Re: [79attendees] Oops -- what were they _thinking_?

[Dave Crocker <[e-mail]>]

On 11/15/2010 9:59 AM, Charles E. Perkins wrote:
> According to my seatmate on my flight home, there
> were times when IESG or IAOC members would request
> that certain hallway discussions be terminated.


Charlie,

The presumption of your seatmate's comment is that there was an active effort to 
suppress free conversation.  Since you said "hallway", this was not about 
getting a meeting into order.  Other than volume control, it is difficult to 
imagine that this means anything other than an attempt to suppress political speech.

That is such a serious charge, it should be required to be much, much more specific.

The essential action that is called for, here, is to query your seatmate about 
specifics and report them back to this list.

Obviously the better action is for your seatmate to make a public, first-person 
report.  One could imagine that they might decline the request, for fear of 
retribution, but it would be irresponsible of them to make the basic claim to 
you and not provide enough detail to follow-up on it.

The fact that there have been no other reports of attempts at speech control 
makes this one report inherently suspect.  Absent more useful information, doing 
anything but ignoring the report would be irresponsible.

d/

-- 

   Dave Crocker
   Brandenburg InternetWorking
   bbiw.net