Charlie Breindahl writes:

All this is background and only periferally relevant to the question of AoIR conference locations. What really matters is this: I don't feel comfortable about going to the US anymore. I feel that my personal security is threatened and my dignity is violated in ways that are probably hard to understand if you are a US national.

I don't know. I'm a US national and I understand. When I go through O'Hare and see the instructions on fingerprinting, it turns my stomach. Many Americans feel our own security, privacy, and dignity are under threat from our own government via "the Patriot Act" (i.e. use the word "terrorism" and civil rights don't count anymore), no fly lists, and so on. In my own town the FBI sent people to knock on the doors of anarchists to grill them about whether they planned on committing crimes at the Republican convention or knew of anyone who was. In Denver, the FBI did this to a woman who works for the American Friends Service Committee (a Quaker organization committed to non-violent humanitarian assistance). Most of us in academia view the visa issues as a tremendous threat to our well being, not just because of the issues coming up in this discussion but also because of the increased difficulty (and sometimes impossibility) of recruiting scholars and graduate students who are not US citizens. So I fully empathize with the concerns expressed here. They make me really mad, because it is one more reason to be so disappointed with my own country. Regarding AoIR conference venues, all of the sites we have discussed for 2006 are outside the United States. Nancy -- Nancy Baym http://www.ku.edu/home/nbaym Communication Studies, University of Kansas Bailey Hall, 1440 Jayhawk Blvd., Room 102, Lawrence, KS 66045-7574, USA Association of Internet Researchers: http://aoir.org

Thank you Charlie for presenting this European perspective. I would like to go even further in history. Because of our experiences in World War II, I have learned to suspect all forms of registration for profiling purposes, especially when they are situated in a context lacking privacy assurances and fair juridical process. As researchers and academics we need to discuss this with our American colleagues and invite them to conferences in our countries while supporting them in their attempts to change these unjust policies in their own country. The European countries that signed the Schengen accord also have a policy that restrict the free movement of people. However, the privacy laws and juridical process is very different from that of the US. Secondly, none of the US citizens visiting a so-called Schengen country will be subjected to fingerprinting and photographing. Nor will their name, address, and credit card details be known 15 minutes after they board their plane at a US airport (European airlines now turn over 34 pieces of information about each passenger, within 15 minutes of departure. Soon this will change, because of the Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam experience, and they will need this information before we even board a plane). Another concern are our colleagues from Muslim and/or Arab countries. If we know that they are not able to attend conferences in the US, and we continue to organise international conferences in the US, we accept the politics of "us and them". Personally, I am not prepared to do that. I understand that the AoIR conference organisers for 2005 are a bit overwhelmed by the reactions on the choice of venue. But things have changed. We are not talking about frustrating logistics anymore. The new security policies are made possible by the technologies many of us are researching. Maybe we have been looking at these technologies in a too optimistic framework. Greetings, Maja (Netherlands/Norway) On Oct 5, 2004, at 4:35 PM, Charlie Breindahl wrote:

I think that the discussion so far has framed the issue as being aligned with the digital divide between internet "have and have-not" countries (Mexico possibly excepted). I am not sure this is the case. Many Europeans are uncomfortable with current US politics as well.

It has not gone unnoticed that the present US government refers to European hesitance towards the US policy in Iraq in less than flattering terms. We Europeans sometimes find it hard to understand why the US government would expect its friends in Europe to go to war in Iraq for reasons that seem somewhat dubious (weapons of mass destruction, etc.) and simultaneously tutor us about how to avoid terrorism and further democracy in the world.

Subjects like nationalism, terrorism, fundamentalist beliefs, and democracracy versus security have unfortunately been part of the political agenda in Europe since the early seventies. Examples include, but are not limited to, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the Basque separatist organization ETA, the German Baader-Meinhof group, the Italian Red Brigades, the November 17 group in Greece, German nationalist skinheads, etc. We have - unfortunately - a great deal of experience in treating such problems. The present US government acts as if terrorism was a new problem predominantly concerning the US.

All this is background and only periferally relevant to the question of AoIR conference locations. What really matters is this: I don't feel comfortable about going to the US anymore. I feel that my personal security is threatened and my dignity is violated in ways that are probably hard to understand if you are a US national. Electronic fingerprints that go to vast registers, rampant collection of information on foreign travellers, suspects held captive for undetermined periods of time, political radicals killed with remotely controlled missiles, electronic conversations monitored automatically and recorded routinely, credit card transactions traced at a whim... it gives me the creeps! It is directly against my beliefs about the information age and all that I have taught my students about information policy.

I think it is very real and has very little to do with hysterics.