Re: What is a "management position? [Last Call: <draft-farrresnickel-harassment-05.txt> (IETF Anti-Harassment Procedures) to Best Current Practice]

[Scott Kitterman <[e-mail]>]

On March 18, 2015 1:52:24 PM EDT, Pete Resnick <[e-mail]> wrote:
>On 3/16/15 5:52 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
>> On 17/03/2015 10:57, Dave Crocker wrote:
>> ...
>>    
>>> Public vs. private is entirely orthogonal to 'formally powerful' vs.
>>> 'has leverage but no formal authority'.
>>>
>>> By way of example:
>>>
>>>     A document writer has made statements to a participant that
>violate
>>> the boundaries acceptable to the Ombud team.  The statements were
>made
>>> in private, but have been sufficiently verified. The Ombud feels
>that
>>> the document writer needs to be removed from any position of
>leverage in
>>> the IETF, other than "regular participant".
>>>
>>>     Currently, it's the Chair(s) who have the authority to remove
>that
>>> person, not the Ombud.  But confidentiality constrains the Ombud
>>> possibly from making the request and certainly from explaining why.
>>>
>>> d/
>>>
>>> ps.  Extra credit:  Note that the confidentiality thing prevents any
>>> sort of persistent application of a decision.  There's no way to bar
>>> someone from being a document writer going forward, even if we
>figure
>>> out how to handle the immediate situation.
>> Right. And the only solution that I can see is what would happen
>> inside a company in such a situation: extend the envelope of the
>> confidential discussion to include the person(s) with that
>> authority.
>>    
>
>I think we have now circled back to the reason the original text ended 
>up in the document in the first place:
>
>We really want the Ombudsteam to be as confidential as possible. That's
>
>certainly important for the Respondent, for whom public accusations can
>
>be destructive and could bring legal liability for both them *and* the 
>IETF, but I think the most important reason for confidentiality is for 
>the sake of the Subject: Being the recipient of sexual, racial/ethnic, 
>or other sorts of harassment (in contrast to most other sorts of bad 
>behavior) can be embarrassing and shaming for the recipient, and can 
>make one the object of all sorts of horrible negative comments. Of 
>course, it would be perfectly lovely if we lived in a world where 
>comments along the lines of "she was asking for it" or "he's just being
>
>overly sensitive to any comment about race" or "she seemed to be
>happily 
>participating in it" were not the first things out of people's mouths, 
>but we don't live in that world. And it would be nice if people did not
>
>look upon the targets of harassment as victims to be pitied, but they
>do.
>
>Because of that, the best thing to do is to limit as much as possible 
>the number of people who get exposed to the information about the 
>incident. In the current text, even in the most extreme cases of 
>remedies (e.g., removal from a meeting), the only people -- beyond the 
>Ombudsteam -- that need to be made aware of the imposition of a remedy 
>are people who are under contract to the IAOC/ISOC (i.e., the 
>secretariat), which means that some level of confidentiality can be 
>contractually imposed. As soon as we give the ability to the Ombudsteam
>to remove someone from an appointed position (NomCom-appointed or 
>otherwise), members of the open volunteer community are going to have
>to 
>be made aware of the existence of the remedy, whether it's the entire 
>IESG ("This person can no longer be a chair for any WG"), the IAB
>("This 
>person can no longer be confirmed as an AD") or others. Maybe we want
>to 
>go through the exercise of trying to figure out what sorts of 
>confidentiality "envelopes" we want to have and examine how this 
>document interacts with 2026, 2418, and 7437, but it's not going to be
>a 
>pleasant exercise.
>
>The thing I like about the original text, and reason that I'm OK with
>in 
>Sam's text, is that it limits how many people need to know the result; 
>the Ombudsteam removes the person from the situation that is causing
>the 
>problem (from a mailing list or a meeting in the extreme case), but can
>only tell the Respondent that it would be a good idea to resign at that
>point. If things go the right way, the person resigns and the outcome
>is 
>identical to having the Ombudsteam remove them (with potentially less 
>people having to be told). If things go badly and they refuse to resign
>and instead make a stink, the outcome doesn't seem all that much worse 
>than the stink such a person will make after the Ombudsteam summarily 
>dismisses them from their position. And again, it avoids the Ombudsteam
>having to figure out who in the community needs to be told, and what 
>particular details they need to know.
>
>pr

Since the accused can't be kept quiet, is it realistic to have a document that purports to provide confidentiality? Unless the identity of the accuser and the alleged victim are unknown to the accused (which would create its own set of problems), the process can't really be called confidential. 

Scott K