting
in China and the IAOC has been working on a potential China meeting for
several years. We are now close to making a decision on a potential
upcoming meeting in China. However, the following issue has arisen
and we would appreciate your feedback.

The Chinese government has imposed a rule on all conferences held
since 2008 regarding political speech. A fundamental law in China
requires that one not criticize the government. Practically, this
has reference to public political statements or protest marches, which
are not the IETF's custom. The government, which is a party to the
issue,
requires that people who attend conferences in China (the IETF being
but one example) not engage in political speech during their tour
in China. We consider this to be acceptable, on the basis that the
IETF intends to abide by the laws of whatever nations it visits and
we don't believe that this impacts our ability to do technical work.

The rule is implemented in the Hotel agreement and reads (note that
the "Client" would be the Host, and the "Group" would be the IETF) :

"Should the contents of the Group's activities, visual or audio
presentations at the conference,or printed materials used at the
conference (which are within the control of the Client) contain
any defamation against the Government of the People's Republic
of China, or show any disrespect to the Chinese culture, or
violates any laws of the People's Republic of China or feature
any topics regarding human rights or religion without prior
approval from the Government of the People's Republic of China,
the Hotel reserves the right to terminate the event on the spot
and/or ask the person(s) who initiates or participates in any or
all of the above action to leave the hotel premises immediately.

The Client will support and assist the Hotel with the necessary
actions to handle such situations. Should there be any financial
loss incurred to the Hotel or damage caused to the Hotel's
reputation as a result of any or all of the above acts, the Hotel
will claim compensation from the Client."

What does this condition mean ? The hotel staff would have, in theory,
the legal right to shut down the meeting and ask the offending
participants to leave the property immediately. While we do not
foresee a situation where such action would take place, we feel that
it is proper to disclose these conditions to the community.

The members of the IAOC, speaking as individuals, do not like this
condition as a matter of principle. The IAOC does believe that this
condition would not prevent the IETF from conducting its business.

We note that the Vancouver/Quebec survey conducted earlier this year
asked for people to suggest venues in Asia; an overwhelming majority
(94%) of those who mentioned China were in favor of having a meeting
there.

We are therefore asking for input from the community by two means - by
commenting on the IETF discussion list, and also by completing a very
short survey on people's intentions to travel to China, or not,
subject to these conditions. This survey can be found here :

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=h4DUkRUOdG_2bVLqioPcYYHw_3d_3d

All responses received by October 1, 2009 at 9:00 AM EDT (1300 UTC)
will be considered by the IAOC in making its decision. We appreciate
the assistance of the community in providing us with data that will
help us to make an informed decision.

Regards
Marshall Eubanks
(acting for the IAOC)

[Tim Bray]

Post by Marshall Eubanks
The Chinese government has imposed a rule on all conferences held
since 2008 regarding political speech.

Perhaps more material to this discussion, the government has imposed
severe and wide-ranging restrictions on people's access to the
Internet. This bites most sharply at the Web/HTTP level.

[Non-rhetorical information-seeking question: Is IRC access unrestricted?]

Thus, operators of a Web-centric conference might have to decide
between declining to go, based on the Web's being restricted to a
crippled subset of itself, or alternatively to use an event there as a
teaching platform as to the benefits of an uncensored Web.

Also, bear in mind that there are a large number of people around the
world who are very angry at the Chinese government, and are looking
for opportunities to stage protests as visibly as possible. It is not
inconceivable that some of them are IETF attendees and might choose to
try to do this in the IETF context. The thought of the IETF or hotel
being held liable for what the government perceives as illegal action,
or on the other hand being forced to be a party to trying to prevent
what I'd see as a legitimate protest, are both extremely unattractive.

Finally, it wouldn't be that surprising if there was some amused news
coverage about the IETF meeting in the world capital of Internet
censorship.

-Tim

[Peter Saint-Andre]

Post by Tim Bray

Post by Marshall Eubanks
The Chinese government has imposed a rule on all conferences held
since 2008 regarding political speech.

Perhaps more material to this discussion, the government has imposed
severe and wide-ranging restrictions on people's access to the
Internet. This bites most sharply at the Web/HTTP level.

Given that my blog is probably blocked, I suppose I won't be doing any
blogging that week. ;-)

Peter

- --
Peter Saint-Andre
https://stpeter.im/

[Eric Rescorla]

Post by Marshall Eubanks
The Chinese government has imposed a rule on all conferences held
since 2008 regarding political speech. A fundamental law in China
requires that one not criticize the government. Practically, this
has reference to public political statements or protest marches, which
are not the IETF's custom. The government, which is a party to the issue,
requires that people who attend conferences in China (the IETF being
but one example) not engage in political speech during their tour
in China. We consider this to be acceptable, on the basis that the
IETF intends to abide by the laws of whatever nations it visits and
we don't believe that this impacts our ability to do technical work.
The rule is implemented in the Hotel agreement and reads (note that
"Should the contents of the Group's activities, visual or audio
presentations at the conference,or printed materials used at the
conference (which are within the control of the Client) contain
any defamation against the Government of the People's Republic
of China, or show any disrespect to the Chinese culture, or
violates any laws of the People's Republic of China or feature
any topics regarding human rights or religion without prior
approval from the Government of the People's Republic of China,
the Hotel reserves the right to terminate the event on the spot
and/or ask the person(s) who initiates or participates in any or
all of the above action to leave the hotel premises immediately.
The Client will support and assist the Hotel with the necessary
actions to handle such situations. Should there be any financial
loss incurred to the Hotel or damage caused to the Hotel's
reputation as a result of any or all of the above acts, the Hotel
will claim compensation from the Client."
What does this condition mean ? The hotel staff would have, in theory,
the legal right to shut down the meeting and ask the offending
participants to leave the property immediately. While we do not
foresee a situation where such action would take place, we feel that
it is proper to disclose these conditions to the community.

It's not entirely clear to me what these conditions mean, so
maybe it's worth trying to parse them a bit. ISTM that there are
a bunch of potential questions about their interpretation:

1. What materials are covered under this? This could include any
of [in roughly descending order of "officialness"]:
(a) Materials printed in the program [Do we have a program?]
(b) Materials presented by IETF management (IAB, IESG, etc.)
(c) Speech by IETF management
(d) Materials presented by WG participants
(e) Speech by WG participants

2. What exactly is covered by the restriction on "any defamation
against the Government of the People's Republic of China, or show
any disrespect to the Chinese culture, or violates any laws of the
People's Republic of China or feature any topics regarding human
rights or religion"?

3. What recourse, if any, do we have if the hotel staff judge that
the lines above have been crossed?

4. What, if anything, is the IETF on the hook for if the conference
is cancelled?


None of these seem entirely clear from the text above. In the
maximal (and most worrisome) interpretation, the hotel staff, in their
sole discretion, could choose to cancel the entire IETF because a
single WG participant says something about Taiwan in the course of a
WG discussion. If that's in fact the controlling interpretation, then
that seems distinctly problematic.

Is it really that bad? Let's take a deeper look at each term:

1. The materials covered are specified as:

"Should the contents of the Group's activities, visual or audio
presentations at the conference,or printed materials used at the
conference (which are within the control of the Client)"

Except for the final parenthetical, this seems to include all of
(a)-(e). The relevant question then becomes what the meaning
of the final parenthetical is, and in particular, who the
Client is. I suppose one could argue that the Client is just
IASA and so all that's relevant is presentations from IAOC
(or more liberally from the I*). However, if you argue that
the client is IETF then clearly the IETF management *could*
control what people present (E.g., require pre-clearance of
slides) and say (by cutting off the microphones). So, I don't
think this is particularly clear. It doesn't seem to me that
we would really have much of an argument that presentations
at the plenary aren't "within the control of the Client",
however. That said, I think the natural interpretation is
that anything that's on the agenda falls into this category--if
people want to interpret it differently, we should get a
legal opinion to that effect--or better yet, get the
terms modified to make it clear.


2. The offensive topics are described as:

"[1] any defamation
against the Government of the People's Republic of China, or [2] show
any disrespect to the Chinese culture, or [3] violates any laws of the
People's Republic of China or [4] feature any topics regarding human
rights or religion"?

(Numbers mine)

This really seems exceptionally broad. I'm not overly worried about
IETFers defaming the government of the PRC, but I think I can come
up with plausible technical topics that would violate at least
[2] and [4]. In particular:

- An expression that HTTP error codes need not be translated into
Chinese could be argued to show disrespect to Chinese culture.
- Discussion of location privacy [Geopriv] or resistance to lawful
intercept [TLS, RTPSEC, IPsec] could be argued to be
relevant to human rights. I've fairly regularly heard negative
opinions expressed about both the US and Chinese governments
in these discssions.
- As someone else observed, the discussion of net neutrality in last
IETF's plenary could similarly be argued to be relevant to human
rights (cf. Ted's comments) The US and China come in for
criticism here as well.
- Discussion of language differences between Taiwan and China
could easily fall into a number of these categories.

So, absent some narrowing of this clause, it does seem to me like
this would have a chilling effect on technical discussion.


3. This clause actually seems the clearest and the most expansive:

the Hotel reserves the right to terminate the event on the spot
and/or ask the person(s) who initiates or participates in any or
all of the above action to leave the hotel premises immediately.

This appears to me to allow the hotel staff, in their sole discretion,
to determine which actions violate this contract and shut down the
entire IETF meeting. I don't see that we have any meaningful recourse.

Perhaps it's just security guy paranoia, but I would be reluctant to
sign a contract that featured this sort of clause regardless of the
antecedent actions that ostensibly triggered it; the problem here is
that it gives the hotel an incentive to use the implicit threat of
terminating the event as negotiating leverage for other interactions
where they simply wish to get a more advantageous deal.


4. I'm not entirely clear what our liability is here. Consider the
worst case: in the first session on Monday, there's a formal
presentation from an IETF official (e.g., an AD) denouncing China's
Tibet policy. The hotel decides that this is a breach of the above
terms and closes the entire IETF meeting. At this point, a large
fraction of IETFers cancel their hotel reservations, demand their
money back, and go home. Is the IETF required to make the hotel whole?
Maybe these reservations will be un-cancellable, but that's not
been the case for at least some previous meetings I've attended.
If the IETF is on the hook here, this seems like a fairly high
level of risk for the IETF to bear.


The bottom line, then, is that the stated terms seem to me to be quite
problematic: they (at least arguably) seem to apply to relevant
technical discussions by pretty much everyone at IETF and don't give
us any meaningful recourse if the hotel judges that we're in breach.

This leads immediately to the question of whether there is some more
constrained version of these terms that actually would be
acceptable. I don't see much room for negotiation in point (2), which
seems to me to be the meat of the objectionable material. One could
imagine narrowing (1) to apply somehow to only "official" statements
by the IETF and (3) to provide some sort of recourse, or required
escalation procedures, or something. However, I don't know if the IETF
management would be willing to bind themselves to these terms and I
don't know if we could define a meaningful escalation procedure, but
if we were able to achieve these, it seems like the impact on the
rest of the IETF would be marginal. [Speaking solely for myself,
were I still on the IAB I would not be willing to be bound by these
terms.] However, as it is, this seems to me to have the potential
for an unacceptably high impact on the IETF as a whole.

-Ekr

[Ole Jacobsen]

Eric,

Speaking not on behalf of the IAOC, but as an individual attendee who
has also attended a couple of Internet-related meetings in China: You
raise a number of good questions. Unfortunately, since the wording was
dictated by a branch of the Chinese government I see little hope in it
either being revised or further clarified. I view the entire thing as
a warning sign that certain activities are not allowed [just like we
have signs that say "violators may be prosecuted"]. The broadness
of these statements I am sure is deliberate.

In a more recent message you said:

" In particular, we can refuse to take those terms now and instead
attempt to negotiate for terms that we find more acceptable."

I very much doubt that we have any way to negotiate with the Chinese
government on this.

But back to the specifics:

I don't think the rules were written with a group like the IETF in
mind. I also don't think, in fact I am pretty certain, that the hotel
staff would be the ones who decide to shut down the meeting or take
other action. I am sure what would happen, in practice, is that the
*local host* would intervene, warn the offender and that would
probably be the end of it. This assumes there was ever anything for
the hotel or host to complain about in the first place which is
something I also doubt, ---- unless someone in our community decides
that they want to push the boundaries and prove a point. That is
frankly my ONLY worry about this matter. The Chinese government is, by
now, well aware of what a typical IETF meeting looks like and would
not have granted permission for the meeting to take place if they
expected us to stage a political rally, but just in case we should be
so inclined, there is a set of rules spelled out (albeit broadly) in
the text we are discussing.

I assure you that there is no intention to have WG materials
pre-screened or anything of the sort, heck they're never ready on time
anyway ;-) And I honestly do not think that anyone should plan on
being more careful than usual about what they say in general WG
discussions or plenaries. The meeting should be like any other IETF
meeting in terms of content.

So, we can do what Steve Crocker suggests, go to China with a positive
attitude or stay home and wonder what might have happened.

Ole

Post by Eric Rescorla
It's not entirely clear to me what these conditions mean, so
maybe it's worth trying to parse them a bit. ISTM that there are
1. What materials are covered under this? This could include any
(a) Materials printed in the program [Do we have a program?]
(b) Materials presented by IETF management (IAB, IESG, etc.)
(c) Speech by IETF management
(d) Materials presented by WG participants
(e) Speech by WG participants
2. What exactly is covered by the restriction on "any defamation
against the Government of the People's Republic of China, or show
any disrespect to the Chinese culture, or violates any laws of the
People's Republic of China or feature any topics regarding human
rights or religion"?
3. What recourse, if any, do we have if the hotel staff judge that
the lines above have been crossed?
4. What, if anything, is the IETF on the hook for if the conference
is cancelled?

[snip]

[Eric Rescorla]

At Sat, 19 Sep 2009 15:28:06 -0700 (PDT),

Post by Ole Jacobsen
I don't think the rules were written with a group like the IETF in
mind. I also don't think, in fact I am pretty certain, that the hotel
staff would be the ones who decide to shut down the meeting or take
other action. I am sure what would happen, in practice, is that the
*local host* would intervene, warn the offender and that would
probably be the end of it. This assumes there was ever anything for
the hotel or host to complain about in the first place which is
something I also doubt, ---- unless someone in our community decides
that they want to push the boundaries and prove a point. That is
frankly my ONLY worry about this matter. The Chinese government is, by
now, well aware of what a typical IETF meeting looks like and would
not have granted permission for the meeting to take place if they
expected us to stage a political rally, but just in case we should be
so inclined, there is a set of rules spelled out (albeit broadly) in
the text we are discussing.

I'm not really following you here. I've read the stated contract
terms and I'm concerned that they prohibit activities which may
reasonably occur during IETF. Are you saying:

(a) No, they don't prohibit those activities.
(b) Yes, they do prohibit those activities, but they won't actually
be enforced that way.

If you're saying (a), I'd be interested in seeing your analysis
of why that is the case, since my own analysis indicates the
contrary. Indeed, it seems to me that this very discussion
we are having now (which clearly is an appropriate IETF discussion),
violates a number of the terms.

If you're saying (b), then I have to say I don't find that very
reassuring.

Post by Ole Jacobsen
I assure you that there is no intention to have WG materials
pre-screened or anything of the sort, heck they're never ready on time
anyway ;-) And I honestly do not think that anyone should plan on
being more careful than usual about what they say in general WG
discussions or plenaries. The meeting should be like any other IETF
meeting in terms of content.
So, we can do what Steve Crocker suggests, go to China with a positive
attitude or stay home and wonder what might have happened.

I'm a little puzzled by "stay home". It's not like the world
is divided into "China" and "Home". In what way are Hiroshima,
Anaheim, and Maastricht, to pick three random examples any more
"Home" than China?

-Ekr

[Ole Jacobsen]

Post by Eric Rescorla
I'm not really following you here. I've read the stated contract
terms and I'm concerned that they prohibit activities which may
(a) No, they don't prohibit those activities.
(b) Yes, they do prohibit those activities, but they won't actually
be enforced that way.
If you're saying (a), I'd be interested in seeing your analysis of
why that is the case, since my own analysis indicates the contrary.
Indeed, it seems to me that this very discussion we are having now
(which clearly is an appropriate IETF discussion), violates a number
of the terms.

What I am saying is (c) that you have listed a set of topics and
concluded that they violate the contract, I don't agree. I have stated
what I believe to be the INTENTION of the language in the contract,
namely prevent political protest at the meeting. I have now attended
68 out of 75 IETF meetings, but I have never seen "political protest"
of the form that I think might lead to a meeting being shut down in
China. Yes, we are a rowdy bunch at times, and we discuss a lot of
technical things that spill over into layer 9, but let me repeat what
I said earlier: There is no way the host, with the understanding of
the government, would invite us to meet in China if they expected us
to:

a) Not discuss our usual topics
b) Stage a political rally

The offending hotel clause, simply put, is a reminder of b.

Post by Eric Rescorla
I'm a little puzzled by "stay home". It's not like the world
is divided into "China" and "Home". In what way are Hiroshima,
Anaheim, and Maastricht, to pick three random examples any more
"Home" than China?

I thought this was clear, but: Staying home for any value of home
would mean not attending a meeting in China if it were held there,
or more generally not holding the meeting there. There are already
some people who have said they would "stay" home if we held a meeting
there, based on principle or based on what I will characterize as
"fear of consequences".

My personal belief, and the belief of many of have attended meetings
in China is that the fear is unfounded.


Ole

[Tim Chown]

Post by Ole Jacobsen
My personal belief, and the belief of many of have attended meetings
in China is that the fear is unfounded.

When I attended APAN24 in China, I felt the discussions in each session
were very open.

As with the IETF, there was also plenty of good discussions around tables
outside the meeting rooms (smoke-free, for the person who asked) and
network access seemed open. The meeting agenda contained some of the
topics that some posters to this thread seem to have concerns with
(see http://www.apan.net/meetings/xian2007/schedule.html). And a lot
of very interesting and innovative new application areas.

I think the IETF should explore every possibility to host a meeting in
China.

[Matt Crawford]

Post by Marshall Eubanks
We are therefore asking for input from the community by two means - by
commenting on the IETF discussion list, ...

I'm trying to imagine the thought police remaining calm during a
plenary such as the one at Danvers. I can't quite picture it.

[Steven M. Bellovin]

On Fri, 18 Sep 2009 11:12:59 -0500

Post by Matt Crawford

Post by Marshall Eubanks
We are therefore asking for input from the community by two means -
by commenting on the IETF discussion list, ...

I'm trying to imagine the thought police remaining calm during a
plenary such as the one at Danvers. I can't quite picture it.

Speaking of Danvers -- what is the situation -- theory and practice --
regarding encrypted transmissions to/from such a meeting? I think that
a high percentage of IETF attendees are using various sorts of VPNs
and/or encrypted tunnels for email retrieval, remote login, etc. Note
that I'm assuming they don't care much if we discuss cryptographic
technology (i.e., they're happy for the Security Area to meet). I'm
just talking ordinary, day-to-day activities for many participants.

N.B. It is extremely unlikely that I'd attend a meeting in that slot,
regardless of where it was; my current $DAYJOB doesn't give me the
luxury of attending most IETF meetings.


--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb

[John C Klensin]

--On Friday, September 18, 2009 15:46 -0400 "Steven M. Bellovin"

Post by Steven M. Bellovin
...
Speaking of Danvers -- what is the situation -- theory and
practice -- regarding encrypted transmissions to/from such a
meeting? I think that a high percentage of IETF attendees are
using various sorts of VPNs and/or encrypted tunnels for email
retrieval, remote login, etc. Note that I'm assuming they
don't care much if we discuss cryptographic technology (i.e.,
they're happy for the Security Area to meet). I'm just
talking ordinary, day-to-day activities for many participants.

I obviously cannot speak for the meeting or venue, but I've
routinely used encrypted tunnels from various facilities and
hotels in Beijing and have not encountered a problem for many
years (and the problems then were not clearly different from
problems I used to routinely encounter in hotels in the US and
Western Europe).

Commitments and clarity would definitely be good, especially
given that someone feels a need for the sort of provision
Marshall quoted, but my impression from some experience is that,
if we confine our networking efforts and technical (and even
technical policy) discussions to the meeting and meeting
participants, we would be extremely unlikely to have any
problems. Now, if some IETF participant decided to wander into
a far-away neighborhood of Beijing, find a random Internet cafe,
wander in, and offer to teach everyone there how to set up an
encrypted tunnel to web proxies in some problematic country (or
other entity)... well, I haven't had any first-hand experiences
that let me guess what would happen, although I assume it would
be treated as bad judgment or worse.

john

[Jari Arkko]

I have been in a couple of meetings in China, and everything always went
smoothly. Arrival process at the airport is one of the moat pleasant
that I've had outside Schengen area in EU. There is a lot of university
and commercial activity on new Internet technology, and going there
gives one typically a very different, fresh viewpoint. I never had any
problems with my VPN and had also direct access to the sites that I use
daily. Its a large country with very large variations in the level of
modernization and infrastructure, e.g., hotel, restaurant and Internet
connection quality can vary quite a bit. Some of my colleagues in the
same lab have also been over there, e.g., the 3GPP security group has
met there several times (and they often deal with topics such as
encryption or anonymity) and the experience was similar.

With regards to the hotel clause I need to say that I'm not an expert in
writing hotel contracts. But I'll just that there are plenty of laws
that one has to obey in every country. Unfortunately, there may not
always be an bulletproof way to avoid getting into problems with
purposefully vague laws. If the authorities really wanted to, I'm sure a
sizable fraction of the IETF could be investigated in many countries
for, say, export of encryption software or just being a crypto expert
(see, e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Sklyarov),
reverse-engineering which might be a violation of DCMA (see, e.g.,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptography#Digital_rights_management),
copyright violations for your personal benefit, building software or
protocols that allow others to violate someone's copyright (we have
several working groups trying to improve P2P technology), or linking to
infringing content*. But for some reason none of us are suddenly scared
about these things. That's because we know from experience that when we
go to a country, we are not suddenly all arrested. I would suggest the
way to resolve our current question is to look for other meetings that
have taken place in China. If operator forums, 3GPP, IEEE, a few major
scientific conferences on our field, etc have successfully met there, I
think we should go as well.

I also strongly believe that political views should not matter for this
discussion. For the record, I'm not happy with the actions of the
Chinese government. But I'm also unhappy with many other governments,
including the one in my own country. If we start blaming a particular
country, there's a lot of blame to go around.

Jari

*) Message to whoever intercepts this e-mail: Naturally, I have not been
involved with any of the listed activities :-)

[Scott Brim]

Post by Marshall Eubanks
Greetings;
We have received numerous suggestions and requests for an IETF meeting
in China and the IAOC has been working on a potential China meeting for
several years. We are now close to making a decision on a potential
upcoming meeting in China. However, the following issue has arisen
and we would appreciate your feedback.
The Chinese government has imposed a rule on all conferences held
since 2008 regarding political speech. A fundamental law in China
requires that one not criticize the government. Practically, this
has reference to public political statements or protest marches, which
are not the IETF's custom. The government, which is a party to the
issue,
requires that people who attend conferences in China (the IETF being
but one example) not engage in political speech during their tour
in China. We consider this to be acceptable, on the basis that the
IETF intends to abide by the laws of whatever nations it visits and
we don't believe that this impacts our ability to do technical work.
The rule is implemented in the Hotel agreement and reads (note that
"Should the contents of the Group's activities, visual or audio
presentations at the conference,or printed materials used at the
conference (which are within the control of the Client) contain
any defamation against the Government of the People's Republic
of China, or show any disrespect to the Chinese culture, or
violates any laws of the People's Republic of China or feature
any topics regarding human rights or religion without prior
approval from the Government of the People's Republic of China,
the Hotel reserves the right to terminate the event on the spot
and/or ask the person(s) who initiates or participates in any or
all of the above action to leave the hotel premises immediately.
The Client will support and assist the Hotel with the necessary
actions to handle such situations. Should there be any financial
loss incurred to the Hotel or damage caused to the Hotel's
reputation as a result of any or all of the above acts, the Hotel
will claim compensation from the Client."
What does this condition mean ? The hotel staff would have, in theory,
the legal right to shut down the meeting and ask the offending
participants to leave the property immediately. While we do not
foresee a situation where such action would take place, we feel that
it is proper to disclose these conditions to the community.

I don't see that. Is this what they told you? What I see is:

- the _conference_ materials shouldn't contain political speech.
"which are within control of the client"

- if an _individual_ does so, that individual may be asked to leave.

I don't see "if anyone says anything they could shut the conference
down".

Scott

[Marshall Eubanks]

Post by Scott Brim

Post by Marshall Eubanks
Greetings;
We have received numerous suggestions and requests for an IETF meeting
in China and the IAOC has been working on a potential China meeting for
several years. We are now close to making a decision on a potential
upcoming meeting in China. However, the following issue has arisen
and we would appreciate your feedback.
The Chinese government has imposed a rule on all conferences held
since 2008 regarding political speech. A fundamental law in China
requires that one not criticize the government. Practically, this
has reference to public political statements or protest marches, which
are not the IETF's custom. The government, which is a party to the
issue,
requires that people who attend conferences in China (the IETF being
but one example) not engage in political speech during their tour
in China. We consider this to be acceptable, on the basis that the
IETF intends to abide by the laws of whatever nations it visits and
we don't believe that this impacts our ability to do technical work.
The rule is implemented in the Hotel agreement and reads (note that
"Should the contents of the Group's activities, visual or audio
presentations at the conference,or printed materials used at the
conference (which are within the control of the Client) contain
any defamation against the Government of the People's Republic
of China, or show any disrespect to the Chinese culture, or
violates any laws of the People's Republic of China or feature
any topics regarding human rights or religion without prior
approval from the Government of the People's Republic of China,
the Hotel reserves the right to terminate the event on the spot
and/or ask the person(s) who initiates or participates in any or
all of the above action to leave the hotel premises immediately.
The Client will support and assist the Hotel with the necessary
actions to handle such situations. Should there be any financial
loss incurred to the Hotel or damage caused to the Hotel's
reputation as a result of any or all of the above acts, the Hotel
will claim compensation from the Client."
What does this condition mean ? The hotel staff would have, in theory,
the legal right to shut down the meeting and ask the offending
participants to leave the property immediately. While we do not
foresee a situation where such action would take place, we feel that
it is proper to disclose these conditions to the community.

- the _conference_ materials shouldn't contain political speech.
"which are within control of the client"

In the above,

"the Hotel reserves the right to terminate the event on the spot"

I, speaking just for myself, think that this is extremely unlikely to
happen.
There have been a number of technical meetings in the PRC in the
recent past,
and I haven't heard of any being shut down. Also, this would be a very
serious step
for any venue to take, and would likely mean a near termination of any
future foreign
conference business for them for quite some time to come.

Others, of course, will have to judge this probability for themselves.

Regards
Marshall

Post by Scott Brim
- if an _individual_ does so, that individual may be asked to leave.
I don't see "if anyone says anything they could shut the conference
down".
Scott

[Carsten Bormann]

Post by Marshall Eubanks
The IAOC does believe that this
condition would not prevent the IETF from conducting its business.

Marshall,

I also do not believe that the IETF needs to violate this condition to
do its business.
However, in this case there are two aspects out of control:
1) The IETF participants may have a different interpretation of the
condition than you and I have.
2) The people running the place may have a different interpretation of
the condition than you and I have.

I have lived close enough to what was the GDR for long enough to know
that 2 is an extremely uncontrollable problem.
(And I have been in the IETF long enough to think that 1 isn't much
more controllable.)

China certainly deserves to host a meeting.
Has the SAR (Hong Kong) been considered?

Gruesse, Carsten

[John C Klensin]

Marshall,

Since seeing your note, I've been trying to figure out how to
formulate my concern. Carsten's note captured it for me, so
let me be a little more specific.

First, thanks for asking.

I am deliberately not addressing the "where else could we meet
where things would be better" question, the visa issues, or any
of the other logistical questions in this note.

Let's assume (at least for purposes of argument -- I assume some
members of the community might disagree) that we can trust the
government of the PRC to be sensible in this sort of matter, to
understand what an IETF meeting implies, etc. The difficulty is
that, from things I've heard informally, the proposed Host
("Client") isn't the government or a government body.

I am concerned that, if there is some incident --completely
unrelated to IETF-- that someone associated with the host or
hotel might overreact and decide to interpret, e.g., a
discussion about mandatory-to-implement cryptography, as pushing
too close to the "politics" or "criticism" line. I'd be much
less concerned if any perceived incident led to some sort of
conversation between "us" and relevant government folks about
real issues and boundaries than if (and I assume this is an
exaggeration) some middle-level hotel employee could panic and
pull the eject lever.

john


--On Friday, September 18, 2009 18:26 +0200 Carsten Bormann

Post by Carsten Bormann

Post by Marshall Eubanks
The IAOC does believe that this
condition would not prevent the IETF from conducting its
business.

...
I have lived close enough to what was the GDR for long enough
to know that 2 is an extremely uncontrollable problem.
(And I have been in the IETF long enough to think that 1 isn't
much more controllable.)
...

[Ole Jacobsen]

John,

Since both you and I have attended meetings in China, as recently as 3
weeks ago, I think you will agree that the host --- any host --- has
a significant investment in effort, people and funds along with a
great deal of pride and determination that the meeting run
"perfectly." Given all that, I would find it very surprising that the
host would allow a random hotel employee, or anyone else for that
matter, to pull the eject lever to use your term. I also very much
doubt that government officials (if we assume they will be present)
are looking for an excuse to throw us out and shut the meeting down.
Perhaps if this was a Greenpeace conference, but it's not.

This isn't to say that I "agree" with the conditions, just that I feel
fairly confident that an IETF meeting running "normally" would not
find itself running afoul of any of these rules.

I would also like to remind everyone that ONE of the reasons a meeting
is being proposed in China is that the IETF now has a significant
number (and growing) of Chinese participants and for reasons beyond
our control, many of them are having difficulties obtaining visas to
visit the United States when we have IETF meetings here.

Ole

Post by Carsten Bormann
Marshall,
Since seeing your note, I've been trying to figure out how to
formulate my concern. Carsten's note captured it for me, so let me
be a little more specific.
First, thanks for asking.
I am deliberately not addressing the "where else could we meet where
things would be better" question, the visa issues, or any of the
other logistical questions in this note.
Let's assume (at least for purposes of argument -- I assume some
members of the community might disagree) that we can trust the
government of the PRC to be sensible in this sort of matter, to
understand what an IETF meeting implies, etc. The difficulty is
that, from things I've heard informally, the proposed Host
("Client") isn't the government or a government body.
I am concerned that, if there is some incident --completely
unrelated to IETF-- that someone associated with the host or hotel
might overreact and decide to interpret, e.g., a discussion about
mandatory-to-implement cryptography, as pushing too close to the
"politics" or "criticism" line. I'd be much less concerned if any
perceived incident led to some sort of conversation between "us" and
relevant government folks about real issues and boundaries than if
(and I assume this is an exaggeration) some middle-level hotel
employee could panic and pull the eject lever.
john

[Paul Wouters]

Post by John C Klensin
I am concerned that, if there is some incident --completely
unrelated to IETF-- that someone associated with the host or
hotel might overreact and decide to interpret, e.g., a
discussion about mandatory-to-implement cryptography, as pushing
too close to the "politics" or "criticism" line.

Those concerns are not different with other countries, including the US.
A few hours after 9/11, once I was over my initial shock, I started
downloading all cryptography software I knew was hosted mainly in
the United States. We are far from a universal faith in any national
government.

Pre-emptively excluding countries based on culture, (perceived) bias,
or other non-technical and non-organisation arguments is wrong. So if the
visa issues are not much worse then for other countries, and an internet
connection not hampered by a Great Firewall, I see no reason to single
out China. Perhaps appropriate people could inform about organisational
matters with others who have more experience, for example the IOC.

Paul

[Andrew Sullivan]

Post by Paul Wouters
visa issues are not much worse then for other countries, and an internet
connection not hampered by a Great Firewall, I see no reason to single

If there has been an indication one way or the other about the nature
of the Internet access the meeting would be able to offer, I think I
missed it. Do we know that the proposed meeting would not be so
hampered?

A

[John C Klensin]

--On Friday, September 18, 2009 15:02 -0400 Paul Wouters

Post by Paul Wouters

Post by John C Klensin
I am concerned that, if there is some incident --completely
unrelated to IETF-- that someone associated with the host or
hotel might overreact and decide to interpret, e.g., a
discussion about mandatory-to-implement cryptography, as
pushing too close to the "politics" or "criticism" line.

Those concerns are not different with other countries,
including the US.
A few hours after 9/11, once I was over my initial shock, I
...
We are far from a universal faith in any national
government.
Pre-emptively excluding countries based on culture,
(perceived) bias,
or other non-technical and non-organisation arguments is
wrong.

But, at least to my knowledge, the IETF has not been asked
before (by any country) to agree to having the meeting stopped,
having all participants being kicked out of the country, and
bearing full financial responsibility for any costs that result,
if some number of participants are perceived of as being out of
line... and perceived by a process in which the IETF has no
voice, no right to state an opinion or defend itself, etc.

It seems to me that provision is a significant issue,
independent of how one feels about those concerns that are "not
different with other countries" and also independent of our
appraisal of how likely it is to be triggered.

john

[Pete Resnick]

But, at least to my knowledge, the IETF has not been asked before
(by any country) to agree to having the meeting stopped, having all
participants being kicked out of the country, and bearing full
financial responsibility for any costs that result, if some number
of participants are perceived of as being out of line... and
perceived by a process in which the IETF has no voice, no right to
state an opinion or defend itself, etc.

Perhaps a distinction without a difference, but the IETF has not been
asked any of this; the Host is the one signing the agreement and
bearing the full financial responsibility. We haven't yet heard what
the agreement between the IETF/IAOC and the Host is.

Personally, I'm of the opinion that the Host (and the IAOC if faced
with similar text in a contract they need to sign) should simply
cross off the portion, say that they don't agree to the condition,
sign the rest of it, and see what comes back. Call it "negotiation".

So long as we have assurances that crypto isn't a problem, and
assurances that technical discussions which happen to touch on
political issues (IDNs, crypto, privacy, etc.) are OK, I'm willing to
roll the dice. But it seems silly to sign a contract like the one
outlined.

pr

[Henk Uijterwaal]

Personally, I'm of the opinion that the Host (and the IAOC if faced with
similar text in a contract they need to sign) should simply cross off
the portion, say that they don't agree to the condition, sign the rest
of it, and see what comes back. Call it "negotiation".

We already asked if this condition could be removed and the answer was
a sound no with no room for discussion.

Henk

[Scott Kitterman]

Post by Henk Uijterwaal

Personally, I'm of the opinion that the Host (and the IAOC if faced with
similar text in a contract they need to sign) should simply cross off
the portion, say that they don't agree to the condition, sign the rest
of it, and see what comes back. Call it "negotiation".

We already asked if this condition could be removed and the answer was
a sound no with no room for discussion.

I think it should be considered that if such restrictions are acceptable for on venue, once the
precedent is set, it may well be requested again.

Scott K

[John Levine]

Post by Scott Kitterman
I think it should be considered that if such restrictions are acceptable
for on venue, once the precedent is set, it may well be requested again.

Quite possibly, and I expect that should it happen, we'll debate the
merits again.

No venue is perfect, and any large country is going to have political
issues. People from several countries cannot get US visas, simply
because of where they live, not anything they've done, but we seem
willing to meet in the US anyway. China is a large and sophisticated
country, nothing we do is going to change that, and politically
motivated boycotts far larger than anything the IETF could do have
invariably been ineffective and often counterproductive. Whatever
small influence we might exert is going to be far greater if we meet
and interact with the people who run the Chinese Internet.

R's,
John

[Scott Kitterman]

Post by John Levine

Post by Scott Kitterman
I think it should be considered that if such restrictions are acceptable
for on venue, once the precedent is set, it may well be requested again.

Quite possibly, and I expect that should it happen, we'll debate the
merits again.
No venue is perfect, and any large country is going to have political
issues. People from several countries cannot get US visas, simply
because of where they live, not anything they've done, but we seem
willing to meet in the US anyway. China is a large and sophisticated
country, nothing we do is going to change that, and politically
motivated boycotts far larger than anything the IETF could do have
invariably been ineffective and often counterproductive. Whatever
small influence we might exert is going to be far greater if we meet
and interact with the people who run the Chinese Internet.

I didn't for a moment consider that an IETF decision not to go would have
any impact on the policies of the Chinese government. I agree with you
that it would not.

The question that was posed, as I understand it, was about the
acceptability of the restrictions to the IETF. If such restrictions are
acceptable, then they should be acceptable anywhere. I don't think China
should get a free pass because it's China.

Scott K

[Henk Uijterwaal]

John, (and others),

Post by John C Klensin
The difficulty is
that, from things I've heard informally, the proposed Host
("Client") isn't the government or a government body.

The (possible) host is not a government body. However, the host must
have permission from the government to organize the meeting, they
asked for it and got it.

I think it is safe to assume that the government did run some checks
on what the IETF is doing and, if we did keep ourselves busy with
things they do not like, then I seriously doubt that they would
have given the host permission to invite us in the first place.

Henk

[Melinda Shore]

Post by Henk Uijterwaal
I think it is safe to assume that the government did run some checks
on what the IETF is doing and, if we did keep ourselves busy with
things they do not like, then I seriously doubt that they would
have given the host permission to invite us in the first place.

I've run into first-time attendees who were extremely
surprised, and not happy with, things that were said
in meetings, even knowing in advance that discussion
tends to be kind of, uh, frank.

Melinda

[Tim Bray]

Post by Henk Uijterwaal
I think it is safe to assume that the government did run some checks
on what the IETF is doing and, if we did keep ourselves busy with
things they do not like, then I seriously doubt that they would
have given the host permission to invite us in the first place.

Um... I really doubt the government of the PRC has much understanding
of the behavior or culture of the IETF.

And the more I think of it, the more I think that even the slightest
hint of a suggestion that the attendees comport themselves in such a
manner as to please the Chinese government is very apt to provoke
deliberate provocations from some members of our community -Tim

[Fred Baker]

Post by Henk Uijterwaal
I think it is safe to assume that the government did run some checks
on what the IETF is doing

The government has been negotiating to bring an IETF meeting to China
since 1997, and has been very carefully vetting the IETF's activities
for a long time. U betcha they know what we're doing.

[Brian E Carpenter]

Post by Fred Baker

Post by Henk Uijterwaal
I think it is safe to assume that the government did run some checks
on what the IETF is doing

The government has been negotiating to bring an IETF meeting to China
since 1997, and has been very carefully vetting the IETF's activities
for a long time. U betcha they know what we're doing.

Up to *at least* the level of a Vice Minister of the PRC Government, from my
personal knowledge. Roughly the same level as the US Government's direct contact
with the IETF, also from my personal knowledge. There is nothing sinister
there; we should be flattered.

However, I have a question to the IAOC: do we know if other standards meetings
such as 3GPP had to sign similar conditions before meeting in the PRC?

Brian

[Marshall Eubanks]

Post by Brian E Carpenter

Post by Fred Baker

Post by Henk Uijterwaal
I think it is safe to assume that the government did run some checks
on what the IETF is doing

The government has been negotiating to bring an IETF meeting to China
since 1997, and has been very carefully vetting the IETF's activities
for a long time. U betcha they know what we're doing.

Up to *at least* the level of a Vice Minister of the PRC Government, from my
personal knowledge. Roughly the same level as the US Government's direct contact
with the IETF, also from my personal knowledge. There is nothing sinister
there; we should be flattered.
However, I have a question to the IAOC: do we know if other
standards meetings
such as 3GPP had to sign similar conditions before meeting in the PRC?

Dear Brian;

Please note that we would not be signing these conditions. The host
would be.

We were told that these conditions apply to all conferences, without
exception.

Whether or not other conferences have the same level of transparency
as we do (i.e.,
whether the organizing committees know about these formal
restrictions, and
communicate them to their attendees), I do not know.

Regards
Marshall

Post by Brian E Carpenter
Brian
_______________________________________________
IAOC mailing list
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/iaoc

[John C Klensin]

--On Friday, September 18, 2009 21:29 +0200 Henk Uijterwaal

Post by Henk Uijterwaal
John, (and others),

Post by John C Klensin
The difficulty is
that, from things I've heard informally, the proposed Host
("Client") isn't the government or a government body.

The (possible) host is not a government body. However, the
host must
have permission from the government to organize the meeting,
they asked for it and got it.

I was nearly certain of that.

Post by Henk Uijterwaal
I think it is safe to assume that the government did run some
checks
on what the IETF is doing and, if we did keep ourselves busy
with
things they do not like, then I seriously doubt that they would
have given the host permission to invite us in the first place.

I am at least as certain of that as Fred is.

My concern is not "catching the government by surprise about our
being there" in any way. I think we have a fairly clear
understanding of what we are getting into in that area and
assume that they (both government and prospective hosts) pretty
much do too. Within the IETF, some people are going to be happy
about what that understanding implies and some people aren't,
and I'm really glad that you folks are the ones who have to
figure out where the consensus lies (and not me).

The specific issue I was trying to address was whether there was
any risk of one of our loose cannons (or
politically/environmentally-insensitive individuals) triggering
a reaction from some mid-level hotel staffer who was
oversensitive and overly risk-adverse as a matter of
personality, or as the result of conditions beyond anyone's
control, and having the combination trigger a situation that
would not exist with a combination of calmer heads with more
inclination to try to defuse a situation than to escalate it.
And, if that risk existed, whether there was anything that could
be done to mitigate it.

An example might include trying to change the provisions for
unilateral action by the hotel or Host, into a requirement that,
if a problem was perceived, it went into some sort of
problem-understanding and resolution review team that involved a
few of our senior folks and representation from the government
as well as the hotel and Host people. I assume that such a
team, if organized in advance, could move quickly enough to meet
any reasonable need.

I think that, if we were going to do this, that sort of model
would benefit everyone. From our standpoint, it would help
lower the risk of a misunderstanding turning into a crisis.

Post by Henk Uijterwaal
From theirs, even a public hint of inclination to shut down an

IETF meeting or start kicking participants out would, as others
have pointed out, have long-term bad consequences that would
spread well beyond a particular hotel or Host.

john

[Noel Chiappa]

Post by Carsten Bormann
Has the SAR (Hong Kong) been considered?

Excellent idea. Does HK have the same 'Great Firewall of China' issues
(which I would assume would be a fairly significant problem for many
IETF members)?

Noel

[Donald Eastlake]

To quote from Wikipedia: "Most national laws of the People's Republic
of China do not apply to the Special Administrative Regions of Hong
Kong or Macau. There are no known cases of the Chinese authorities
censoring critical political or religious [Internet] content in those
territories."

I am opposed to the IETF meeting in China except in Hong Kong or
Macau. While one could argue endlessly about how likely such IETF
documents as RFC 1984 and RFC 2804 or such politically and culturally
sensitive issues as language tags, "internationalization" of
protocols, issuance of advice/requests to international authorities in
reference to country codes, etc., will be a problem, it seems to me
that the risk is too great.

Thanks,
Donald
=============================
Donald E. Eastlake 3rd [phone] (home)
155 Beaver Street
Milford, MA 01757 USA

   > Has the SAR (Hong Kong) been considered?
Excellent idea. Does HK have the same 'Great Firewall of China' issues
(which I would assume would be a fairly significant problem for many
IETF members)?
       Noel
_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf

[Peter Saint-Andre]

Post by Marshall Eubanks
"Should the contents of the Group's activities, visual or audio
presentations at the conference,or printed materials used at the
conference (which are within the control of the Client) contain
any defamation against the Government of the People's Republic
of China, or show any disrespect to the Chinese culture, or
violates any laws of the People's Republic of China or feature
any topics regarding human rights or religion without prior
approval from the Government of the People's Republic of China,
the Hotel reserves the right to terminate the event on the spot
and/or ask the person(s) who initiates or participates in any or
all of the above action to leave the hotel premises immediately.
The Client will support and assist the Hotel with the necessary
actions to handle such situations. Should there be any financial
loss incurred to the Hotel or damage caused to the Hotel's
reputation as a result of any or all of the above acts, the Hotel
will claim compensation from the Client."
What does this condition mean ?

The problem is that we have no idea what this means, and even worse we
have in principle no way of discovering what it might mean. Presumably
interpretation of the rule will be up to the local authorities, and we
have no way of knowing beforehand what activities might be they might
construe as defamation of the local government, disrespect for the local
culture, violation of the local laws, or discussion of human rights or
religion. However, we can think of many statements that could be made
and topics that could be discussed at an IETF meeting that might fall
afoul of this rule. As a recent example, consider the session on network
neutrality during the technical plenary at IETF 75, which included a
freewheeling discussion about encryption as a human right (as I recall,
Ted Hardie even used the word "liberty"). Given the extraordinarily
vague nature of this condition, I think its effect would be chilling on
the freedom of speech that is necessary to complete even our technical
work, which as we know often threatens the asserted power of those who
function on Layer 8.

Peter

- --
Peter Saint-Andre
https://stpeter.im/

[Dean Willis]

Finally, do you think that, in this group of people, there won't be
at least one who cannot resist stating their opinions about some
political hot button? Or for that matter, figure out they can DoS
the entire IETF by throwing up a controversial slide. Obviously
there's some wiggle-room in the "within the control of the client"
clause--but that's the sort of thing that gets worked out in courts
later. It's not very helpful when the on-site authorities have
already pulled the plug, and I don't expect them to be sympathetic
to the idea that the IETF cannot control the behavior of it's
participants.

You are absolutely right.

I might find a little political speech tempting, and can assure you
that there would be a number of other people with pithy political
comments to make.

Perhaps something like "Free Tibet and Taiwan, Celebrate Falan Gong,
Porn is a Human Right", as a footer on every slide? After all, we
have no rules about political speech. If the IETF tried to move to
suppress such discourse, we could well be sued back in the States.

I can certainly imagine people with agendae using this as an
opportunity to score massive publicity by getting the IETF shut down
or even better arranging for mass arrests and/or related civil
disobedience on a large scale. It might even be a good thing, but it
would be better if we weren't caught in the middle of it. Or maybe I'm
wrong; perhaps the best service we can give the world is to be made
examples of in China.

There are other risks as well. It wasn't too long ago that the Mexican
government had to send a plane to retrieve many of the Mexican
citizens in the country, after PRC health authorities decided to put
them all into a rather primitive extended quarantine (read
"concentration/death camp"). Given the IETF's penchant for outbreaks
of respiratory diseases (the "IETF cold/flu" that frequently gets
around), I'd not like to have that happen to us. I was doing standards
work and we were scheduled to meet in Guangdong during the SARS
outbreak, and remember television scenes of hospitals fenced in with
barbed wire, with the afflicted being fork-lifted over the fence to
die, as all supplies in the hospitals had supposedly been exhausted
and water and electricity cut off to "prevent spread". Not that any
country would do all that well in such a situation, but the People's
Republic of China has a proven track record of being rather scary, at
least from a western point of view.

See:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8033089.stm

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124137876507580987.html

http://www.salisburypost.com/Lifestyle/082109-quarantined-in-china

So all in all, I'd say I'm not comfortable with the idea of an IETF
meeting in the PRC at this time. Maybe, in a few years, if they open
up their Internet and cut back on the human rights abuses associated
with the users of our technology (making bloggers "disappear" is just
NOT acceptable), then we'll be ready to meet there. But not now, not
yet.

--
Dean

[Enrico Marocco]

Post by Dean Willis
So all in all, I'd say I'm not comfortable with the idea of an IETF
meeting in the PRC at this time. Maybe, in a few years, if they open
up their Internet and cut back on the human rights abuses associated
with the users of our technology (making bloggers "disappear" is just
NOT acceptable), then we'll be ready to meet there. But not now, not
yet.

Or, at the very least, remove the Facebook block: that would be a real
show stopper for many of us.

(Besides, I've heard that Mafia Wars scores play an essential role in
resolving disputes within the IESG...)

I'm only half kidding.

[Dave CROCKER]

Post by Marshall Eubanks
We are therefore asking for input from the community by two means - by
commenting on the IETF discussion list,

Marshall,

Thanks for asking.

I've only been to China a couple of times, but it was enough to be impressed,
particularly with many aspects of their Internet technical and operations savvy.

Alas, that's not the question here.

As a community, we of the IETF are extremely diverse, extremely undisciplined,
and extremely insensitive. In particular, attempting to place us into an
environment with distinctive political constraints is loaded with risk. We
can't even follow local customs to avoid sitting in inappropriate places in the
hotel (Munich), nevermind the already-noted exchange that took place at the last
IETF Plenary...

We should try to avoid venues that have visa challenges and behavior challenges.
Our diversity ensures that the former will be a real problem. Our unruliness
makes the latter quite likely to be a problem.

d/

[Ross Callon]

Speaking solely as an individual, providing only my personal opinion:

I think that this is not acceptable and we should not sign it.

I understand that no location is perfect. However, I think that this goes well beyond what we normally put up with and well beyond what we should put up with.

There are two classes of issues which concern me:

The first is the risk to the IETF. I understand that the likelihood of anything happening as a result of this is very low. However, the IETF is a very unruly and opinionated group, and is probably more unruly than other groups that have recently met in China (or anywhere else). We have little idea what IETF attendees will do either in spite of or even because of this restriction. It would not be surprising to have some sort of major dust-up at the IESG plenary over this issue, and we don't know how the host country officials would react to this. Also, while the risk of the meeting being stopped in the middle seems very low, if it did happen this would be a very bad result for all concerned. If one IETF attendee were to be booted out of the hosting country based on something that they said
or put on their slides or in a jabber room even that would be very bad.

Also, from a moral point of view I don't think that we should accept this. Freedom of speech is a very basic freedom that is guaranteed in a wide range of countries (although of course not all). The people who live there don't have the ability to say "no" without serious consequences. We DO have the ability to say no, and I think that we should.

Again, this is just my personal opinion, and not the opinion of any group nor organization that I might happen to be associated with.

thanks, Ross

-----Original Message-----
From: iesg-***@ietf.org [mailto:iesg-***@ietf.org] On Behalf Of Marshall Eubanks
Sent: 18 September 2009 11:42
To: IETF Announcement list; IETF-Discussion list; Working Group Chairs
Cc: IAOC Jabberr; IAB IAB; IESG; irtf-***@irtf.org
Subject: Request for community guidance on issue concerning a future meeting of the IETF

Greetings;

We have received numerous suggestions and requests for an IETF meeting
in China and the IAOC has been working on a potential China meeting for
several years. We are now close to making a decision on a potential
upcoming meeting in China. However, the following issue has arisen
and we would appreciate your feedback.

The Chinese government has imposed a rule on all conferences held
since 2008 regarding political speech. A fundamental law in China
requires that one not criticize the government. Practically, this
has reference to public political statements or protest marches, which
are not the IETF's custom. The government, which is a party to the
issue,
requires that people who attend conferences in China (the IETF being
but one example) not engage in political speech during their tour
in China. We consider this to be acceptable, on the basis that the
IETF intends to abide by the laws of whatever nations it visits and
we don't believe that this impacts our ability to do technical work.

The rule is implemented in the Hotel agreement and reads (note that
the "Client" would be the Host, and the "Group" would be the IETF) :

"Should the contents of the Group's activities, visual or audio
presentations at the conference,or printed materials used at the
conference (which are within the control of the Client) contain
any defamation against the Government of the People's Republic
of China, or show any disrespect to the Chinese culture, or
violates any laws of the People's Republic of China or feature
any topics regarding human rights or religion without prior
approval from the Government of the People's Republic of China,
the Hotel reserves the right to terminate the event on the spot
and/or ask the person(s) who initiates or participates in any or
all of the above action to leave the hotel premises immediately.

The Client will support and assist the Hotel with the necessary
actions to handle such situations. Should there be any financial
loss incurred to the Hotel or damage caused to the Hotel's
reputation as a result of any or all of the above acts, the Hotel
will claim compensation from the Client."

What does this condition mean ? The hotel staff would have, in theory,
the legal right to shut down the meeting and ask the offending
participants to leave the property immediately. While we do not
foresee a situation where such action would take place, we feel that
it is proper to disclose these conditions to the community.

The members of the IAOC, speaking as individuals, do not like this
condition as a matter of principle. The IAOC does believe that this
condition would not prevent the IETF from conducting its business.

We note that the Vancouver/Quebec survey conducted earlier this year
asked for people to suggest venues in Asia; an overwhelming majority
(94%) of those who mentioned China were in favor of having a meeting
there.

We are therefore asking for input from the community by two means - by
commenting on the IETF discussion list, and also by completing a very
short survey on people's intentions to travel to China, or not,
subject to these conditions. This survey can be found here :

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=h4DUkRUOdG_2bVLqioPcYYHw_3d_3d

All responses received by October 1, 2009 at 9:00 AM EDT (1300 UTC)
will be considered by the IAOC in making its decision. We appreciate
the assistance of the community in providing us with data that will
help us to make an informed decision.

Regards
Marshall Eubanks
(acting for the IAOC)

[Rahul Aggarwal]

Hi Ross,
Same here.

Post by Ross Callon
I think that this is not acceptable and we should not sign it.

Agreed.

Post by Ross Callon
I understand that no location is perfect. However, I think that this goes well beyond what
we normally put up with and well beyond what we should put up with.
The first is the risk to the IETF. I understand that the likelihood of anything happening
as a result of this is very low. However, the IETF is a very unruly and
opinionated group, and is probably more unruly than other groups that
have recently met in China (or anywhere else). We have little idea what
IETF attendees will do either in spite of or even because of this
restriction. It would not be surprising to have some sort of major
dust-up at the IESG plenary over this issue, and we don't know how the
host country officials would react to this. Also, while the risk of the
meeting being stopped in the middle seems very low, if it did happen
this would be a very bad result for all concerned. If one IETF attendee were to be
booted out of the hosting country based on something that they said or
put on their slides or in a jabber room even that would be very bad.
Also, from a moral point of view I don't think that we should accept this. Freedom of
speech is a very basic freedom that is guaranteed in a wide range of
countries (although of course not all). The people who live there don't
have the ability to say "no" without serious consequences. We DO have
the ability to say no, and I think that we should.

I agree with that. This is basically about freedom of speech. It would be
ironical to host a meeting of the IETF, which stands for open Internet
standards, in a setting which limits open speech.

This is purely my personal opinion as well.

rahul

Post by Ross Callon
Again, this is just my personal opinion, and not the opinion of any
group nor organization 'that I might happen to be associated with.
thanks, Ross
-----Original Message-----
Sent: 18 September 2009 11:42
To: IETF Announcement list; IETF-Discussion list; Working Group Chairs
Subject: Request for community guidance on issue concerning a future meeting of the IETF
Greetings;
We have received numerous suggestions and requests for an IETF meeting
in China and the IAOC has been working on a potential China meeting for
several years. We are now close to making a decision on a potential
upcoming meeting in China. However, the following issue has arisen
and we would appreciate your feedback.
The Chinese government has imposed a rule on all conferences held
since 2008 regarding political speech. A fundamental law in China
requires that one not criticize the government. Practically, this
has reference to public political statements or protest marches, which
are not the IETF's custom. The government, which is a party to the
issue,
requires that people who attend conferences in China (the IETF being
but one example) not engage in political speech during their tour
in China. We consider this to be acceptable, on the basis that the
IETF intends to abide by the laws of whatever nations it visits and
we don't believe that this impacts our ability to do technical work.
The rule is implemented in the Hotel agreement and reads (note that
"Should the contents of the Group's activities, visual or audio
presentations at the conference,or printed materials used at the
conference (which are within the control of the Client) contain
any defamation against the Government of the People's Republic
of China, or show any disrespect to the Chinese culture, or
violates any laws of the People's Republic of China or feature
any topics regarding human rights or religion without prior
approval from the Government of the People's Republic of China,
the Hotel reserves the right to terminate the event on the spot
and/or ask the person(s) who initiates or participates in any or
all of the above action to leave the hotel premises immediately.
The Client will support and assist the Hotel with the necessary
actions to handle such situations. Should there be any financial
loss incurred to the Hotel or damage caused to the Hotel's
reputation as a result of any or all of the above acts, the Hotel
will claim compensation from the Client."
What does this condition mean ? The hotel staff would have, in theory,
the legal right to shut down the meeting and ask the offending
participants to leave the property immediately. While we do not
foresee a situation where such action would take place, we feel that
it is proper to disclose these conditions to the community.
The members of the IAOC, speaking as individuals, do not like this
condition as a matter of principle. The IAOC does believe that this
condition would not prevent the IETF from conducting its business.
We note that the Vancouver/Quebec survey conducted earlier this year
asked for people to suggest venues in Asia; an overwhelming majority
(94%) of those who mentioned China were in favor of having a meeting
there.
We are therefore asking for input from the community by two means - by
commenting on the IETF discussion list, and also by completing a very
short survey on people's intentions to travel to China, or not,
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=h4DUkRUOdG_2bVLqioPcYYHw_3d_3d
All responses received by October 1, 2009 at 9:00 AM EDT (1300 UTC)
will be considered by the IAOC in making its decision. We appreciate
the assistance of the community in providing us with data that will
help us to make an informed decision.
Regards
Marshall Eubanks
(acting for the IAOC)
_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf

[Bernard Aboba]

The IETF does not and cannot make any warranties relating to the political views, manners or behavior of attendees. The attendees are responsible for their own actions, and the IETF has no ability ensure their conformance to local laws or customers. If attendees violate the laws or customs of the host country, they may face consequences -- but they're on their own.

So if the question is whether the IETF should sign any agreement that takes responsibility for the behavior attendees, I'd say that this is a bad idea. It's not really an issue of politics -- I'd say the same thing if the meeting were being held in Palm Beach and the city requested that the IETF take responsibility for ensuring that participants conformed to the dress code (no white after labor day!).

[Gene Gaines]

Marshall, excellent statement for the IAOC.
May I recommend that the IETF sit down with representatives of the People's
Republic of China and the U.S. government and discuss concerns with meetings
in both countries -- the issue of censorship in China and arbitrary visa
problems in the U.S.

Not to open Internet-related issues, only to establish procedures and
agreements that will permit the IETF to meet in both countries without
having to sacrifice the open character of its meetings and without having
the visa problems that have harmed some individuals in the past.

It is important to both countries and to the the IETF to normalize its
meeting relationships.

Gene Gaines

Post by Bernard Aboba
The IETF does not and cannot make any warranties relating to the political
views, manners or behavior of attendees. The attendees are responsible for
their own actions, and the IETF has no ability ensure their conformance to
local laws or customers. If attendees violate the laws or customs of the
host country, they may face consequences -- but they're on their own.
So if the question is whether the IETF should sign any agreement that takes
responsibility for the behavior attendees, I'd say that this is a bad
idea. It's not really an issue of politics -- I'd say the same thing if
the meeting were being held in Palm Beach and the city requested that the
IETF take responsibility for ensuring that participants conformed to the
dress code (no white after labor day!).
_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf

[Marshall Eubanks]

Post by Gene Gaines
Marshall, excellent statement for the IAOC.

Thank you, but I trust that you and others understand that the
statement represents the consensus view of the IAOC, and was prepared
by the IAOC working together.

The Chair, Bob Hinden, has been unavailable because he is on vacation.
I volunteered to be the Acting Chair,
which is why I am writing this instead of Bob.

Regards
Marshall

Post by Gene Gaines
May I recommend that the IETF sit down with representatives of the
People's Republic of China and the U.S. government and discuss
concerns with meetings in both countries -- the issue of censorship
in China and arbitrary visa problems in the U.S.
Not to open Internet-related issues, only to establish procedures
and agreements that will permit the IETF to meet in both countries
without having to sacrifice the open character of its meetings and
without having the visa problems that have harmed some individuals
in the past.
It is important to both countries and to the the IETF to normalize
its meeting relationships.
Gene Gaines
The IETF does not and cannot make any warranties relating to the
political views, manners or behavior of attendees. The attendees
are responsible for their own actions, and the IETF has no ability
ensure their conformance to local laws or customers. If attendees
violate the laws or customs of the host country, they may face
consequences -- but they're on their own.
So if the question is whether the IETF should sign any agreement
that takes responsibility for the behavior attendees, I'd say that
this is a bad idea. It's not really an issue of politics -- I'd
say the same thing if the meeting were being held in Palm Beach and
the city requested that the IETF take responsibility for ensuring
that participants conformed to the dress code (no white after labor
day!).
_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf

[Peter Saint-Andre]

Post by Bernard Aboba
The IETF does not and cannot make any warranties relating to the
political views, manners or behavior of attendees. The attendees are
responsible for their own actions, and the IETF has no ability ensure
their conformance to local laws or customers. If attendees violate the
laws or customs of the host country, they may face consequences -- but
they're on their own.
So if the question is whether the IETF should sign any agreement that
takes responsibility for the behavior attendees, I'd say that this is a
bad idea. It's not really an issue of politics -- I'd say the same
thing if the meeting were being held in Palm Beach and the city
requested that the IETF take responsibility for ensuring that
participants conformed to the dress code (no white after labor day!).

Wearing white after Labor Day, while gauche, does not put a damper on
technical discussions (and their inevitable political ramifications)
within the IETF.

Peter

- --
Peter Saint-Andre
https://stpeter.im/

[Ole Jacobsen]

Technically, the IETF (or ISOC or IAOC) will not be signing the
agreement, the host in China will, but that's in some sense a fairly
minor detail. We would still be expected to "play by the rules".

I don't think anyone is expecting us to warrant the views or
behaviors of our attendees, so Marshall's question is really about
disclosing what the rules are ("you have been warned") and asking the
community if they can live with those rules. And yes, if you break the
rules, you're on your own, but if it brings down the meeting (and
network in the process) that's not good for anyone, but we feel it is
VERY unlikely to happen.

Whether or not we should meet in China based on principles of
free speech and such is, I think, something we need to come to
at least a rough consensus on. We, the IAOC, are confident that
a meeting there would be successful by the usual criteria that
we apply for meetings, but we recognize that the matter at hand
is important and thus it is being disclosed prior to any agreement
being made.

Ole




Ole J. Jacobsen
Editor and Publisher, The Internet Protocol Journal
Cisco Systems
Tel: [phone] Mobile: [phone]

Post by Bernard Aboba
The IETF does not and cannot make any warranties relating to the
political views, manners or behavior of attendees. The attendees
are responsible for their own actions, and the IETF has no ability
ensure their conformance to local laws or customers. If attendees
violate the laws or customs of the host country, they may face
consequences -- but they're on their own.
So if the question is whether the IETF should sign any agreement
that takes responsibility for the behavior attendees, I'd say that
this is a bad idea. It's not really an issue of politics -- I'd say
the same thing if the meeting were being held in Palm Beach and the
city requested that the IETF take responsibility for ensuring that
participants conformed to the dress code (no white after labor
day!).

[Robert Elz]

Date: Fri, 18 Sep 2009 14:29:44 -0700 (PDT)
From: Ole Jacobsen <***@cisco.com>
Message-ID: <***@pita.cisco.com>

| Whether or not we should meet in China based on principles of
| free speech and such is, I think, something we need to come to
| at least a rough consensus on.

Actually, no, we don't, and shouldn't. If we were to start down
that road we'd need to start analysing the policies of countries on
all kinds of sensitive issues, such as religious freedom, the right
to "bear arms", compulsory military service provisions, whether
or not abortion is permitted, adherence to the Kyoto pact on
climate control, ....

None of that makes sense for an organisation like the IETF. On the
other hand, individuals both can, and should, exercise their own
right to refuse to attend meetings in locations where if they were
to attend they'd feel either threatened, or to perhaps be complicit
in some policy with which they disagree.

If the effect of that were to cause attendance at some site to be
so low that useful work was impossible, then the chances of a future
meeting there would be negligible - and that's the one thing that the
IETF (or IAOC or whoever) should consider - will it be possible to
hold an effective IETF meeting, if the answer to that is no, then
look elsewhere, if yes, then that is a suitable venue, after which
it's just a (perhaps not trivial) matter of choosing between all
the available suitable venues offered for any particular meeting.

kre

[Theodore Tso]

Post by Robert Elz
Date: Fri, 18 Sep 2009 14:29:44 -0700 (PDT)
| Whether or not we should meet in China based on principles of
| free speech and such is, I think, something we need to come to
| at least a rough consensus on.
Actually, no, we don't, and shouldn't. If we were to start down
that road we'd need to start analysing the policies of countries on
all kinds of sensitive issues, such as religious freedom, the right
to "bear arms", compulsory military service provisions, whether
or not abortion is permitted, adherence to the Kyoto pact on
climate control, ....

I think we can make a distinction between things that aren't going to
affect (or are highly unlikely) to directly affect an average IETF
attendee, and issues are more general in nature, or what an oppressive
regime inflicts on its citizens. If there was a proposal to go to a
country was highly likely to clap someone in irons and lock them away
just because they were Jewish, and it would apply to IETF attendees, I
hope it would be obvious that this would be a "religious freedom"
issue that would impact our choice of that venue.

Some IETF'ers might decide that they don't want to render legtimacy to
a regime that denies its citizens Free Speach, and I agree with you
that should be a decision that each attendee should make for its own.

OTOH, if there is a legal agreement which must be signed which clearly
impacts the free speach rights of IETF attendees, past a certain
level, I think it is valid for us as a community to decide that maybe
using such a venue might not be the path of wisdom.

Whether or not the situation "on the ground" in Beijing is likely to
rise to that level, I am not sure. Maybe people are right in that the
authorities understand that if they were to be unreasonable, it's
highly likely that it would be widely publicized and it would be a
major black eye for them. On the other hand, having heard stories
(admittedly many years ago), about someone on an international
assignment in China who called his wife and talked to her in Portugese
(since that was her native language), only to have a heavily
Chinese-accented voice break into the line to demand, "speak in
English", I'd be feeling rather cautious about going to China and
would probably feel that I would want to be very careful about how I
spoke and behaved while in that country, far more than most other
civilized parts of the world --- which wouldn't make it to be a
terribly pleasant place to visit.

- Ted

[Ole Jacobsen]

Post by Theodore Tso
OTOH, if there is a legal agreement which must be signed which clearly
impacts the free speach rights of IETF attendees, past a certain
level, I think it is valid for us as a community to decide that maybe
using such a venue might not be the path of wisdom.

Which is why we asked you :-)

Post by Theodore Tso
Whether or not the situation "on the ground" in Beijing is likely to
rise to that level, I am not sure. Maybe people are right in that
the authorities understand that if they were to be unreasonable,
it's highly likely that it would be widely publicized and it would
be a major black eye for them. On the other hand, having heard
stories (admittedly many years ago), about someone on an
international assignment in China who called his wife and talked to
her in Portugese (since that was her native language), only to have
a heavily Chinese-accented voice break into the line to demand,
"speak in English", I'd be feeling rather cautious about going to
China and would probably feel that I would want to be very careful
about how I spoke and behaved while in that country, far more than
most other civilized parts of the world --- which wouldn't make it
to be a terribly pleasant place to visit.

I think that if you would ask the thousands of businessmen who visit
China every day you would not hear such stories in 2009. Having just
come from a meeting in Beijing (APNIC 28), I can certainly attest to
the fact that nobody worries about what they say in public or private
and there isn't an army of listeners ready to jump on you (at least as
far as I could tell). Of course, if you wander down to a certain
square and unroll a banner, it would probably get you arrested before
anyone had a chance to read it. Since that's not typically something
we do in the IETF, the IAOC does not feel it would impact our ability
to have a good meeting.

The result of the survey will be informative, I am sure.

Ole

[Dave CROCKER]

Post by Robert Elz
If the effect of that were to cause attendance at some site to be
so low that useful work was impossible, then the chances of a future
meeting there would be negligible - and that's the one thing that the
IETF (or IAOC or whoever) should consider

Robert,

Trying to follow up on Ted Tso's very reasonable comments...

You are suggesting an evaluation model that would cause going to a place that
resulted in poor attendance and other problems during the meeting, thereby
seriously damaging the effectiveness of that meeting. If we believe the
incremental cost and utility of a single meeting is small, then this is a
reasonable model.

If instead we know that costs are quite high -- as they are -- and we believe
that each meeting should be treated as strategically important, then we should
not be so cavalier in taking risks with their success.

d/

ps. I quite like Pete's suggestion to simply cross off the problematic section
of text. However, since it is really the host -- that is, a Chinese group --
and not "us" signing the thing, I suspect this approach has its own problems.

[Steve Crocker]

The choice is between engaging and not engaging. Engaging is better.
Not engaging isn't constructive. The Internet and the IETF are all
about engaging, expanding, communicating and being open. Much of this
dialog has been worried about possible extreme situations. Let's
focus on the center. More than a billion people live in China and
their use of the Internet is expanding rapidly. They are building
much of the technology and contributing technically. It's to
everyone's advantage to have comfortable, constructive interaction.
Our first slogan was "Networks Bring People Together."

If you prefer to focus on the negatives, here's my analysis:

If we don't go to China, we have charted a downhill course and the
rest of the world will come together without us. The IETF will lose
relevance.

If we do go to China and something bad happens, the consequences will
be much worse for China than for the IETF. The work of the IETF will
suffer a bit, but we'll recover quickly enough. However, China's
quest for engagement with the rest of the world will be hurt more
seriously.

Bottom line: We should go to China with a positive attitude. We're
robust enough to deal with any consequences. If we don't go to China,
however, we have weakened ourselves.

Steve

[Roni Even]

Hi,
I support this view.
Furthermore I believe that even though people are allowed to have their
opinions about a specific country politics or values the IETF is not the
place to bring them forward regardless of the meeting location. The IETF is
a technical body and not the UN.



Roni Even

Post by Ross Callon
-----Original Message-----
Steve Crocker
Sent: Saturday, September 19, 2009 10:56 PM
To: IETF Discussion; IAOC IAOC
Subject: Re: Request for community guidance on issue concerning a
future meeting of the IETF
The choice is between engaging and not engaging. Engaging is better.
Not engaging isn't constructive. The Internet and the IETF are all
about engaging, expanding, communicating and being open. Much of this
dialog has been worried about possible extreme situations. Let's
focus on the center. More than a billion people live in China and
their use of the Internet is expanding rapidly. They are building
much of the technology and contributing technically. It's to
everyone's advantage to have comfortable, constructive interaction.
Our first slogan was "Networks Bring People Together."
If we don't go to China, we have charted a downhill course and the
rest of the world will come together without us. The IETF will lose
relevance.
If we do go to China and something bad happens, the consequences will
be much worse for China than for the IETF. The work of the IETF will
suffer a bit, but we'll recover quickly enough. However, China's
quest for engagement with the rest of the world will be hurt more
seriously.
Bottom line: We should go to China with a positive attitude. We're
robust enough to deal with any consequences. If we don't go to China,
however, we have weakened ourselves.
Steve
_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf

[Melinda Shore]

Post by Roni Even
I support this view.
Furthermore I believe that even though people are allowed to have their
opinions about a specific country politics or values the IETF is not the
place to bring them forward regardless of the meeting location. The IETF is
a technical body and not the UN.

Unfortunately (or maybe not) national regulatory policies
do have some influence on what the IETF does and one hopes
that what the IETF does has some influence on national
regulatory policies. I think the likelihood of there being
a problem seems low, but still, it's hard not to wonder about
something like the Raven process and how that particularly
boisterous meeting (Washington?) would have fared in China.

Melinda

[Roni Even]

Melinda,
I see a difference between addressing requirements for protocol that address
national regulatory services and voicing an opinion about national
regulatory policies.
I also noticed that the issues raised on the mailing list were wider than
national regulatory services


Roni Even

Post by Ross Callon
-----Original Message-----
Sent: Sunday, September 20, 2009 1:01 AM
To: Roni Even
Cc: 'Steve Crocker'; 'IETF Discussion'; 'IAOC IAOC'
Subject: Re: Request for community guidance on issue concerning a
future meeting of the IETF

Post by Roni Even
I support this view.
Furthermore I believe that even though people are allowed to have

their

Post by Roni Even
opinions about a specific country politics or values the IETF is not

the

Post by Roni Even
place to bring them forward regardless of the meeting location. The

IETF is

Post by Roni Even
a technical body and not the UN.

Unfortunately (or maybe not) national regulatory policies
do have some influence on what the IETF does and one hopes
that what the IETF does has some influence on national
regulatory policies. I think the likelihood of there being
a problem seems low, but still, it's hard not to wonder about
something like the Raven process and how that particularly
boisterous meeting (Washington?) would have fared in China.
Melinda

[Richard Golodner]

Post by Roni Even
The IETF is
a technical body and not the UN.

What more needs to be said? Please stay on track for the sake of the
IETF itself.
Richard Golodner

[Adrian Farrel]

Post by Roni Even
Furthermore I believe that even though people are allowed to have their
opinions about a specific country politics or values the IETF is not the
place to bring them forward regardless of the meeting location. The IETF is
a technical body and not the UN.

Yes. It really will not be a productive use of email space to comment on
each other's countries as if we had studied the culture and socio-political
situation in any more depth than the mass media in our own countries shows
us.

Surely individuals are free to make their own choices about attending or
staying away. If sufficient individuals stated their intention to stay away
(for whatever reason), that would give the IAOC pause for thought because
the success of the meeting is dependent on attendance. But otherwise we
should just make up our own minds and act on our own principles.

Adrian

[Marshall Eubanks]

Speaking just for myself, I agree with Steve. I think it that is
better to engage than to retreat. Nothing is certain, but I also think
that it is highly likely that we would have a good meeting.

Regards
Marshall

Post by Steve Crocker
The choice is between engaging and not engaging. Engaging is
better. Not engaging isn't constructive. The Internet and the IETF
are all about engaging, expanding, communicating and being open.
Much of this dialog has been worried about possible extreme
situations. Let's focus on the center. More than a billion people
live in China and their use of the Internet is expanding rapidly.
They are building much of the technology and contributing
technically. It's to everyone's advantage to have comfortable,
constructive interaction. Our first slogan was "Networks Bring
People Together."
If we don't go to China, we have charted a downhill course and the
rest of the world will come together without us. The IETF will lose
relevance.
If we do go to China and something bad happens, the consequences
will be much worse for China than for the IETF. The work of the
IETF will suffer a bit, but we'll recover quickly enough. However,
China's quest for engagement with the rest of the world will be hurt
more seriously.
Bottom line: We should go to China with a positive attitude. We're
robust enough to deal with any consequences. If we don't go to
China, however, we have weakened ourselves.
Steve
_______________________________________________
IAOC mailing list
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/iaoc

[Eran Hammer-Lahav]

If by engage you mean continue to discuss the terms of having a meeting in China, then I agree. If the government there really wants to host an IETF meeting, they should be able to help changes these terms to focus on individuals and not the entire event or organization.

But to suggest that without holding a meeting in China the IETF does not engage its Chinese members, that is simply false.

Personally, I doubt I will be attending a meeting in China. Not because of any political reasons, but simply because the cost of such a meeting compared to the value it brings my employer (that is attending a meeting, not general IETF participation).

My concerns are having access to the meeting via IRC and voice streams and not having to worry about where the meeting it taking place. I think bad behavior is more likely from people participating from outside China than at the event. And if all it takes to shut down such channels is someone saying something about Tibet on the IRC channel, then that's simply not acceptable.

EHL

Post by Ross Callon
-----Original Message-----
Marshall Eubanks
Sent: Saturday, September 19, 2009 3:17 PM
To: Steve Crocker
Cc: IAOC IAOC; IETF Discussion
Subject: Re: [IAOC] Request for community guidance on issue concerning
a future meeting of the IETF
Speaking just for myself, I agree with Steve. I think it that is
better to engage than to retreat. Nothing is certain, but I also think
that it is highly likely that we would have a good meeting.
Regards
Marshall

Post by Steve Crocker
The choice is between engaging and not engaging. Engaging is
better. Not engaging isn't constructive. The Internet and the IETF
are all about engaging, expanding, communicating and being open.
Much of this dialog has been worried about possible extreme
situations. Let's focus on the center. More than a billion people
live in China and their use of the Internet is expanding rapidly.
They are building much of the technology and contributing
technically. It's to everyone's advantage to have comfortable,
constructive interaction. Our first slogan was "Networks Bring
People Together."
If we don't go to China, we have charted a downhill course and the
rest of the world will come together without us. The IETF will lose
relevance.
If we do go to China and something bad happens, the consequences
will be much worse for China than for the IETF. The work of the
IETF will suffer a bit, but we'll recover quickly enough. However,
China's quest for engagement with the rest of the world will be hurt
more seriously.
Bottom line: We should go to China with a positive attitude. We're
robust enough to deal with any consequences. If we don't go to
China, however, we have weakened ourselves.
Steve
_______________________________________________
IAOC mailing list
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/iaoc

_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf

[Eric Rescorla]

At Sat, 19 Sep 2009 15:55:55 -0400,

Post by Steve Crocker
The choice is between engaging and not engaging. Engaging is better.
Not engaging isn't constructive. The Internet and the IETF are all
about engaging, expanding, communicating and being open. Much of this
dialog has been worried about possible extreme situations. Let's
focus on the center. More than a billion people live in China and
their use of the Internet is expanding rapidly. They are building
much of the technology and contributing technically. It's to
everyone's advantage to have comfortable, constructive interaction.
Our first slogan was "Networks Bring People Together."
If we don't go to China, we have charted a downhill course and the
rest of the world will come together without us. The IETF will lose
relevance.
If we do go to China and something bad happens, the consequences will
be much worse for China than for the IETF. The work of the IETF will
suffer a bit, but we'll recover quickly enough. However, China's
quest for engagement with the rest of the world will be hurt more
seriously.
Bottom line: We should go to China with a positive attitude. We're
robust enough to deal with any consequences. If we don't go to China,
however, we have weakened ourselves.

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with this analysis, but I'm not sure
it's a complete analysis.

We've been offered a deal under certain terms that at least some of
the community aren't comfortable with. Now, it might well be true that
it's better to take those terms than not if those were the only two
options, but that's not the case here. In particular, we can refuse to
take those terms now and instead attempt to negotiate for terms that
we find more acceptable. It seems to me that even under the analysis
you've laid out that's a superior course of action.

-Ekr

[Simon Perreault]

Post by Steve Crocker
The choice is between engaging and not engaging. Engaging is better.
Not engaging isn't constructive.

Thank you. I wanted to say this, but could not find the right words.

I fully agree with Steve Crocker.

In the long run, exposure to and participation in the IETF might even prove
beneficial to the Chinese.

Thanks,
Simon

[Michael StJohns]

Hi Steve -

To paraphrase, you believe we should accept constraints upon the topics that can be raised at the meeting (stick to the center) as the cost of doing business in China. And the reason for that is to maintain the relevance of the IETF?

I'm finding this argument not well constructed.

I agree that engagement is good, but the IETF is about individuals and we engage better at a personal level than IETF to country. That can be accomplished at any venue - and possibly better at a venue without excessive constraints on discussion.

I'd be happy to have a WG meeting in the PRC - on topics other than those common to the security area, but I remain concerned about prior restraint for the IETF as a whole as a price of holding a meeting there.

Post by Steve Crocker
The choice is between engaging and not engaging. Engaging is better.
Not engaging isn't constructive. The Internet and the IETF are all
about engaging, expanding, communicating and being open. Much of this
dialog has been worried about possible extreme situations. Let's
focus on the center. More than a billion people live in China and
their use of the Internet is expanding rapidly. They are building
much of the technology and contributing technically. It's to
everyone's advantage to have comfortable, constructive interaction.
Our first slogan was "Networks Bring People Together."
If we don't go to China, we have charted a downhill course and the
rest of the world will come together without us. The IETF will lose
relevance.

This construction is black and white and somewhat irrelevant. The IETF not meeting at this time in China is unlikely to make the rest of the world "come together without us". Nor will us going to the meeting be the sole reason for the world coming together with us.

Post by Steve Crocker
If we do go to China and something bad happens, the consequences will
be much worse for China than for the IETF. The work of the IETF will
suffer a bit, but we'll recover quickly enough. However, China's
quest for engagement with the rest of the world will be hurt more
seriously.

There's bad and there's BAD. I'm mostly concerned not about the whole IETF being kicked out of the hotel/PRC, but in individuals being sequestered or removed for speech that in any other IETF venue would be relevant and on-topic for the technical discussion. That (fear of) prior restraint has a strong possibility of adversely affecting the IETF by limiting discussion and constraining the free flow of ideas. And that - free flow of ideas- not "engagement" - is the strength of the IETF.

Post by Steve Crocker
Bottom line: We should go to China with a positive attitude. We're
robust enough to deal with any consequences. If we don't go to China,
however, we have weakened ourselves.

Bottom line - we should be the IETF and find venues that will accept us for ourselves.

_______________________


Hmm.. I was going to stop there, but let's ask the meta question: What is the maximum set of constraints you think we should accept on the IETF as the price of holding a meeting? For example, would it be acceptable to go somewhere where a class of IETF participant were treated as 2nd class citizens and possibly segregated? Would it be acceptable to go somewhere where ALL presentations had to be vetted and approved by the local government? Etc?

Its all about slippery slopes - if we accept constraints other than those we impose upon ourselves, we weaken ourselves.

Mike

Post by Steve Crocker
Steve
_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf

[Steve Crocker]

I don't think the IETF, either as a whole, in any of its working
groups, or as individuals, need feel inhibited about having the same
sorts of discussions in Beijing that it would have anywhere else.

Run the experiment and get some data. Survey attendees afterwards and
find out what everyone felt. (My prediction: There will be more
discussion about the usual problems of not enough cookies, location of
restaurants, connectivity, etc.)

Steve

Post by Michael StJohns
Hi Steve -
To paraphrase, you believe we should accept constraints upon the
topics that can be raised at the meeting (stick to the center) as
the cost of doing business in China. And the reason for that is to
maintain the relevance of the IETF?
I'm finding this argument not well constructed.
I agree that engagement is good, but the IETF is about individuals
and we engage better at a personal level than IETF to country.
That can be accomplished at any venue - and possibly better at a
venue without excessive constraints on discussion.
I'd be happy to have a WG meeting in the PRC - on topics other than
those common to the security area, but I remain concerned about
prior restraint for the IETF as a whole as a price of holding a
meeting there.

Post by Steve Crocker
The choice is between engaging and not engaging. Engaging is better.
Not engaging isn't constructive. The Internet and the IETF are all
about engaging, expanding, communicating and being open. Much of this
dialog has been worried about possible extreme situations. Let's
focus on the center. More than a billion people live in China and
their use of the Internet is expanding rapidly. They are building
much of the technology and contributing technically. It's to
everyone's advantage to have comfortable, constructive interaction.
Our first slogan was "Networks Bring People Together."
If we don't go to China, we have charted a downhill course and the
rest of the world will come together without us. The IETF will lose
relevance.

This construction is black and white and somewhat irrelevant. The
IETF not meeting at this time in China is unlikely to make the rest
of the world "come together without us". Nor will us going to the
meeting be the sole reason for the world coming together with us.

Post by Steve Crocker
If we do go to China and something bad happens, the consequences will
be much worse for China than for the IETF. The work of the IETF will
suffer a bit, but we'll recover quickly enough. However, China's
quest for engagement with the rest of the world will be hurt more
seriously.

There's bad and there's BAD. I'm mostly concerned not about the
whole IETF being kicked out of the hotel/PRC, but in individuals
being sequestered or removed for speech that in any other IETF venue
would be relevant and on-topic for the technical discussion. That
(fear of) prior restraint has a strong possibility of adversely
affecting the IETF by limiting discussion and constraining the free
flow of ideas. And that - free flow of ideas- not "engagement" - is
the strength of the IETF.

Post by Steve Crocker
Bottom line: We should go to China with a positive attitude. We're
robust enough to deal with any consequences. If we don't go to China,
however, we have weakened ourselves.

Bottom line - we should be the IETF and find venues that will accept
us for ourselves.
_______________________
What is the maximum set of constraints you think we should accept on
the IETF as the price of holding a meeting? For example, would it
be acceptable to go somewhere where a class of IETF participant were
treated as 2nd class citizens and possibly segregated? Would it be
acceptable to go somewhere where ALL presentations had to be vetted
and approved by the local government? Etc?
Its all about slippery slopes - if we accept constraints other than
those we impose upon ourselves, we weaken ourselves.
Mike

Post by Steve Crocker
Steve
_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf

[Michael StJohns]

Steve -

Some 15 years ago, the IETF had a plenary session on the NSA's CLIPPER chip initiative. That was a hot topic of the time and was a great example of open discussion.

That discussion could not be had at an IETF in the PRC.

We've had various discussions on P2P systems and their ability to evade government restrictions.

That discussion could not be had at an IETF in the PRC.

We've had discussions on E164 and whether or not the owner of E164.ARPA could allocate a country code for Taiwan.

That discussion could not be had at an IETF in the PRC.

I'm not sure what the hot topics will be at the time of a PRC meeting and whether or not they might be offensive to the PRC government - there may be none or they may be non-offensive.

The question I'd like us to consider: Is it in the best interests of the IETF to pre-censor ourselves as the price of holding a meeting in a specific venue?

I don't know the answer to that question.


If the answer is yes - let's do it... but it feels like we're losing something that's critical to the IETF.

Post by Steve Crocker
I don't think the IETF, either as a whole, in any of its working
groups, or as individuals, need feel inhibited about having the same
sorts of discussions in Beijing that it would have anywhere else.
Run the experiment and get some data. Survey attendees afterwards and
find out what everyone felt. (My prediction: There will be more
discussion about the usual problems of not enough cookies, location of
restaurants, connectivity, etc.)
Steve

Post by Michael StJohns
Hi Steve -
To paraphrase, you believe we should accept constraints upon the
topics that can be raised at the meeting (stick to the center) as
the cost of doing business in China. And the reason for that is to
maintain the relevance of the IETF?
I'm finding this argument not well constructed.
I agree that engagement is good, but the IETF is about individuals
and we engage better at a personal level than IETF to country.
That can be accomplished at any venue - and possibly better at a
venue without excessive constraints on discussion.
I'd be happy to have a WG meeting in the PRC - on topics other than
those common to the security area, but I remain concerned about
prior restraint for the IETF as a whole as a price of holding a
meeting there.

Post by Steve Crocker
The choice is between engaging and not engaging. Engaging is better.
Not engaging isn't constructive. The Internet and the IETF are all
about engaging, expanding, communicating and being open. Much of this
dialog has been worried about possible extreme situations. Let's
focus on the center. More than a billion people live in China and
their use of the Internet is expanding rapidly. They are building
much of the technology and contributing technically. It's to
everyone's advantage to have comfortable, constructive interaction.
Our first slogan was "Networks Bring People Together."
If we don't go to China, we have charted a downhill course and the
rest of the world will come together without us. The IETF will lose
relevance.

This construction is black and white and somewhat irrelevant. The
IETF not meeting at this time in China is unlikely to make the rest
of the world "come together without us". Nor will us going to the
meeting be the sole reason for the world coming together with us.

Post by Steve Crocker
If we do go to China and something bad happens, the consequences will
be much worse for China than for the IETF. The work of the IETF will
suffer a bit, but we'll recover quickly enough. However, China's
quest for engagement with the rest of the world will be hurt more
seriously.

There's bad and there's BAD. I'm mostly concerned not about the
whole IETF being kicked out of the hotel/PRC, but in individuals
being sequestered or removed for speech that in any other IETF venue
would be relevant and on-topic for the technical discussion. That
(fear of) prior restraint has a strong possibility of adversely
affecting the IETF by limiting discussion and constraining the free
flow of ideas. And that - free flow of ideas- not "engagement" - is
the strength of the IETF.

Post by Steve Crocker
Bottom line: We should go to China with a positive attitude. We're
robust enough to deal with any consequences. If we don't go to China,
however, we have weakened ourselves.

Bottom line - we should be the IETF and find venues that will accept
us for ourselves.
_______________________
What is the maximum set of constraints you think we should accept on
the IETF as the price of holding a meeting? For example, would it
be acceptable to go somewhere where a class of IETF participant were
treated as 2nd class citizens and possibly segregated? Would it be
acceptable to go somewhere where ALL presentations had to be vetted
and approved by the local government? Etc?
Its all about slippery slopes - if we accept constraints other than
those we impose upon ourselves, we weaken ourselves.
Mike

Post by Steve Crocker
Steve
_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf

[Olaf Kolkman]

Post by Michael StJohns
Some 15 years ago, the IETF had a plenary session on the NSA's
CLIPPER chip initiative. That was a hot topic of the time and was a
great example of open discussion.
That discussion could not be had at an IETF in the PRC.
We've had various discussions on P2P systems and their ability to
evade government restrictions.
That discussion could not be had at an IETF in the PRC.
We've had discussions on E164 and whether or not the owner of
E164.ARPA could allocate a country code for Taiwan.
That discussion could not be had at an IETF in the PRC.

Mike,

Do you have evidence that those items could not be discussed or do you
suspect that those items could not have been discussed?


--Olaf





________________________________________________________

Olaf M. Kolkman NLnet Labs
Science Park 140,
http://www.nlnetlabs.nl/ 1098 XG Amsterdam

[Dave CROCKER]

Post by Olaf Kolkman
Do you have evidence that those items could not be discussed or do you
suspect that those items could not have been discussed?

When discussed as other than a technical matter, "privacy" is typically viewed
as a human rights topic.

Discussion of human rights issues is prohibited by the contract.


But we all really need to be more careful about discussing this contracted
constraint. To add to some of the latest comments posted:

This is not about "engaging" China and Chinese people in the IETF. They are, and
have been for many years, fully engaged in the IETF, with some IETF technical
work of particular importance to China. Again: Chinese participants are
already fully engaged in the IETF and have been for a long time.

If our ability to hold a meeting in a particular venue is a test of the hosting
country's engagement in IETF work, then this represents yet one more reason we
should routinize our meetings, holding them in a fixed set of places. We should
seek to avoid having this been an opportunity for the IETF to give offense or
suffer a bad meeting, or for a country to be offended. Having this sort of
political concern be a factor in what really ought to be mundane meeting
logistics administration strikes me a strategically distracting. (And, like
others, I think it both arrogant and silly to think that the IETF can influence
anyone else's culture; we have enough problems with our own...)

Rather, I will again suggest that the question needs to be about the match
between the /particular/ details of IETF operational culture, versus
/particular/ rules at a venue. Not in terms of principles but in terms of behavior.

I have enjoyed the meetings I have attended in China and was impressed with both
the expertise of local participants and the hosting details. But Asian
organizations, like APNIC, industry trade associations like 3gPP, and frankly
every other group I've been around, have meeting styles that are nothing like
the range displayed in the IETF.

Imagine that the rule in question were that all attendees had to wear either a
coat and tie, or a skirt, and that violation of that rule would cause
individuals to be excluded, with broad enough violation terminating the meeting.
Imagine further that various folk assured us that individual violations of
that rule wouldn't cause a problem. Would we agree to such a constraint? I
doubt it. Yet it's really a very mild effort to ensure a reasonable business
tone for a meeting.

But it doesn't match the realities of an IETF meeting.

I find it hard to believe that the discussion about net neutrality that we had
at the last plenary would be acceptable according to the rules of the contract
now in question. And I find it hard to imagine that having that plenary in
Beijing would not have elicited far stronger and more pointed and specifically
problematic comments from the floor. Again: We are an indelicate group. Let's
not pretend otherwise and let's not pretend that decades of consistent behavior
will magically change for a meeting in a particular venue.

And we should be careful at arm-waving dismissals of the concerns. The
constraints in the contract are real and meaningful and, as noted, they are
unlike anything the IETF has had to agree to in more than 20 years of meetings.
It does not matter whether any of us individually approves or disapproves of
the rules. Equally, it does not matter whether other groups have agreed to the
rules and had successful meetings.

What should matter is whether agreeing to the rules makes sense, given the
realities of IETF meeting behavior.

As for the survey, it only queries whether folks will attend, given the
constraint. Or rather, it only queries whether folks /say/ they will attend.
Whether they actually do attend will not be known. Survey questions like this
measure attitude, not behavior.

Better, there are various other, important questions it doesn't ask. So let's
be very careful about what we claim is learned from the survey.

Also, let's be careful about our expectations, should the meeting be held in
Beijing, with the constraints being agreed to. It is quite likely that problems
that ensue will not be as visible or as massive as some folk have put forward as
the strawman alternative. In other words, when thinking about likely outcomes,
don't assume it will be all black or all white. Systemic hassles are usually
pursued more subtly than that.

d/

[Michael StJohns]

Sorry - over generalizing here - but I think fairly. Change "PRC" to "this hotel under the terms of the contract as presented in the initial contract" and add "without violating the terms of the contract to the end of the statement" and consider what I said again. A plain text reading of those terms would - I believe - ban these types of discussions.

But I'll mostly stand by my original comments given that the contract terms as presented to us, were presented to the hotel by the government and are there to enforce a government requirement.


If the terms were simply those imposed by this site, and we could get other terms at other locations in the country - let's do that. But those terms are imposed on the host by the hotel at the behest of the government and are apparently not negotiable regardless of which site in the country we choose.

Post by Olaf Kolkman

Post by Michael StJohns
Some 15 years ago, the IETF had a plenary session on the NSA's
CLIPPER chip initiative. That was a hot topic of the time and was a
great example of open discussion.
That discussion could not be had at an IETF in the PRC.
We've had various discussions on P2P systems and their ability to
evade government restrictions.
That discussion could not be had at an IETF in the PRC.
We've had discussions on E164 and whether or not the owner of
E164.ARPA could allocate a country code for Taiwan.
That discussion could not be had at an IETF in the PRC.

Mike,
Do you have evidence that those items could not be discussed or do you
suspect that those items could not have been discussed?
--Olaf
________________________________________________________
Olaf M. Kolkman NLnet Labs
Science Park 140,
http://www.nlnetlabs.nl/ 1098 XG Amsterdam

[Health]

all in all,

Since IETF only focus on and discuss technical issues, has the issue of politics or human right been discussed in the past IETF meeting?

if the answer is "NO", there should have none probles of hold a meeting in China.


Yao

----- Original Message -----
From: "Dave CROCKER" <***@dcrocker.net>
To: "IETF Discussion" <***@ietf.org>
Cc: "IAOC IAOC" <***@ietf.org>
Sent: Monday, September 21, 2009 3:21 AM
Subject: Re: Request for community guidance on issue concerninga future meeting of the IETF

Post by Dave CROCKER

Post by Olaf Kolkman
Do you have evidence that those items could not be discussed or do you
suspect that those items could not have been discussed?

When discussed as other than a technical matter, "privacy" is typically viewed
as a human rights topic.
Discussion of human rights issues is prohibited by the contract.
But we all really need to be more careful about discussing this contracted
This is not about "engaging" China and Chinese people in the IETF. They are, and
have been for many years, fully engaged in the IETF, with some IETF technical
work of particular importance to China. Again: Chinese participants are
already fully engaged in the IETF and have been for a long time.
If our ability to hold a meeting in a particular venue is a test of the hosting
country's engagement in IETF work, then this represents yet one more reason we
should routinize our meetings, holding them in a fixed set of places. We should
seek to avoid having this been an opportunity for the IETF to give offense or
suffer a bad meeting, or for a country to be offended. Having this sort of
political concern be a factor in what really ought to be mundane meeting
logistics administration strikes me a strategically distracting. (And, like
others, I think it both arrogant and silly to think that the IETF can influence
anyone else's culture; we have enough problems with our own...)
Rather, I will again suggest that the question needs to be about the match
between the /particular/ details of IETF operational culture, versus
/particular/ rules at a venue. Not in terms of principles but in terms of behavior.
I have enjoyed the meetings I have attended in China and was impressed with both
the expertise of local participants and the hosting details. But Asian
organizations, like APNIC, industry trade associations like 3gPP, and frankly
every other group I've been around, have meeting styles that are nothing like
the range displayed in the IETF.
Imagine that the rule in question were that all attendees had to wear either a
coat and tie, or a skirt, and that violation of that rule would cause
individuals to be excluded, with broad enough violation terminating the meeting.
Imagine further that various folk assured us that individual violations of
that rule wouldn't cause a problem. Would we agree to such a constraint? I
doubt it. Yet it's really a very mild effort to ensure a reasonable business
tone for a meeting.
But it doesn't match the realities of an IETF meeting.
I find it hard to believe that the discussion about net neutrality that we had
at the last plenary would be acceptable according to the rules of the contract
now in question. And I find it hard to imagine that having that plenary in
Beijing would not have elicited far stronger and more pointed and specifically
problematic comments from the floor. Again: We are an indelicate group. Let's
not pretend otherwise and let's not pretend that decades of consistent behavior
will magically change for a meeting in a particular venue.
And we should be careful at arm-waving dismissals of the concerns. The
constraints in the contract are real and meaningful and, as noted, they are
unlike anything the IETF has had to agree to in more than 20 years of meetings.
It does not matter whether any of us individually approves or disapproves of
the rules. Equally, it does not matter whether other groups have agreed to the
rules and had successful meetings.
What should matter is whether agreeing to the rules makes sense, given the
realities of IETF meeting behavior.
As for the survey, it only queries whether folks will attend, given the
constraint. Or rather, it only queries whether folks /say/ they will attend.
Whether they actually do attend will not be known. Survey questions like this
measure attitude, not behavior.
Better, there are various other, important questions it doesn't ask. So let's
be very careful about what we claim is learned from the survey.
Also, let's be careful about our expectations, should the meeting be held in
Beijing, with the constraints being agreed to. It is quite likely that problems
that ensue will not be as visible or as massive as some folk have put forward as
the strawman alternative. In other words, when thinking about likely outcomes,
don't assume it will be all black or all white. Systemic hassles are usually
pursued more subtly than that.
d/
--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net
_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf

[Ole Jacobsen]

Mike,

"That discussion could not be had at an IETF in the PRC."

That's YOUR interpretation. Obviously the IAOC, or at least speaking
for myself only, do not believe this is true. If we have to change
the "normal content" of an IETF meeting in order to meet in a given
location, then I fully agree that we should not meet in such a place.

As I've said many times already, there is a state law in place and the
hotel has reminded us of this by inserting the clause (which the HOST
not the IETF/IAOC or ISOC) will be signing. We can certainly agree
that the language is broad and that it seems to give a lot of power to
the hotel, but that's likely because this is generic language that is
inserted into the contract to protect the business interests of the
hotel (I'm not defending it, just an observation).

The language in question is not intended to curb our speech, or make
us worry about what we can say in the course of doing normal IETF
business. I am sure it wasn't even designed with a group like the IETF
in mind. I know that you can choose to read it that way and I
understand your right to object to the language on principle, but I
have to tell you in all honesty that unless someone decides to score a
political point by doing something really "stupid" there is nothing to
worry about. I further predict that IF such a stupid act were to take
place, there would be plenty of warning, negotiation and so on rather
than swift action.

Please try to keep in mind that (various organizations in) China has
been wanting to host an IETF meeting since 1997. One organization has
finally been given government approval to do so. This is a Big Deal
for them. Do you really think the Chinese government is looking for
an excuse to make an example of a bunch of geeks meeting in a hotel
and embarrass the local host in the process? I don't think so.

Ole

Ole J. Jacobsen
Editor and Publisher, The Internet Protocol Journal
Cisco Systems
Tel: [phone] Mobile: [phone]
E-mail: ***@cisco.com URL: http://www.cisco.com/ipj

[Dean Willis]

Post by Ole Jacobsen
Please try to keep in mind that (various organizations in) China has
been wanting to host an IETF meeting since 1997. One organization has
finally been given government approval to do so. This is a Big Deal
for them. Do you really think the Chinese government is looking for
an excuse to make an example of a bunch of geeks meeting in a hotel
and embarrass the local host in the process? I don't think so.

No, the PRC government at the top level is not trying to make an
example of the IETF. They're probably trying very hard to get the IETF
to engage with them.

But there a re a lot of people in the world who will be looking for
ways to make the PRC government over-react against the IETF, resulting
in an international incident that is embarrassing or otherwise
damaging to the PRC. IETF is a much more visible target than other
SDOs that might meet in China (including 3GPP2 and OMA that I have had
experience with). Further, it might be easier to trigger a
governmental reaction against IETF than those other bodies due to the
politically sensitive nature of some of our work. After all, we're the
people who made things happen so that Taiwan would have its own
country code in the DNS.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Country_code_top-level_domain

And there are "politcal immune cells" that operate at a level below
that of the top-level government people that made the decision to
allow the IETF. It's hard to say what sort of actions might cause them
to activate against us or our people.

Another way to ask this question: Are our members who are Falun Gong
practitioners going to be persecuted for their beliefs while attending
IETF? Are our members who are active in Tibetan or Taiwanese
independence movements going to be quietly picked up off the street
outside our venue? Are our members who run large-scale porn web sites
going to be hassled? Will the IETF be held financially liable for
their legal defense? If so, would it not behoove said movements to
orchestrate a few arrests in order to gain international attention and
force the IETF to financial and politically engage on behalf of the
movements?

This seems like a golden opportunity for publicity, and I'd bet every
dissident with half a clue is currently thinking very hard about how
to maximize the opportunity. If they can make it happen by leaking
something into the ear of a suspected snitch, they will. If they can
make it happen by setting up a WG conversation around a risky topic,
they will. If they can make it happen by having someone pretending to
be a senior party member threaten the hotel manager, causing the hotel
manager to close a working group meeting, they will. If they can make
it happen by triggering the political immune system (which they
understand far better than we do) in any way, they will.

Do we have a large political bullseye painted on our foreheads? Yes,
we do. Should we let that stop us from meeting in China? That's the
open question. There are risks, we need to understand those risks, and
then we can decide whether or not we want to go down that path.

We should perhaps note that at least one SIP interoperability event
(SIPit 21) was held in China. The hospitality was reported as
excellent, no real political problems were reported, and the event
was generally considered quite successful. I seem to recall that they
did have an issue with network connectivity. However, this is a very
small group, and much less attractive as a political target than a
meeting of the full IETF would be.


--
Dean Willis

[Marshall Eubanks]

Dear Michael;

What follows is purely my opinion.

Post by Michael StJohns
Steve -
Some 15 years ago, the IETF had a plenary session on the NSA's
CLIPPER chip initiative. That was a hot topic of the time and was a
great example of open discussion.
That discussion could not be had at an IETF in the PRC.

I do not agree with this and the following assertions about what
cannot be discussed in our technical meetings.
These were all technical discussions and, while they may have
political or other implications, is there
any Internet technology for which that is not the case ? The basic
engineering design of the Internet has fairly
profound political implications.

I have not censored my technical discussions in the past for political
reasons and do not intend to do
so in the future. I would be opposed to any meeting location that
required such technical censorship. Politeness and respect towards the
Host, yes, of course. Censorship of technical discussions, pre or
otherwise, no.

I do not feel that we will be technically censored in any Chinese IETF
meeting and would certainly not have supported going forward with
this, even to this extent, if I did feel that way.

I recognize that this is ultimately a judgement call, and others may
differ, but that is my opinion.

Regards
Marshall

Post by Michael StJohns
We've had various discussions on P2P systems and their ability to
evade government restrictions.
That discussion could not be had at an IETF in the PRC.
We've had discussions on E164 and whether or not the owner of
E164.ARPA could allocate a country code for Taiwan.
That discussion could not be had at an IETF in the PRC.
I'm not sure what the hot topics will be at the time of a PRC
meeting and whether or not they might be offensive to the PRC
government - there may be none or they may be non-offensive.
The question I'd like us to consider: Is it in the best interests
of the IETF to pre-censor ourselves as the price of holding a
meeting in a specific venue?
I don't know the answer to that question.
If the answer is yes - let's do it... but it feels like we're losing
something that's critical to the IETF.

Post by Steve Crocker
I don't think the IETF, either as a whole, in any of its working
groups, or as individuals, need feel inhibited about having the same
sorts of discussions in Beijing that it would have anywhere else.
Run the experiment and get some data. Survey attendees afterwards and
find out what everyone felt. (My prediction: There will be more
discussion about the usual problems of not enough cookies, location of
restaurants, connectivity, etc.)
Steve

Post by Michael StJohns
Hi Steve -
To paraphrase, you believe we should accept constraints upon the
topics that can be raised at the meeting (stick to the center) as
the cost of doing business in China. And the reason for that is to
maintain the relevance of the IETF?
I'm finding this argument not well constructed.
I agree that engagement is good, but the IETF is about individuals
and we engage better at a personal level than IETF to country.
That can be accomplished at any venue - and possibly better at a
venue without excessive constraints on discussion.
I'd be happy to have a WG meeting in the PRC - on topics other than
those common to the security area, but I remain concerned about
prior restraint for the IETF as a whole as a price of holding a
meeting there.

Post by Steve Crocker
The choice is between engaging and not engaging. Engaging is better.
Not engaging isn't constructive. The Internet and the IETF are all
about engaging, expanding, communicating and being open. Much of this
dialog has been worried about possible extreme situations. Let's
focus on the center. More than a billion people live in China and
their use of the Internet is expanding rapidly. They are building
much of the technology and contributing technically. It's to
everyone's advantage to have comfortable, constructive interaction.
Our first slogan was "Networks Bring People Together."
If we don't go to China, we have charted a downhill course and the
rest of the world will come together without us. The IETF will lose
relevance.

This construction is black and white and somewhat irrelevant. The
IETF not meeting at this time in China is unlikely to make the rest
of the world "come together without us". Nor will us going to the
meeting be the sole reason for the world coming together with us.

Post by Steve Crocker
If we do go to China and something bad happens, the consequences will
be much worse for China than for the IETF. The work of the IETF will
suffer a bit, but we'll recover quickly enough. However, China's
quest for engagement with the rest of the world will be hurt more
seriously.

There's bad and there's BAD. I'm mostly concerned not about the
whole IETF being kicked out of the hotel/PRC, but in individuals
being sequestered or removed for speech that in any other IETF venue
would be relevant and on-topic for the technical discussion. That
(fear of) prior restraint has a strong possibility of adversely
affecting the IETF by limiting discussion and constraining the free
flow of ideas. And that - free flow of ideas- not "engagement" - is
the strength of the IETF.

Post by Steve Crocker
Bottom line: We should go to China with a positive attitude. We're
robust enough to deal with any consequences. If we don't go to China,
however, we have weakened ourselves.

Bottom line - we should be the IETF and find venues that will accept
us for ourselves.
_______________________
What is the maximum set of constraints you think we should accept on
the IETF as the price of holding a meeting? For example, would it
be acceptable to go somewhere where a class of IETF participant were
treated as 2nd class citizens and possibly segregated? Would it be
acceptable to go somewhere where ALL presentations had to be vetted
and approved by the local government? Etc?
Its all about slippery slopes - if we accept constraints other than
those we impose upon ourselves, we weaken ourselves.
Mike

Post by Steve Crocker
Steve
_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf

_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf

[Tim Bray]

Politeness and respect towards the Host, yes, of
course. Censorship of technical discussions, pre or otherwise, no.

Perhaps you'd like to rephrase that. It is an incontrovertible fact
that there are many people who feel the PRC government is corrupt and
authoritarian, sends its armed forces to shoot down peaceful
protesters, brutally oppresses national minorities, invades some
neighbors and threatens to invade others, kidnaps and locks up people
for expressing their opinions; is essentially barbarous and thus has
forfeited any right to respect from civilized people. To be fair, you
can find people who have a gripe with any government in the world,
although China's is unusually controversial. In any case, respect for
any particular governing body really can't be imposed as a
precondition of attending any meeting anywhere.

-Tim

[Marshall Eubanks]

On Sun, Sep 20, 2009 at 10:55 AM, Marshall Eubanks

Politeness and respect towards the Host, yes, of
course. Censorship of technical discussions, pre or otherwise, no.

Perhaps you'd like to rephrase that. It is an incontrovertible fact
that there are many people who feel the PRC government is corrupt and
authoritarian, sends its armed forces to shoot down peaceful
protesters, brutally oppresses national minorities, invades some
neighbors and threatens to invade others, kidnaps and locks up people
for expressing their opinions; is essentially barbarous and thus has
forfeited any right to respect from civilized people. To be fair, you
can find people who have a gripe with any government in the world,
although China's is unusually controversial. In any case, respect for
any particular governing body really can't be imposed as a
precondition of attending any meeting anywhere.

I was speaking purely for myself, and about our hosts. I believe that,
if I accept someone's hospitality,
that implies that I should show them politeness and respect while I am
their guest.
That is not the same as saying that I will agree with them, or even
that I will hold my tongue, but
I do try and be polite.

Regards
Marshall

-Tim

[Ole Jacobsen]

Tim,

The government of China is NOT the host of the meeting. Beyond normal
courtesy as you cross the border (unless you want to be detained), I
wouldn't expect you to act in any particular way towards government
officials.

Ole

Ole J. Jacobsen
Editor and Publisher, The Internet Protocol Journal
Cisco Systems
Tel: [phone] Mobile: [phone]

Post by Tim Bray

Politeness and respect towards the Host, yes, of
course. Censorship of technical discussions, pre or otherwise, no.

Perhaps you'd like to rephrase that. It is an incontrovertible fact
that there are many people who feel the PRC government is corrupt
and authoritarian, sends its armed forces to shoot down peaceful
protesters, brutally oppresses national minorities, invades some
neighbors and threatens to invade others, kidnaps and locks up
people for expressing their opinions; is essentially barbarous and
thus has forfeited any right to respect from civilized people. To
be fair, you can find people who have a gripe with any government in
the world, although China's is unusually controversial. In any
case, respect for any particular governing body really can't be
imposed as a precondition of attending any meeting anywhere.
-Tim

[Dave Cridland]

Rather than debate on whether this would have been or wouldn't have
been the case, can I suggest we actually approach the PRC government
and ask them? I'm sure they'd be willing to at least tell us. Their
purpose here is presumably to avoid contraversial topics being
discussed, rather than to catch us out.

I suspect that the idea would be to avoid calling to attention any
political viewpoints specifically relating to China, rather than
discussing the basic problems and issues.

Post by Michael StJohns
Steve -
Some 15 years ago, the IETF had a plenary session on the NSA's
CLIPPER chip initiative. That was a hot topic of the time and was
a great example of open discussion.
That discussion could not be had at an IETF in the PRC.

[...]

Dave.

[Adrian Farrel]

I'd be happy to have a WG meeting in the PRC - on topics other than those
common to the security area, but I remain concerned about prior restraint
for the IETF as a whole as a price of holding a meeting there.

I wonder if we could ask. Is that too simple?

We have plenty of minutes of previous meetings, slidesets, and I-Ds/RFCs. We
even have audio recordings.

There have been loads of Chinese nationals at the meetings who could
comment.

Can we find out in advance whether the material is even close to being an
issue to the Chinese government?

My guess is that it would not be and that clearing the air in this way would
be welcomed.

Thanks,
Adrian

[SM]

Post by Steve Crocker
The choice is between engaging and not engaging. Engaging is better.
Not engaging isn't constructive. The Internet and the IETF are all
about engaging, expanding, communicating and being open. Much of this
dialog has been worried about possible extreme situations. Let's
focus on the center. More than a billion people live in China and
their use of the Internet is expanding rapidly. They are building
much of the technology and contributing technically. It's to
everyone's advantage to have comfortable, constructive interaction.
Our first slogan was "Networks Bring People Together."

As far as I am aware, the IETF engages participants from all
countries, including China. There is on-going work within the IETF
on technologies that will be useful to the people living in
China. Participants from China do contribute to the IETF. I have
not seen participants shun because they are from China or proposals
shun because they are made by a participant from China or any other country.

The IETF does not run the Internet. The IETF is not about
politics. Some countries may not agree with the contents of RFC 1984
or RFC 2804. The "IETF does not take a moral position when there is
no clear consensus around a single position".

The choice is not about engaging or not engaging. The IAOC requested
community guidance about a rule implemented in the Hotel agreement
[1]. I do have some side questions but I prefer not to ask them for
now. I suggest that the IAOC does not base its decision on the
results of a survey as the results are not the "sense of the room".

I'll mention that this is a very delicate issue for unstated
reasons. There were some comments that referred to a region in the
Far East. That is to be expected as there is a diversity of
views. It does not affect the technical choices of the IETF.

There was a message posted by Ole Jacobsen [2]. I read "host" in
terms of premises and not in terms of country. It discloses the
rules. The question is whether people attending a meeting can live
with the "warning". Would you:

(i) tone down your comments as there are people, irrespective of country,
that find the IETF norm unbusiness-like.

(ii) self-censor to avoid any interpretation that may be considered as
infringing the rules.

(iii) explore the limits of what is considered as acceptable.

The choice of a location for a meeting is not about making a
political statement. If we focus on the center only, it is going to
be interpreted as a political statement. Whatever decision is taken,
it won't look good.

There are some IETF participants that have business interests in
China [4]. To them, it is a question of whether attending the IETF
meeting can have a negative impact on their ability to conduct business.

Some people have commented on a negotiation of the conditions. The
outcome was obvious [3]. The world does not work as the IETF
does. There was a (non-IETF related) meeting that got pulled off
because some government (not China) thought that it could be used as
a bargaining chip to influence the decision of the organizer on another matter.

An IETF meeting in Beijing will be successful both in terms of
participation and revenue. You can run IPSec sessions from AS
4808. You may receive bogus DNS answers. A secdir review may be
similar to the message [5] posted by Ekr. The lawyers have not chipped in yet.

Regards,
-sm

1. http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf-announce/current/msg06549.html
2. http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg58524.html
3. http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg58562.html
4. http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg58551.html
5. http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg58547.html

[Ole Jacobsen]

You said:

"There was a message posted by Ole Jacobsen [2]. I read "host" in
terms of premises and not in terms of country. It discloses the
rules. The question is whether people attending a meeting can live
with the "warning". Would you:

(i) tone down your comments as there are people, irrespective of
country, that find the IETF norm unbusiness-like.

(ii) self-censor to avoid any interpretation that may be considered
as infringing the rules.

(iii) explore the limits of what is considered as acceptable."

For clarification, "host" means the organization in China that is
organizing the meeting, finding local sponsors etc, etc. The most
recent host was .SE in Stockholm for IETF 75, the next host is
WIDE for IETF 76 in Hiroshima.

As for (i) and (ii), I would say "we should not have to". Beyond
some cultural sensitivity which it's always good to observe, I
don't think self-censorship is what is needed or requested.

Regarding (iii), I would obviously not recommend such action, and
apart from our usual desire to run experiments, I don't really see
what purpose this would serve.

Ole

Ole J. Jacobsen
Editor and Publisher, The Internet Protocol Journal
Cisco Systems
Tel: [phone] Mobile: [phone]
E-mail: ***@cisco.com URL: http://www.cisco.com/ipj

[Donald Eastlake]

Steve,

No, ignoring extreme situations and unless a promise of no Internet
access censorship for the IETF meeting can be obtained, it is a choice
between endorsing censorship or opposing it. Networks censored on a
political, religious, and cultural basis do not "Bring People
Together".

Your message below is fundamentally inconsistent. You claim that the
IETF is so insignificant that if it doesn't meet in China, the IETF
will become irrelevant. Yet you claim that the IETF is so significant
that if it holds a meeting in China and there are troubles, this will
strike a severe blow against China's aspirations. You can't have it
both way.

Donald

The choice is between engaging and not engaging.  Engaging is better.  Not
engaging isn't constructive.  The Internet and the IETF are all about
engaging, expanding, communicating and being open.  Much of this dialog has
been worried about possible extreme situations.  Let's focus on the center.
 More than a billion people live in China and their use of the Internet is
expanding rapidly.  They are building much of the technology and
contributing technically.  It's to everyone's advantage to have comfortable,
constructive interaction.  Our first slogan was "Networks Bring People
Together."
If we don't go to China, we have charted a downhill course and the rest of
the world will come together without us.  The IETF will lose relevance.
If we do go to China and something bad happens, the consequences will be
much worse for China than for the IETF.  The work of the IETF will suffer a
bit, but we'll recover quickly enough.  However, China's quest for
engagement with the rest of the world will be hurt more seriously.
Bottom line: We should go to China with a positive attitude.  We're robust
enough to deal with any consequences.  If we don't go to China, however, we
have weakened ourselves.
Steve

[Jari Arkko]

Steve,

Post by Steve Crocker
If we don't go to China, we have charted a downhill course and the
rest of the world will come together without us. The IETF will lose
relevance.
If we do go to China and something bad happens, the consequences will
be much worse for China than for the IETF. The work of the IETF will
suffer a bit, but we'll recover quickly enough. However, China's quest
for engagement with the rest of the world will be hurt more seriously.
Bottom line: We should go to China with a positive attitude. We're
robust enough to deal with any consequences. If we don't go to China,
however, we have weakened ourselves.

FWIW I agree with Steve on this.

(I don't think going to China will make or break our relevance, but it
is important to be where networks and equipment are being built, so
other things being equal I'd really like to go.)

Jari

[Clint Chaplin]

   Date:        Fri, 18 Sep 2009 14:29:44 -0700 (PDT)
 | Whether or not we should meet in China based on principles of
 | free speech and such is, I think, something we need to come to
 | at least a rough consensus on.
Actually, no, we don't, and shouldn't.   If we were to start down
that road we'd need to start analysing the policies of countries on
all kinds of sensitive issues, such as religious freedom, the right
to "bear arms", compulsory military service provisions, whether
or not abortion is permitted, adherence to the Kyoto pact on
climate control, ....

Going down the path of banning meetings in various locations due to
ideological issues could rapidly create a dilemma that Berkeley,
California found itself in.

The Berkeley city council banned purchasing fuel for the city vehicles
from various suppliers due to human rights issues, among others. They
at some point found out that they had banned all possible suppliers,
and therefor could not purchase fuel. They had to compromise on their
stance in order to keep the community running.

kre
_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf

[SM]

Post by Marshall Eubanks
The Chinese government has imposed a rule on all conferences held
since 2008 regarding political speech. A fundamental law in China
requires that one not criticize the government. Practically, this

As an IETF participant, I do not take any position on the above.

Post by Marshall Eubanks
has reference to public political statements or protest marches, which
are not the IETF's custom. The government, which is a party to the
issue,

It is in the custom of the IETF to follow local laws in respect to meetings.

Post by Marshall Eubanks
The rule is implemented in the Hotel agreement and reads (note that
"Should the contents of the Group's activities, visual or audio
presentations at the conference,or printed materials used at the
conference (which are within the control of the Client) contain
any defamation against the Government of the People's Republic
of China, or show any disrespect to the Chinese culture, or
violates any laws of the People's Republic of China or feature
any topics regarding human rights or religion without prior
approval from the Government of the People's Republic of China,
the Hotel reserves the right to terminate the event on the spot
and/or ask the person(s) who initiates or participates in any or
all of the above action to leave the hotel premises immediately.

The topics to be discussed at an IETF meeting are set by the IETF. I
am not aware of any practice that requires government approval of the
topics. I note that contributions are subject to the rules of RFC
5378 and RFC 3979 (updated by RFC 4879).

Post by Marshall Eubanks
The Client will support and assist the Hotel with the necessary
actions to handle such situations. Should there be any financial
loss incurred to the Hotel or damage caused to the Hotel's
reputation as a result of any or all of the above acts, the Hotel
will claim compensation from the Client."

That is a liability the IETF can live without.

I believe that it is an extremely bad idea for the IETF to accept the
rule implemented in the hotel agreement.

One of the requirements for an IETF meeting which most attendees care
about is Internet access. The only political restriction on that is
that network must not assign RFC 1918 IP addresses to users and that
there must not be any filtering which purports to "enhance the user
experience" or protect them.

Some IETF participants might be considered as being disrespectful
towards the "leadership". They can turn a meeting into a rowdy
party. If the above is implemented, there are risks, both internal
and external, of a public relations nightmare.

Regards,
-sm

[Dave Cridland]

Post by SM
Some IETF participants might be considered as being disrespectful
towards the "leadership". They can turn a meeting into a rowdy
party. If the above is implemented, there are risks, both internal
and external, of a public relations nightmare.

I wonder what might happen if a remote participant started openly,
and pointedly, talking about human rights, say, or the Tibet
situation, on the XMPP chatroom service.

Now, obviously that participant is not going to be ejected from the
hotel - they could easily be a few thousand miles away - but
presumably some authority somewhere might well act.

Would that action be:

1) The termination of XMPP services (either by the hotel, or by the
GFW).

2) The termination of IP services from the hotel.

3) The termination of the conference.

It strikes me that any of these would harm participation very
heavily, and since it presents little or no risk to the remote
participant - who could therefore remotely participate purely for
disruptive purposes - it opens up a large window of disruption by
essentially external parties.

There's already been comments that an IETF meeting held within the
GFW would be seized upon by the press as ironic. It seems to be that
one sabotaged, or used deliberately for political purposes, would
raise much more press, and worse, this press coverage may actually be
useful to someone wanting to ensure the point is made.

I'd like to know what the PRC might say to that. The only solutions I
immediately see would be to give the PRC administrative rights over
the chatrooms, or else perform such policing ourselves, neither of
which exactly fills me with glee.

FWIW, I wouldn't be going to China, but then, I nearly always
remotely participate, so no change there. I do think we should make
every effort to hold a meeting in China, though, as a hefty chunk of
network expertise is there.

Dave.

[Noel Chiappa]

ONE of the reasons a meeting is being proposed in China is that the
IETF now has a significant number (and growing) of Chinese
participants

A meeting in China makes a certain amount of sense, but there are
inevitably going to be side-issues.

for reasons beyond our control, many of them are having difficulties
obtaining visas to visit the United States when we have IETF
meetings here.

Do they have any difficulty getting into Hong Kong?

Noel

[Alissa Cooper]

Post by Marshall Eubanks
"Should the contents of the Group's activities, visual or audio
presentations at the conference,or printed materials used at the
conference (which are within the control of the Client) contain
any defamation against the Government of the People's Republic
of China, or show any disrespect to the Chinese culture, or
violates any laws of the People's Republic of China or feature
any topics regarding human rights or religion without prior
approval from the Government of the People's Republic of China,
the Hotel reserves the right to terminate the event on the spot
and/or ask the person(s) who initiates or participates in any or
all of the above action to leave the hotel premises immediately.

We will definitely talk about privacy in GEOPRIV. One interpretation
of the above provision would lead me to conclude that at the very
least the GEOPRIV group would have to get some of its presentation
materials approved by the government in advance.

[Noel Chiappa]

Perhaps appropriate people could inform about organisational matters
with others who have more experience, for example the IOC.

Umm, you're not being ironic here, are you?

I'm wondering, because as I assume you are aware, a number of promises were
made to the IOC before the Olympics, in order to get the event, and those
promises were blatantly utterly ignored when the event actually started. So I
don't know if your reference to the IOC was an allusion to all that.

IMO, after the un-kept promises made before the Olympics, any organization
would be terminally naive to accept at face value any representations or
committments made by that government prior to an event. They might keep them,
they might not.

Noel

[Stephen Farrell]

Post by Marshall Eubanks
Greetings;
We have received numerous suggestions and requests for an IETF meeting
in China

I'd have no problem with such a meeting if, and only if, there would
be a normal meeting network with normal Internet access. I reckon the
hotel-pull-the-plug scenario is unlikely enough to ignore, (assuming
there are no other restrictions),

Stephen

PS: will there be a prize for the least appropriate BoF proposal? :-)

[Theodore Tso]

In addition to the distasteful restriction on freedom of speech placed
on attendees (comments, perhaps made in jest, during the plenary or
even in the hallway about the "great firewall of china" might cause
summary ejection of the individuals or the entire groups), there are
two other issues that don't seem to be addressed in the Hotel
agreement.

(1) What assurances if any can be given about IETF members being
granted or denied visas based on blog postings talking about, say,
Google or Cisco being evil due to their aiding and abetting China's
censorship of the Internet made available to their citizens (not to
mention those who may have in the past rendered technical assistance
to those in China desiring to circumvent the "Great Firewall")?

(2) What sort of access will IETF'ers have to the Internet? Will
IETF'ers behind the Great Firewall? What about the ability for
IETF'ers to use encryption (ssh, IPSEC, etc.) to connect to their
corporate Intranet? Note that encrypted tunnels could be used by
IETF'ers to proxy out to get unfiltered internet access --- but will
the Chinese government allow this on the grounds that they won't be
able to monitor network activity for "political activity"? If these
restrictions prevents people from being to connect to their corporate
networks, it would seem to be an absolute showstopper.

- Ted

[Noel Chiappa]

(comments, perhaps made in jest, during the plenary or even in the
hallway about the "great firewall of china" might cause summary
ejection of the individuals or the entire groups)

Look at the bright side: if that should by some chance happen, we'd never,
ever, have to have this discussion again.

Noel

[Michael StJohns]

Given that one of the reasons for moving meetings out of the US was an inability to get timely visas for physical entry I find it kind of ironic that we're contemplating having a meeting in a place where there's a complete inability to get a visa for your mind.....

Yup - hyperbole - but I will note the set of permissible actions at this venue appears to be much more constrained than any other venue we've visited. I will also note that many if not most of the topics considered within the security area could be in violation of PRC law. We've been focusing on the free speech issues and really should be considering whether or not we have more fundamental issues. For those who have said "the government is unlikely to enforce..." various items, I would suggest that its not smart to knowingly violate any laws in any country.

Mike

Post by Marshall Eubanks
Greetings;
We have received numerous suggestions and requests for an IETF meeting
in China and the IAOC has been working on a potential China meeting for
several years. We are now close to making a decision on a potential
upcoming meeting in China. However, the following issue has arisen
and we would appreciate your feedback.
The Chinese government has imposed a rule on all conferences held
since 2008 regarding political speech. A fundamental law in China
requires that one not criticize the government. Practically, this
has reference to public political statements or protest marches, which
are not the IETF's custom. The government, which is a party to the
issue,
requires that people who attend conferences in China (the IETF being
but one example) not engage in political speech during their tour
in China. We consider this to be acceptable, on the basis that the
IETF intends to abide by the laws of whatever nations it visits and
we don't believe that this impacts our ability to do technical work.
The rule is implemented in the Hotel agreement and reads (note that
"Should the contents of the Group's activities, visual or audio
presentations at the conference,or printed materials used at the
conference (which are within the control of the Client) contain
any defamation against the Government of the People's Republic
of China, or show any disrespect to the Chinese culture, or
violates any laws of the People's Republic of China or feature
any topics regarding human rights or religion without prior
approval from the Government of the People's Republic of China,
the Hotel reserves the right to terminate the event on the spot
and/or ask the person(s) who initiates or participates in any or
all of the above action to leave the hotel premises immediately.
The Client will support and assist the Hotel with the necessary
actions to handle such situations. Should there be any financial
loss incurred to the Hotel or damage caused to the Hotel's
reputation as a result of any or all of the above acts, the Hotel
will claim compensation from the Client."
What does this condition mean ? The hotel staff would have, in theory,
the legal right to shut down the meeting and ask the offending
participants to leave the property immediately. While we do not
foresee a situation where such action would take place, we feel that
it is proper to disclose these conditions to the community.
The members of the IAOC, speaking as individuals, do not like this
condition as a matter of principle. The IAOC does believe that this
condition would not prevent the IETF from conducting its business.
We note that the Vancouver/Quebec survey conducted earlier this year
asked for people to suggest venues in Asia; an overwhelming majority
(94%) of those who mentioned China were in favor of having a meeting
there.
We are therefore asking for input from the community by two means - by
commenting on the IETF discussion list, and also by completing a very
short survey on people's intentions to travel to China, or not,
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=h4DUkRUOdG_2bVLqioPcYYHw_3d_3d
All responses received by October 1, 2009 at 9:00 AM EDT (1300 UTC)
will be considered by the IAOC in making its decision. We appreciate
the assistance of the community in providing us with data that will
help us to make an informed decision.
Regards
Marshall Eubanks
(acting for the IAOC)
_______________________________________________
IETF-Announce mailing list
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf-announce

[Tony Hain]

Post by Michael StJohns
Given that one of the reasons for moving meetings out of the US was an
inability to get timely visas for physical entry I find it kind of
ironic that we're contemplating having a meeting in a place where
there's a complete inability to get a visa for your mind.....
Yup - hyperbole - but I will note the set of permissible actions at
this venue appears to be much more constrained than any other venue
we've visited. I will also note that many if not most of the topics
considered within the security area could be in violation of PRC law.
We've been focusing on the free speech issues and really should be
considering whether or not we have more fundamental issues. For those
who have said "the government is unlikely to enforce..." various items,
I would suggest that its not smart to knowingly violate any laws in any
country.

I too was struck by the irony of trading one set of visa issues for another
...

While I agree one should not intentionally violate any laws of the visited
country, my concern with this condition is that I might lose my ability to
acquire a visa in the future due to the stupid actions of someone else. I
don't recall the questions on the PRC visa application, but I know that a
frequent question on visa app forms is something to the effect of "have you
ever been denied access, or asked to leave the country". I am willing to
deal with the consequences of my own actions, but I am not sure I want to
risk my future livelihood over someone else's desire for 15 minutes of fame.

I have been to Beijing/Shanghai/Guangzhou/HK many times over the last 7
years, and I can't see jeopardizing the ability to conduct future business
there given the strongly held viewpoints of many IETF attendees, so it is
not clear to me that I would attend under that condition. I would be happy
to participate in normal IETF business there, as there are contributors that
deserve the same locality considerations that the rest of the group is
given. If there were some way to make it clear that any issues were personal
actions, which probably means not scheduling a plenary to invite a group
discussion which may go south, I would be less concerned about attending.

Beyond that, I do agree with Mike that we need to take a close look at the
WGs which have problematic agendas in such an environment. It is not about
how we interpret the content of the discussions, it is how the local
officials would interpret it. Unless someone fairly high up in the national
government is willing to bless the topics in advance, and strong-arm any
local enforcement that is looking to make a name for themselves, I don't
think it makes sense to even bother scheduling them to meet.

Tony

Post by Michael StJohns
Mike

Post by Marshall Eubanks
Greetings;
We have received numerous suggestions and requests for an IETF meeting
in China and the IAOC has been working on a potential China meeting

for

Post by Marshall Eubanks
several years. We are now close to making a decision on a potential
upcoming meeting in China. However, the following issue has arisen
and we would appreciate your feedback.
The Chinese government has imposed a rule on all conferences held
since 2008 regarding political speech. A fundamental law in China
requires that one not criticize the government. Practically, this
has reference to public political statements or protest marches, which
are not the IETF's custom. The government, which is a party to the
issue,
requires that people who attend conferences in China (the IETF being
but one example) not engage in political speech during their tour
in China. We consider this to be acceptable, on the basis that the
IETF intends to abide by the laws of whatever nations it visits and
we don't believe that this impacts our ability to do technical work.
The rule is implemented in the Hotel agreement and reads (note that
"Should the contents of the Group's activities, visual or audio
presentations at the conference,or printed materials used at the
conference (which are within the control of the Client) contain
any defamation against the Government of the People's Republic
of China, or show any disrespect to the Chinese culture, or
violates any laws of the People's Republic of China or feature
any topics regarding human rights or religion without prior
approval from the Government of the People's Republic of China,
the Hotel reserves the right to terminate the event on the spot
and/or ask the person(s) who initiates or participates in any or
all of the above action to leave the hotel premises immediately.
The Client will support and assist the Hotel with the necessary
actions to handle such situations. Should there be any financial
loss incurred to the Hotel or damage caused to the Hotel's
reputation as a result of any or all of the above acts, the Hotel
will claim compensation from the Client."
What does this condition mean ? The hotel staff would have, in theory,
the legal right to shut down the meeting and ask the offending
participants to leave the property immediately. While we do not
foresee a situation where such action would take place, we feel that
it is proper to disclose these conditions to the community.
The members of the IAOC, speaking as individuals, do not like this
condition as a matter of principle. The IAOC does believe that this
condition would not prevent the IETF from conducting its business.
We note that the Vancouver/Quebec survey conducted earlier this year
asked for people to suggest venues in Asia; an overwhelming majority
(94%) of those who mentioned China were in favor of having a meeting
there.
We are therefore asking for input from the community by two means - by
commenting on the IETF discussion list, and also by completing a very
short survey on people's intentions to travel to China, or not,
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=h4DUkRUOdG_2bVLqioPcYYHw_3d_3d
All responses received by October 1, 2009 at 9:00 AM EDT (1300 UTC)
will be considered by the IAOC in making its decision. We appreciate
the assistance of the community in providing us with data that will
help us to make an informed decision.
Regards
Marshall Eubanks
(acting for the IAOC)
_______________________________________________
IETF-Announce mailing list
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf-announce

_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf

[Doug Ewell]

It might be helpful to avoid responses of the form "At least the Chinese
will be able to attend, whereas they couldn't get visas into the U.S."
or "Yeah? Well, the U.S. has human rights problems, too!" This is not
a competition between the U.S. and China. There are two hundred other
countries where international conferences can be held.

--
Doug Ewell | Thornton, Colorado, USA | http://www.ewellic.org
RFC 5645, 4645, UTN #14 | ietf-languages @ http://is.gd/2kf0s

[Wassim Haddad]

Hi,

I also fully agree with Steve. I wrote similar thoughts in the survey.


Regards,

Wassim H.


________________________________________
From: ietf-***@ietf.org [ietf-***@ietf.org] On Behalf Of Simon Perreault [***@viagenie.ca]
Sent: Saturday, September 19, 2009 21:18
To: Steve Crocker
Cc: IAOC IAOC; ***@ietf.org
Subject: Re: Request for community guidance on issue concerning a future meeting of the IETF

Post by Steve Crocker
The choice is between engaging and not engaging. Engaging is better.
Not engaging isn't constructive.

Thank you. I wanted to say this, but could not find the right words.

I fully agree with Steve Crocker.

In the long run, exposure to and participation in the IETF might even prove
beneficial to the Chinese.

Thanks,
Simon
--
DNS64 open-source --> http://ecdysis.viagenie.ca
STUN/TURN server --> http://numb.viagenie.ca
vCard 4.0 --> http://www.vcarddav.org

[Noel Chiappa]

The Internet and the IETF are all about engaging, expanding,
communicating and being open. ... More than a billion people live in
China and their use of the Internet is expanding rapidly. ...
Our first slogan was "Networks Bring People Together."

The likelihood that having the IETF actually meet in China will have _any_
real impact on a country so large, I find very improbable. The things we
produce? Yes. Having a meeting there? Somehow I don't think so.

Noel

[HUANG, ZHIHUI (JERRY), ATTLABS]

As far as I know, IETF is not a political entity so it doesn't seem
appropriate for it to take a position on any of the issues brought up so
far.

Some IETF participants will invariably have strong political views. The
question is whether or not those views should influence their decision
to take part in any conference in China. To each his own, of course. I
just wish people would go to China and see it in first person and decide
for themselves what the real conditions are. Maybe I need to go out more
but for every person I know who's been to China, none has had negative
experiences and some have changed their view of the country completely.

F.U.D. is a powerful thing and I'm dismayed at how much influence it has
on otherwise bright people.

Coming back on topic on a practical concern of encryption and VPN access
from China. I was in China in May 2008 and used IPsec from my hotel
rooms (two hotels in two cities) for VPN access (back to the US) without
problem at all. The throughput maybe suspect at times but not the
protocol operation itself. I would think that is something that can be
properly addressed by the Host.

Thanks,
Jerry (I don't speak for AT&T in any way, shape or form.)
--
Jerry Huang, AT&T Labs, [phone] ([phone], soon)
-----Original Message-----
From: ietf-***@ietf.org [mailto:ietf-***@ietf.org] On Behalf Of
Noel Chiappa
Sent: Sunday, September 20, 2009 11:48 AM
To: ***@ietf.org
Cc: ***@mercury.lcs.mit.edu
Subject: Re: [IAOC] Request for community guidance on issue concerning
afuture meeting of the IETF

The Internet and the IETF are all about engaging, expanding,
communicating and being open. ... More than a billion people live in
China and their use of the Internet is expanding rapidly. ...
Our first slogan was "Networks Bring People Together."

The likelihood that having the IETF actually meet in China will have
_any_
real impact on a country so large, I find very improbable. The things we
produce? Yes. Having a meeting there? Somehow I don't think so.

Noel

[Randall Gellens]

Personally, I have three specific concerns with a meeting in China:

(1) The law and associated hotel rule Marshall quoted could be
violated by what may appear to IETF participants as technical
discussion. For example, the manipulation/censorship of Internet
traffic by or under orders of the Chinese government is well known.
If this were to be mentioned or discussed during the IETF, perhaps in
the context of encryption, tunneling, web proxy, DNS, or some other
technical area, we could run be violating the law and hence the rule.

(2) This is a very personal concern, but my experience with China is
that it is among the worst places to try and avoid tobacco smoke.

(3) Similarly to (2), my experience in Bejing has been that the air
is exceptionally polluted. Hence, I'd be concerned for those IETF
members who would find this makes participation difficult.

[David Harrington]

Hi,

Here are my impressions regarding the areas of concern you raise.

Post by Randall Gellens
(1) The law and associated hotel rule Marshall quoted could be
violated by what may appear to IETF participants as technical
discussion. For example, the manipulation/censorship of Internet
traffic by or under orders of the Chinese government is well known.
If this were to be mentioned or discussed during the IETF, perhaps in
the context of encryption, tunneling, web proxy, DNS, or some other
technical area, we could run be violating the law and hence the rule.

I have worked for a subsidirary of Huawei, and now work for
HuaWeiSymantec (a joint venture startup) and visit Beijing once or
twice a year.
I don't know if the venues under consideration are in Beijing, but I
assume that is fairly likely.
These opinions are my own and do not in any way represent the opinions
of Huawei or HuaweiSymantec.

I have personal concerns about censorship and manipulation of Internet
traffic. I don't have anything to hide, and do not regularly post
views I expect the Chinese government might find offensive, so it does
not impact me directly, but it does impact me indirectly.

I had some difficulty reaching some web sites, although they were
mostly news websites that might discuss politically-sensitive topical
issues. I do not remember having difficulty reaching any websites
critical to my IETF work.

The HQ of HuaweiSymantec is in Hong Kong, and my boss who lives there
tells me that HK is not subject to the censorship on the China
mainland. So maybe meeting in Hong Kong would allow us to meet in
China, without the censorship. (But I personally found HK very
expensive compared to mainland China)

I doubt the Chinese government, or the hotel, is likely to interfere
in our technical discussions. Some lively plenary discussions about
government-regulation impact on Internet technologies, such as the net
neutrality discussion in the Washington meeting and the encryption
regulations discussion we had in Danvers, might make our Chinese
participants and our host uncomfortable.

I would be a bit cautious about political discussions in public venues
outside the official meeting, e.g., over dinner or in bar BOFs.
"Bush-bashing" and other disrepect for our leaders is considered great
sport in Western countries; In China, for cultural reasons based on a
very long history going back at least to Confucious, this type of
disrespect for one's leaders is apparently considered very poor
manners. I am pretty sure that disrespect for their leaders would be
very very poor manners. The locals are much more likely to consider
you a barbarian than to want to engage in such discussions of their
leaders.

Post by Randall Gellens
(2) This is a very personal concern, but my experience with China is
that it is among the worst places to try and avoid tobacco smoke.

I have not found avoiding smoke in China much worse than in Europe. I
find it much easier to avoid smoke in US cities.

Post by Randall Gellens
(3) Similarly to (2), my experience in Bejing has been that the air
is exceptionally polluted. Hence, I'd be concerned for those IETF
members who would find this makes participation difficult.

Auto emission pollution in Beijing is a real problem. If you have any
respiratory problems, I recommend you avoid heavy-traffic areas of
Beijing.

This problem is mostly an outdoor problem, not an indoor problem. You
can mitigate the pollution by wearing surgical masks when outside
(which is fairly common in Beijing). I assume the air handling systems
in a conference center and major international hotels would mitigate
this while indoors.

I think the level of poluution in Beijing is a valid concern when
evaluating venues.

David Harrington

Post by Randall Gellens
--
Randall Gellens
Opinions are personal; facts are suspect; I speak for
myself only
-------------- Randomly selected tag: ---------------
The solution to a problem changes the nature of the problem.

[Peny Yang]

(1) The law and associated hotel rule Marshall quoted could be violated by
what may appear to IETF participants as technical discussion.  For example,
the manipulation/censorship of Internet traffic by or under orders of the
Chinese government is well known. If this were to be mentioned or discussed
during the IETF, perhaps in the context of encryption, tunneling, web proxy,
DNS, or some other technical area, we could run be violating the law and
hence the rule.

[Peny] Well, I am afraid IETF is basically a technical standard
organization. Actually, we have been discussing the technologies
mentioned by you in China every day. But, I personally don't have any
trouble. Did somebody else have?
Again, I am afraid your concern is a bit too political. We basically
will only have technical discussion in IETF.

(2) This is a very personal concern, but my experience with China is that it
is among the worst places to try and avoid tobacco smoke.

[Peny] I am sorry for your bad experience. However, IMHO, your
experience may be the story 10 years ago. I am a smoker. When I would
like to smoke, I always go find the smoking corner.
Now, in Beijing, smoking is prohibited in most of public areas. From
my experience, the policies on smoking in China are more restrict than
some other countries like EU, Japan.

(3) Similarly to (2), my experience in Bejing has been that the air is
exceptionally polluted.  Hence, I'd be concerned for those IETF members who
would find this makes participation difficult.

[Peny] At this moment, I am pretty sure that I can see the blue sky
out of my office. I guess your last visit to Beijing is probably 5
years ago. If IETF could have a meeting in Beijing, I strongly
recommend to have it in autumn. It's the most lovely season of
Beijing.

BR
Peny

--
Randall Gellens
Opinions are personal;    facts are suspect;    I speak for myself only
-------------- Randomly selected tag: ---------------
The solution to a problem changes the nature of the problem.
_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf

[Stephen Farrell]

I just filled in the form.

The main potential issue I would have with such a meeting
is whether or not we'd have a normal meeting network
with normal Internet access. If there's anything that'd
be different about the meeting network and/or access to the
Internet, then I think the IAOC MUST bring that to the
community before making any decision. If there's to be nothing
different, then I think the IAOC would be wise to be
crystal-clear about that.

Absent that information, I don't think that the survey is
useful and it shouldn't be used as the basis for a positive
decision.

The reason I think this is important is that we can only
speculate about reactions to microphone statements, but
we can know in advance about any networking restrictions.
If we cannot access the Internet as usual then I would be
against such a meeting since it would mean participants
could not do their work as usual.

I have yet to see a clear statement on the above. If this
is not yet resolved, that would also be useful to know,

Stephen.

[Noel Chiappa]

there are a lot of people in the world who will be looking for ways
to make the PRC government over-react against the IETF, resulting in
an international incident that is embarrassing or otherwise damaging
to the PRC.

I normally agree with Dean on very little, but I think he has an
interesting point here - because I was thinking the exact same thing
earlier this morning, that someone with an axe to grind could make use of
this.

Of course, it's not at all clear that such an attempt would succeed:
during the Olympics, a number of foreign activists tried to stage small
protests - and were quickly seized by the authorities, and put on planes
out of the country. I would expect the same measured, but strict, reaction
here.

Are our members who are Falun Gong practitioners going to be
persecuted for their beliefs while attending IETF? Are our members
who are active in Tibetan or Taiwanese independence movements going
to be quietly picked up off the street outside our venue?

More likely they just wouldn't be given visas to begin with. That happened
at the Olympics, too.

Noel

[Stewart Bryant]

Post by Noel Chiappa

Are our members who are Falun Gong practitioners going to be
persecuted for their beliefs while attending IETF? Are our members
who are active in Tibetan or Taiwanese independence movements going
to be quietly picked up off the street outside our venue?

More likely they just wouldn't be given visas to begin with. That happened
at the Olympics, too.

So we need to know how many people who would normally attend would
expect to be denied visas.

- Stewart

[Alan DeKok]

Post by Marshall Eubanks
We have received numerous suggestions and requests for an IETF meeting
in China and the IAOC has been working on a potential China meeting for
several years. We are now close to making a decision on a potential
upcoming meeting in China. However, the following issue has arisen
and we would appreciate your feedback.

I would suggest waiting until after Hiroshima to make a decision. I'm
hearing that a large number of people (such as myself) do not have the
budget for a trip to Asia. I suspect an IETF in China within the next 2
years will have lower attendance than Hiroshima.

Alan DeKok.