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
On Fri, 18 Sep 2009, John C Klensin wrote:
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
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