On 11.08.2018 17:20, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
On 08/11/2018 01:15 PM, Judit Foglszinger wrote:It's weird to compromise the privacy of all attendees, because something bad could happen or someone could commit a crime.They do the same on aircraft and most people seem okay with simply because you have to weigh your loss of privacy against the win of safety on board.
It has nothing to do with safety on board.In any case there is a stricter entry policy. On DebConf we want not to to door checks. All people are welcome, so our venue is open.
In facts often we uses universities, where there is no check on people who can enter.
Debconf is not known for the high number of criminals among it's attendees, rather the opposite.I was not assuming that at all. But the thing is, you are never able to see into someone's mind so it doesn't hurt to have at least some sort of suspiciousness.If data collection and insisting on real names would start because of a single incident, that "could have been avoided", that would be the same kind of overreaction, that governments got used to nowadays. This shouldn't be copied by us.Lots of western countries have had mandatory registration with the authorities for years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resident_registration
I organized a DebConf in Switzerland, and I was in registration Team. I can tell you that we never checked the names of the people, and some people registered with an alias. We were fine with it.
On other DebConf, the real name was required, but was handled strictly. You are right, mostly is for "resident", but many people choose not to be accommodated by DebConf. Sometime to have a bed, we have a second registration (e.g. handled by the university, for such rules).
In any case, it seems that we are looking for a problem.For emergency: a list name is a bad thing. It often cause more harm then good, so many hospitals learned not to trust names and documents. (it is not so seldom that people carry the wrong document, independent check will safe lives).
For security: also there a name list is not useful. If you want to kill someone, probably you start to give a wrong name. And as I tell you, we are open (like university, per definition), so a list will never be complete, and it will just distract investigations. People enter and exit university without problem. There are huge number of student, staff, and visitors.
I was in a lot of DebConf, I saw a lot of official document (and also the famous "fake official document") [on older time the signing party were done differently, than we saw the problem]. It is very difficult to discern what it is a official good document, and just a laminated document (or a fake one). I find often very difficult to tell that one person match with the photo of the document. And sometime I cannot read the document (non Latin/Greek/Cyrillic letters).
In short: if a government\university requires to get the names, we ask for them, plus the option for an eventual alias (this was done IIRC in DC12, where the university required name and photo, but as much as possible, we try to keep aliases and privacy). Having an open policy is a plus on DebConf bids. Do you really want to keep out your sweet relative and kids? (or do you think we should register all details just for a visit?)
But we will never ask unnecessary information (ok, we ask for gender and country, but these question are very open (check the question wording), and non mandatory, and we specify that we use statistics just for diversity and "marketing": people and sponsors like to know the share of female, and the number of countries.
ciao cate