Dear TF members,

Here are the draft minutes from our last call. Corrections welcome.

Cheers

Ant

***

Draft Minutes - Code of Conduct TF: Fourth Call
18 November, 17:30-18:30 (UTC+1)

Present:
Denesh Bhabuta, Athina Fragkouli, Antony Gollan, Brian Nisbet, Leo Vegoda, Salam Yamout

Summary: The TF discussed concerns around the recent GM vote to apply the RIPE community’s CoC to Executive Board elections. It was noted that jurisdictions (in terms of which country a RIPE Meeting was held in) would have little bearing on the CoC, as this was a private agreement between two parties. The group discussed legal requirements around record-keeping and personal data. It was noted that much of this would depend on the process that was eventually developed (e.g. personal data would need to be kept at least until the expiry of any appeal period, and potentially longer if a “three-strikes” approach is used). The TF agreed to produce some initial text on record-keeping that could be reviewed by the RIPE NCC. The group noted that it had fallen behind its ambitious time frame, but agreed that it was better to wait until it had something substantial to say before sending another message to the community (though the TF may share at least a brief update before the end of the year).

1.     Minutes

The draft minutes from the previous call were approved without changes.

2.     Agenda

There were no changes to the agenda.

3.     Actions from last meeting

The following actions had been completed:

-       Include a summary at the start of future minutes.

-       RIPE NCC to make mailing list archives public.

-       TF chair to respond to request to participate and let them know that while the ML won’t be opened to non-TF members, they can access the archives and are invited to send a mail to the list if they would like to make a contribution. 

Athina said she could provide input on the next action:

-       Athina to provide input on the decision by the RIPE NCC GM to reference the CoC in relation to potential EB candidates, as well as input on what kind of records a future CoC Team would need to keep (and for how long).

Athina said this requirement aimed to exclude people from standing as candidates in board elections if they misbehaved. The RIPE NCC Executive Board Election TF hadn’t wanted to create something new and had thought the existing CoC was simple and seemed good enough for their purposes. However, the TF had also recommended that the board create a separate CoC that was based on the community’s one. Similarly, when it came to assessing violations, the TF didn’t want to reinvent the wheel, and thought the existing Trusted Contacts could fill this role. The end result would involve a new/separate document which was based on the RIPE community’s CoC and that used the existing Trusted Contacts to make determinations.

She said the question was then whether the CoC-TF would produce a new document and whether the board would prefer that to the existing one. This might be the case, but it would be the board’s decision. She didn’t think it was something that the CoC-TF needed to consider when developing their document.

Brian said if this was how it worked (in terms of the board making this decision), then that was fine with him. However, he was still concerned about the process/enforcement. There was only one Trusted Contact currently who was not a RIPE NCC staff member. He was also concerned that a potential future CoC Team would be drawn into this role, which was quite a different task. So, while Athina had addressed one of his concerns, another remained.  

Denesh asked if this CoC for board candidates would only apply “during” the election period or if it would also consider prior behaviour. If it determined who could stand in elections, then he would be quite concerned, as there were all sorts of due diligence considerations. He was fine with having requirements during the election process itself.

Athina said it would be limited to who could stand as board candidates in elections. A nominee only became a candidate once they had five people supporting them; so they weren’t talking about who could be nominated.

Leo said his understanding was that the Trusted Contacts/future CoC Team would essentially be asked to decide if a nominee was qualified to become a candidate. He asked if there was the potential for conflicts of interest. He asked if it would be the CoC Team that responded, or if there would be an official record keeper (potentially the RIPE NCC) that would consider past behaviour.

Athina said the RIPE NCC ran this process – it accepted nominations (publicly archived) and decided who could be a candidate. According to the new process adopted by the GM, nominees would have to provide ID and sign a statement that they would adhere to a CoC (as defined by the board) and had not committed any fraud. After doing this, they became qualified as candidates. If there were complaints after this point, that was where the Trusted Contacts would need to conduct an evaluation. She expected these complaints would come directly to the RIPE NCC, or otherwise to a public mailing list. If they received a complaint, she assumed the RIPE NCC would forward this to the Trusted Contacts to make an evaluation.

Salam said it sounded like what they were doing as a TF was completely separate from the board elections. Their focus was on the RIPE community – it was up to the board to decide whether what they produced was also helpful for them. What Athina described sounded like any other CoC complaint and could be handled in the same way. This meant the CoC Team would be the place to take any issue affecting the RIPE community – whether this involved a potential board candidate or a regular community member. She thought they should do their job and let the board decide if this was good enough, or if the board needed to design a separate process for their elections. But this led to questions about what the CoC Team did with complaints – whether they had to store them to see if someone was repeatedly violating the CoC.  

Brian said his concern was that they might put their process in place and the board would simply agree to use this for their elections. This might lead to a different (or reduced) pool of volunteers for the CoC Team. Some people might not want to get involved in the sorts of issues surrounding board elections.

Salam asked if they needed to decide whether that RIPE NCC elections were out of scope from the beginning.

Brian thought they should decide whether the board should be allowed to simply take the RIPE community’s CoC. His concern was that this would be massive scope creep and it was not up to the board to decide this.

Salam said she was thinking that a violation of the CoC was the same in either case – bad behaviour was bad behaviour. The team would only decide whether something was a violation – it wouldn’t decide on the actual consequences. If someone’s actions meant they were unable to stand in the board elections, that was not the business of the CoC Team.

Denesh said the CoC would be about complaints received during a particular process (e.g. during a RIPE Meeting or on a mailing list). Action would be taken at that time, potentially starting an investigation. It seemed to him that this could also be applied retroactively – people might complain based on something that had happened in the past. He thought they needed to be careful here, and in that way, he partly agreed with both Brian and Salam’s points.

Athina said this might need to be clarified in the process the board would come up with – to show how it would be implemented. She added that the work of the Trusted Contacts had two stages – the first was to evaluate whether there was a violation – the second was to determine an appropriate outcome. In the context of the RIPE community, the Trusted Contacts could do both; they might decide to remove someone from a mailing list, for example. In the case of board elections, they would only be expected to determine whether a violation had occurred, as there was only one outcome if that was the case.

Brian asked if determining someone couldn’t be a candidate could expose the CoC Team to risks. He saw a big difference between saying someone couldn’t attend a RIPE Meeting vs saying they were not eligible to stand in board elections.

Athina said there could be liability issues, but these were the same as in other cases (e.g. arbitration rulings) There were ways to mitigate this risk. There might be an indemnification clause, or they might find liability insurance. This was something she could discuss internally if the TF felt it would be necessary.

Leo summarised his understanding: there would not be a review by the CoC Team/Trusted Contacts of past actions in the context of board elections. So, there was no need to keep records here, as it was only for that brief period during the elections. However, it would impact who would be called on to adjudicate these cases – as they might have a RIPE NCC staff member or a board member on the CoC Team. He didn’t think this was something for them to solve now, but it was something that the RIPE NCC could look at and come up with a plan that didn’t discourage people from joining the CoC Team if they were reluctant to assume additional responsibilities.    

Brian said an alternative was to say that they were a community TF and didn’t want to be dragged into RIPE NCC issues. They already had the issue of having only one community member who was currently the sole arbiter for deciding this. He thought this was overreach and it was foolish of the board and membership to agree to this without properly considering the implications.

Athina clarified that there was no mention of this process in the Articles of Association. In Section 6 of the Elections TF, they talked about Trusted Contacts and in parenthesis said this shouldn’t include RIPE NCC staff and potentially the RIPE Chair.  

4.     Questions

Leo said in the interests of time, he would remove the “Structure” item from the agenda, as this would require some discussion. He asked that they instead focus on the “Questions” element.

Jurisdiction – can process remain the same between different meeting jurisdictions?

Athina said countries obviously had their own restrictions and the community couldn’t violate rule of law in other countries. But you could also have agreements between private individuals, and these were none of these countries’ business (provided they didn’t violate the laws/values of these countries). If they said that, for a RIPE Meeting, all participants would have to enter into an agreement with the RIPE NCC (as the organiser), and the CoC was part of this agreement, then participants would be bound by the CoC. If they violated this, the RIPE NCC would have the right to ask them to leave. Ultimately, they were talking about a private agreement, and the country the meeting was being held in didn’t play a big role here.

Record keeping

Leo said the RIPE NCC had said in its past impact analysis that it wanted to manage record keeping. Looking at other CoCs they had looked at, it was not simply records of outcomes, but also reports, investigations, working documents, and communications. He asked if the RIPE NCC had any ideas about what it would want to do here.

Athina said when considering personal data, they needed a legal basis for collecting it. She thought their legal basis (from the law) would be “public interest”. The question was how long they could hold this data. The answer would be for as long as appropriate, according to purpose. She imagined that the CoC Team would gather data during its investigations. The question was whether this data should be deleted once the investigation was concluded. However, if there was an appeal process, then this data would need to be held at least for as long as this appeal process. Another question was whether there would be a “three-strike” approach; if-so, they would need to keep information about past cases. On the other hand, if each case was taken on its merits and each report started with a clean slate, then they would not be able to keep this data (or at least it would have to be anonymised).

Salam said she was curious how this was done in other communities and whether they were making this overly complicated.

Brian said many of the events he was involved in were bad at keeping records – especially in terms of identifying patterns of behaviour (which was the primary reason to keep reports in his view).

Athina said in that case, they would need to make a case and build a story to support their argument that they would keep this information in the public interest.

Leo said his understanding of the RIPE NCC’s impact analysis was that it would need to have some kind of database, at least of decisions, so it could properly implement them. If someone was not able to attend the next three RIPE Meetings or was not able to post to mailing lists for six months – then the RIPE NCC would need to have access to this information so it could track whether it was implemented and when it would need to expire. What Brian had said in terms of behavioural trends – if they had four reports about a person that were not actionable but showed a trend – this was something they would also need to think through as a group.

Brian said these were some of the more complicated questions he had seen around CoCs. If someone was consistently skirting the line, then it was easy for people to forget. People also often overlooked the fact that if someone was constantly skirting the line, perhaps it indicated wider issues. So, this seemed like a reason to keep this information.

Leo suggested they could steal elements from other communities (properly attributed) and try to fit this into something for Athina to review.

Brian noted that the RIPE NCC as secretariat and meeting host had certain things it needed to cover. Due to the risk-averse nature of the RIPE NCC, they might find themselves in a situation that was more formal than what a smaller community might be able to get away with.

Salam said there was the question of where they stopped and where the RIPE NCC began. Perhaps their job as a TF was just to give a decision – they could delete data that was used to create a decision after a certain point (i.e. appeal) and let the RIPE NCC handle this.

Regarding actions, Leo said he’d put together something around the structure of the document. He would appreciate if the TF could start editing this or making comments. Regarding their timeline, they had hoped to get something out by November, which was a little ambitious.

Action: TF members to review document and provide comments on structure

Action: Leo to put together initial text regarding record-keeping.

5.     Communication

Leo said that, as the work of the TF hadn’t progressed as quickly as they had planned, perhaps they might consider whether further communication with the community was needed.

Antony said that as the RIPE Meeting was behind them, perhaps they should wait until they had something more specific to say. It would be good to share some general directions or open questions with the community in advance of publishing an updated draft, to get initial feedback and avoid any surprises.

Salam asked if they should share the structure once they had it.

Antony said potentially, otherwise they might share some leading questions.

Brian said he didn’t think they needed to send an update in November. Everyone understood that timelines were often a little blurry for TFs and he would prefer they wait until they had something more substantial to say. The real deadline for them would be the next RIPE Meeting.

Denesh suggested a short and very quick update before the end of the year. Perhaps they could simply note that they were meeting every two weeks. That way, the community would see that work was happening and progress was being made.

Leo said that was good. He added that he and Denesh would soon meet with the RIPE Chair Team to give them an update – they seemed to want to maintain regular contact with the TFs to see how they were going.

Brian suggested that Leo gather the RIPE Chair Team’s thoughts on the issue of the RIPE CoC being applied to RIPE NCC Executive Board elections.

Leo said he would do that.

Action: Leo to ask for RIPE Chair Team’s perspective on CoC/RIPE NCC board elections.

6.     Review of actions from meeting

Action: TF members to review document and provide comments on structure

Action: Leo to put together initial text regarding record-keeping.

Action: Leo to ask for RIPE Chair Team’s perspective on CoC/RIPE NCC board elections.

(From previous call): RIPE NCC to request statistical information from trusted contacts.

7.     AOB

It was confirmed that the next TF call would take place according to the regular Friday schedule.