Re: [libreplanet-discuss] LibrePlanet 2017 and the Trump Police State

[Will Hill]

Thank you for your considerate reply, John.  It is nice to have that context 
and to know this conversation is ongoing.  

I agree that it would be impractical to change this year's conference.  

Is there a way to catalog and measure the damage done by travel restricitons?  
Perhaps the event site can list of people who can't attend, their reasons, 
and some verification of their claims.  Has this been done before?  

Streaming and videos have been nice, thank you.  They are helpful even for 
people who can attend because there's always too much going on at once.  

The relationship between loss of travel rights and the mission of the FSF 
seems straight forward.  Curtailed or eliminated freedom of movement hampers 
our ability to cooperate.  Key verification, for example, is more difficult.  
Cooperation is key to software freedom, so travel restrictions are a direct 
threat, even if cooperation happens otherwise. 

As Richard Stallman once told me, our rights are not divisible, so the direct 
effects are only the beginning of the harm done.  When someone has power over 
some part of our lives or the lives of our friends, they can use it to 
extract more power and violate us in other ways.  

Under Bush, I learned to hate air travel.  I was "randomly" selected almost 
every time I flew for job interviews.  My laptop was taken for out of sight 
inspection several times.  On one occasion, my major professor had to argue 
on my behalf so that I would not miss a flight to an imaging conference.  One 
of my worst travel experiences happened in Boston, where I was separated from 
my wife and two year old daughter who had just had heart surgery.  I have 
never felt more alone and helpless in my life than I did listening to my 
baby's terrified screams as TSA agents prodded her diapers for bombs.  Travel 
was less awful for a while, but I'm afraid it is going to get worse than it 
was.