Re: privacy and IETF meetings in US

[John C Klensin <[e-mail]>]

--On Friday, June 7, 2019 09:21 -0700 Ole Jacobsen
<[e-mail]> wrote:

> 
> You said:
> 
> "...the political situation in Thailand exploding in the
> months before  IETF 106,.."
> 
> IETF 106 is being held in Singapore, so I am not sure how Thai 
> politics would impact us.

Sorry.  Misread my calendar.  But I could have as easily said
"Political situation in Singapore" or used any other made-up,
half-plausible, example involving any other meeting location.
The point was that things can happen but that calling off a
meeting (or meeting location) because of some unlikely event is
likely to lead to madness.   After all, I could fairly easily
find an article that claims that The BIg One is coming soon and
then contend that we should cancel the San Francisco meeting
because having an major earthquake in the middle of IETF would
be really inconvenient to participants.

While it was not my intent and your (or my) view of "relatively
close" notwithstanding, Eric's comment also stands -- a major
political disruption on that peninsula could affect other
countries as well, some air connections to Singapore go through
Bangkok, etc.   Given air connections from various parts of the
world, similar comments would apply to significant disruptions
in Hong Kong (which seem plausible, if unlikely, to me).

I think the bottom line is that intelligent and strategic
contingency planning is always a good idea because things we can
barely (or cannot at all) anticipate can happen.  Canceling
meetings more than two years out, or blocking countries even
further in advance, seems unwise to me.  If I were negotiating
hotel contracts for the IETF (which I am definitely not... and
happy about that), I'd be looking to see if I could either get
contract escape provisions or insurance to minimize the costs of
our canceling due to Acts of God or politicians between
contract-signing and meeting dates (and evaluating whether the
marginal extra costs of such provisions exceeded the likely
benefits)   And, if we are actually serious about delegating
anything to the IETF LCC, Executive Director, and/or
Secretariat, I'd hope to see sufficient reporting to leave the
general IETF community with the sense that things are under
control but would hope we can avoid debating every political
action or possible natural disaster on the IETF list, especially
in terms of "if you don't agree with my position or concerns,
you are against privacy, freedom, apple pie, motherhood,
assorted traditionally-disadvantaged groups, etc."

One more comment and then I'm going back into my hole...

--On Friday, June 7, 2019 18:38 +0200 JORDI PALET MARTINEZ
<jordi.palet=[e-mail]> wrote:

> Some of us, who pay from our own pocket, buy the IETF flights
> 11-12 months in advance (and they are non-refundable), in
> order to be able to get as lower fares as possible. Otherwise,
> we can't attend the meetings.
> 
> If the decision is taken only 1 year in advance, is fine to
> avoid the cancelation of the ticket, but is if the new venue
> is not announced at the same time, is too late to get a low
> fare.

Jordi,

As someone who has been paying for tickets out of my own pocket
for years, I've always felt I had to trade off "really low fair
from far-in-advance purchase" against the risks of things going
wrong.  I don't buy tickets a year in advance unless I can
either get insurance against various contingencies or conclude
that the prices are low enough that it is reasonable for me to
essentially self-insure.    Under current policies as I
understand them, if we had a meeting scheduled in San Francisco
(or for that matter, Japan or even Vancouver) and, 30 days or
six months ahead of the meeting, there were an earthquake and
the meeting facility fell down, we'd presumably cancel or try to
move the meeting.  While I'd hope you could convince the IETF to
refund your registration fee, I don't think anyone would be
likely to refund your airfare unless you had personally bought
insurance against such catastrophes.  I'd be happy if the IETF
LLC investigated buying, or offering on a group rate, insurance
to cover participant costs associated with meeting cancellation
contingencies even if the result of such an investigation were a
report to the community about the costs and the conclusion that
it wouldn't make sense.  

And, yes, if meetings are going to get canceled or moved, I'd
far prefer that be done at least a year in advance.  However,
which it is sensible and feasible or not involves many tradeoffs
including data the IETF LLC (and the IAOC before it) have
concluded is not appropriately given to the community.  Probably
they are correct, but that means we need to trust them to get it
right.  And, if we can't do that, we need to either fix their
membership (presumably via the Nomcom) or change their terms of
reference (presumably via the IASA 2/0 WG or, if the problem
lies with the LLC Agreement, whatever revolution is required to
change that.  My conclusion is close to "good enough given the
amount of energy I'm willing to invest".  YMMD.

best,
   john