I went through some reservations about sending an invitation to the Hamilton PD's email contact person (P/O Joe Wilson) to come to the meeting. They are similar to Wayne's concerns but include the possibility that some police officers might misinterpret some of Linux and open source views as suspiciously anti-social.
But I have dealt with law enforcement techies and forensic people and found that the vast majority of them don't exhibit that misunderstanding. (Beat cops tend to have a different view because of the nature of their day-to-day jobs is different. Guardian mode rather than analytic/problem solving one.) The invitation was worded to emphases the techie interests. The other minor glitch I weighed was the slight possibility of bad interaction between the police officer who might come and some other attendee. But given that the meeting is open to the public AND that we meet so close to the PD, I figured that it was unlikely for a person having really bad history with the HPD to come to this location anyway. And all the people coming to the HamLUG seem to be fine people. One of the big positives for the invitation was the topic of the presentations I'm can be well presented as positive education. Yes, it would be nice have more visible positive portfolio before making such an invitation but given the proximity of the meeting and PD plus the topic, this may help give a positive impression for the future. It also opens up a communications channel should the HPD or other local PD techies want to learn a bit about Linux as a more secure platform and as a good data & network platform. By the way, one opportunity we missed was the Hamilton Septemberfest this year. It is community event for township and civic groups. Next year, it might be good just to go out there to mingle and mention we're part of the community. J.D. Abolins On Monday 06 October 2003 14:47, Wayne Hardy wrote: > I have mixed feelings about extending invitation to > the PD but on the whole I feel it is a good idea. It > will be good to foster positive relations. I'm > thinking that it will be good to develop positive > relationships with community groups and agencies in > general and specifically because if any questions > arise in the future about what we're up to (1) we'll > be seen in a better light and (2) they'll be less > hesitent ask us about our activities giving us a > chance to explain them. > > I'll give it a yea (what's that term: cautions > optimisim?).
