Re: Names on blue sheets

[Vittorio Bertola <[e-mail]>]

> Il 16/04/2025 09:43 JST Stephen Farrell <[e-mail]> ha scritto:
> 
> ISTM it's generally fine to use "Rob S" so long as there's a
> way to track back to find a more real-world identity, which
> could be via the LLC and payments or whatever, whenever that
> is something necessary, e.g. in the case of some IPR dispute.
> I don't think the real-world identity needs to be trivially
> apparent to readers of the blue-sheets.

I agree, and actually, I am not sure that the IETF's policy of forcing people to disclose online in public that they were in a specific meeting is GDPR-compliant. It's fine to record who was in the room and even to require disclosure of full and true identity for that, but IMHO (and IANAL) it is hard to argue that publishing the resulting lists to the general public is strictly necessary to the functioning of the meeting, up to the point that no specific, separate, optional consent is necessary. It would be sufficient to disclose the list to the appropriate parties if problems arise.

In any case, the only case I have seen of people not signing with their full name is the UK NCSC employees one, and I have seen them do the same at every conference. I do not know if this is an agency policy and what are the reasons, but perhaps, if lists weren't made public on the web, they would have less need to do so.

At the same time, should we introduce a policy that people cannot choose how to name themselves in Datatracker but must use their "true identity" (i.e. the one on their documents), please understand that there are people whose ID card name is not the one they chose to bear in public and this could be a serious problem for them.


-- vb.