RE: I-D.farrresnickel-harassment - timebomb

[Eric Gray <[e-mail]>]

I have some small issues with the wording abstracted below.  Hopefully it is clearer
(or at least less ambiguous) generally, than it is to me.

In the (green) text below, it is ambiguous as to what "prohibited by applicable law"
applies to - the definition, or the harassment it defines.  Intuitively, I suspect that
it is meant to apply to the harassment.

But it is not impossible for some applicable law(s) to explicitly limit the definition of
harassment, and this might be used by malicious individuals to excuse behavior that
might clearly be considered harassment in almost any other context.

I don't know (for certain) about the legal issues with the precise wording, but I'm
reasonably sure this could be worded more clearly.  For example:

"Any form of harassment defined as prohibited  by applicable law can be subject
  to this set of procedures."

As for why this may have been suggested in the first place, it is blatantly obvious
that any organization that allows harassment (however it may be defined) is also
likely to be held accountable for it as the person (or persons) who perpetrate the
harassment itself.

For that reason, I suspect that this was suggested in order to provide a degree of
protection for the IETF, by indicating that an individual that feels they are being
harassed (again by any definition with any applicable legal basis) can avail them-
selves of the procedures being defined.

This does not seem unreasonable to me.

--
Eric

From: ietf [mailto:[e-mail]] On Behalf Of Pete Resnick
Sent: Thursday, March 19, 2015 5:32 PM
To: Michael StJohns
Cc: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: I-D.farrresnickel-harassment - timebomb

On 3/19/15 2:54 PM, Michael StJohns wrote:
Version -06 of draft-farresnickel-harassment has this small phrase that was added in this version:



Any definition of

harassment prohibited by an applicable law can be

   subject to this set of

procedures.

This was added at the behest of the attorneys that did the legal review.


I find "prohibited by an applicable law" to be somewhat problematic and overreaching.

This should be removed.  If something is a violation of applicable law, then the folks responsible for that law should deal with it, not us.  We should be dealing with harassment that impinges on the IETFs creation of standards and not with harassment that has little or no nexus with the IETF.

You have misread the sentence (for which I don't blame you; see below). It is not talking about dealing with acts that are violations of local law. What it says is that the procedures in this document *can* be applied to an act that falls under the definition of harassment that appears in a local law. That is, if a local law says that harassment includes commenting on the stripe pattern of someone's shoes, a person *may* bring a complaint of harassment to the Ombudsteam and ask that these procedures be used.

I did not think that the wording was particularly clear, but it is the wording that the attorneys felt would be legally useful.

pr


--

Pete Resnick <http://www.qualcomm.com/~presnick/><http://www.qualcomm.com/~presnick/>

Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. - [phone]