I missed this the first time around and went back to read it when I saw Mary's
comments. My first reaction was "seriously?".
The IETF is a non-membership standards body. We are perfectly within our
rights to deal with public disruptions of the standards process, and we have
procedures in place to do just that with respect to all IETF controlled mailing
lists. We are also perfectly within our rights to exclude people who do not
conform to accepted behavior norms - again - in public - at IETF meetings as a
matter of safety, decorum or protecting standards production. It's less clear
that we can exclude someone from attending a meeting solely based on bad
behavior on a mailing list. [I've been told for example that one mailing list
participant I consider somewhat disruptive was quite respectful in person].
The key word here is "public". Where I think the document goes off the rails
is that it provides an IETF cause of action for private interactions with a
related confidential investigation and resolution process and I believe that
way lies madness.
The IETF is not an employer of the attendees/participants. The
attendees/participants are not - formally - members of the IETF. The attendees
are not in loco parentis wards of the IETF (e.g. school kids - at least I
hope). There's no contract between the IETF and the participants - for private
interactions - that would provide the IETF (in the form of this ombudsman) the
justification for inserting itself as a third party in its disputes with
another party solely because both participate in the IETF.
I got this off the IEEE web site:
(http://www.ieee.org/about/corporate/governance/p9-26.html)
Harassment is one form of discrimination. Harassment is defined as conduct
that has the purpose or effect of unreasonably interfering with an
individual's participation in IEEE activities or creating an intimidating,
hostile or offensive environment. Harassment occurs when submission to or
rejection of such conduct is made either explicitly or implicitly a term or
condition of an individual's participation in IEEE activities or used as a
basis for decisions affecting that individual?s relationship to the IEEE.
I think they got this exactly right (and I wish the IESG statement read
similarly). Note that they explicitly limit their interest to actions
affecting the standards process. Given that, and given that the IETF standards
process is supposed to be public, I think the confidential investigation and
resolution processes proposed by the document are self-defeating and not in
keeping with the general IETF desire for openness and transparency.
IANAL, but, I would expect that any attempt to impose IETF sanctions due to
private interactions based on a confidential investigation could leave the IETF
vulnerable to being sued. AIRC, the IETF has an insurance policy that
indemnifies various IETF related folk against being sued for actions related to
the standards activities - it would be interesting to get a read of the
underwriter as to whether the policy would cover non-public harassment related
actions without a substantial IETF node.
I don't have a great objection to having a non-executive ombudsman who's job it
is to act as a resource for the chairs, IAB, IESG, IAOC and IETF Trust and the
participants in dealing with interaction issues of any kind. But I would expect
the output of that interaction - for non-public issues - to be limited to
mediation on the IETFs part between the parties. Any further actions would
need to be taken by the harassed in whatever legal, moral or commercial
non-IETF context that is appropriate. Alternately, the harassed can choose to
make whatever documentation they have available public and move this into the
more normal channels.
.
Mike
ps - There was a set of science fiction novels based on a world or in a country
that had only two laws: (1) Don't annoy anyone unnecessarily. (2) Don't be
annoyed easily. They used these to cover all sorts of things up to and
including murder. I will note that I don't think the IETF does well complying
with either of these and I think that (2) is actually more important than (1)
for us.