Re: [Gendispatch] Re: Last IETF ever in China ?! Re: Agenda request: draft-rescorla-anonymous-network

Dear George,

Permit me to gently suggest that you may want to rethink the phrase
"'protest based reasons to avoid a venue."  Defining an objection as
protest carries a connotation that is fundamentally political, which is
contrary to your stated aim.

I also must suggest that you should reflect a bit more on whether these
choices can ever be truly apolitical.  The IETF has ranged from
"unincorporated association" through "organized activity" and and is now a
"disregarded entity"--through all of those it has kept a deep aversion to
having a defined membership.  The IETF, in our common understanding, is
whoever shows up and does the work.  We have participants, not members.

That means defining who can participate and to what extent is a deeply
consequential choice.  Especially when there are specific classes of people
who are commonly excluded and others who are commonly included by the
choices of the nation-states in which we meet, accepting the rules of
whatever jurisdiction a venue falls in turns out, in the long term, to work
against the effective participation of anyone not within a privileged set.
Accepting the status quo is a political statement that you are okay with
the current balance of participation, and that is a political statement,
and a deeply conservative one at that.

Just about a year ago, on April 3, 2025,  I sent a message about IETF 127
to [email protected].  I think you had been on the LLC board about two
weeks at the time, so let me refresh your memory on that comment:

Thanks for taking feedback from the community on this matter.

RFC 8718 has the following text:

Avoid meeting in countries with laws that effectively exclude people on the
basis of race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, national
origin, citizenship, or gender identity.

It is plain that the current US administration is applying executive orders
in ways that discriminate based on gender identity, as they require those
applying for a visa or a visa waiver to present the sex assigned at birth,
even if they are transgendered or non-binary.  They have signalled that
they will treat anyone not doing so as committing visa fraud, which makes
them subject to detention; as you no doubt have seen, the conditions of US
detention include preventing those detained from reaching their counsel,
their consul, or their kin.  This is an effective travel ban on
transgendered people, since they can also be accused of fraud if the
passport associated with the visa or visa waiver shows their true gender
rather than that assigned at birth.

The US administration has also signalled its intention to apply stringent
restrictions on nationals of up to 40 countries (
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/14/us/politics/trump-travel-ban.html).
That executive order has not been updated to specify the new restrictions,
but it will apparently be patterned on the ban in place during Trump's
first term.  Since those restrictions were why we abandoned this venue in
the first place, history appears to be repeating itself.

There is no doubt that "Avoid meeting" would, sadly, apply to San Francisco
if we were booking now.  The question you have to ask now is: what happens
when a venue is located in a country that goes from non-discriminatory to
discriminatory policies?  You will not be surprised to learn that I think
"Avoid meeting" applies here too.  We cannot have a principled stand that
is over-ruled by our pocketbooks, and the above is a clear statement of
principle.  It's also an important one, as the openness of our organization
is key to both to its reputation and its strength.  Undermining that is not
worth the costs.

As I said at the plenary, I am willing to personally contribute to the
shortfall.

Since there is a chance a funding request on this matter could come to the
Board of Trustees, I should note that I have asked Laura Thomson, our
treasurer, to call consensus on any related matter, as my public statements
on this matter might be taken as conflict of interest.  If the matter comes
to the board after the AGM, it would be the new chair or treasurer who
would call consensus.

My thanks again for listening,

Ted Hardie

Whether you like it or not, the choice of where to meet includes the choice
of who will be included and who excluded; that's a fundamentally political
question at both the macro level and within our own processes.

The Internet Society has as its touchstone: "The Internet is for
everyone."  Within the IETF, I think we should recognize that the more
perspectives we can include fully in the development of the Internet's
protocols and operations, the better the Internet will be.  Since a better
Internet is our primary goal as an organization, I personally think that
means that we should cleave a little more closely to the RFC 8718 text
above than I have seen lately.  I hope, after reflection, you do too.

best regards,

Ted Hardie
As a participant


On Thu, Apr 2, 2026 at 11:29 AM George Michaelson <[email protected]> wrote:

> I'd say this phrase is not one we should carry into the future.
>
> Its not helpful to process. I didn't stand as a politician and I'm not
> carrying forward a political agenda. I'm appointed. I reflect on that, and
> the difference between my personal beliefs and positional expectations a
> lot.
>
> My ideal situation on this stuff is that the LLC and documented process
> means approval for a location is a formalism. I know that's unlikely to
> emerge, there's always a decision to be made, and justified, when weighing
> up disparate criteria.
>
> I will probably disappoint a lot of ietf participants if I say I'm not a
> fan of protest based reasons to avoid a venue.
>
> I think it's a bad look for an SDO.
>
> Cheers
>
> G
>
> On Thu, 2 Apr 2026, 8:19 pm S Moonesamy, <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> Hi George,
>> At 02:35 PM 01-04-2026, George Michaelson wrote:
>> >What (and who) is the "political leadership" in this context please.
>>
>> The words "political leadership" means persons who are usually
>> selected through the Nomination Committee process.  I don't know who
>> the persons will be.  As an historical note, the words were
>> previously used in an IETF discussion which occurred in 2008.
>>
>> Regards,
>> S. Moonesamy
>>
>>