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Re: Legality of IETF meetings in PRC. Was: Re: Request for community guidance on issue concerning a futuremeetingof the IETF

2009-10-06 15:16:40

While I do think that the IAOC should be aware of the potential legal implications of where we hold our meetings, I wonder if we are treating China unfairly in this discussion...

On Oct 5, 2009, at 2:30 PM, Cullen Jennings wrote:

The PGP Key signing is a good question - I have no idea - it's certainly something we have done in the past but if it is not legal in the PRC, I could live with a meeting where we did not do any PGP key signing. It detracts a bit from the meeting but is not in what I consider the mediatory must have core of the meeting. Of course this would mean that a group of people that did not often travel out of the PRC would be missing a great opportunity to sign with a group of people outside of China which I view as one of the benefits of having a meeting in Beijing.

Do you know if the PGP signing (and taking the keys home) was legal when we did it in France? It is my understanding that there are (or were) French laws forbidding the export of crypto. However, I don't remember this being raised as a big concern when we held the IETF in Paris.

Did we hire a Swedish lawyer to determine if all of our planned activities were legal before going to Stockholm?

Does anyone know what laws there are about public assembly and/or public discussion of political issues in Japan?

I realize that there is a lot of concern about going to China, and some of it may be justified. But, we should also be careful that we don't end-up holding China to a higher standard than other countries that we visit. If we believe that we should only go to countries where a specific set of activities are legal, we should (IMO) itemize those activities and seek to determine that they are legal in all of our destination countries before we commit to going there.

Perhaps this is something that we could expect our host to help us determine?

Margaret




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