Towards more globally inclusive security conferences

This is a public list of some of my statements concerning the issue of IEEE Security&Privacy, NDSS, and USENIX Security only being hosted in the US. My most public statement so far was in my role as IEEE S&P 2024 Research Ethics Committee chair at the opening ceremony after presenting statistics about the ethics review process, but this did not seem to have been recorded.

The gist of the closing of my statement at the opening ceremony was that S&P is doing a huge disservice to the global security and privacy research community by excluding all members who are not able to travel to the US – for various diverse reasons, including political and economical.

This was in 2024, and since then, the situation has significtrueantly worsened. In 2025, after he-who-shall-not-be-named-because-that-is-what-he-is-thriving-on started to become king of the US, the country has been rapidly slipping into a state of lawlessness. I personally may still be able to travel there with my Austrian citizenship and “Caucasian” appearance (though I am an EU academic and therefore in a particular class of perceived enemies, it seems, and unwilling to share all my email addresses, phone numbers, social media accounts, or DNA) in relative safety. However, in solidarity with those who cannot, I have not in 2025 and will not until the situation normalizes again.

To be clear, this is painful, because it means missing out on 3 out of 4 of the major events in my academic area every year and all the wonderful personal interactions with the great people there. The only conference that already adopted a hopping schedule a while ago is ACM CCS (in 2025 in Taipei, so this is where I traveled). I cannot in good conscience support this situation anymore, and that unfortunately includes serving on the program committees of these conferences until there is at least a clear plan to alleviate the exclusion of a significant part of our community.

(Small note: I am still publishing with ACM, and occasionally IEEE, because those organizations, while dominated by US residents and occasionally interests, still seem to try to serve the global academic public. But I highly respect colleagues who already draw the line with them as well.)

NDSS 2026: My reply to being invited to serve on the program committee (2025-03-28)

Thank you for the invitation and the trust it implies!

Unfortunately, under the assumption that NDSS 2026 will again be hosted in San Diego, I have to decline. One fact is that the US is not currently a safe country to travel to for a signification subset of the global academic security research community. With very high probability, I will not travel to the US for the time being, even though my Austrian passport and tenured position put me in one of the most privileged non-US-citizen classes. Another fact is that 3 out of the “big 4” security conferences do not yet seem to have any plans to start a hopping-around-the-globe schedule that all the other academic fields I have been involved with have adopted long ago. Combined with the relative cost of US-hosted conference travel, this currently makes that part of the academic security community one of the least globally inclusive I am aware of. As I mentioned in my role of IEEE S&P 2024 Research Ethics Committee chair at the opening of the conference last year, this is ethically highly problematic. As a community, we need to have a conversation on changing for the better. Recent US politics and actions have made this ever more urgent. In support of driving such change, I therefore feel morally obliged to stop my engagement with affected conference organizations as long as this conversation and process towards improvement is not happening.

Please accept my personal apologies to the two of you, who were not the decision makers for the hosting location, but have other concerns in getting this event organized. I would very much like to continue to work with both of you, but would ask you to pass on these concerns and resulting decision to the conference chairs as a - potentially small - signal for the strong desire of initiating necessary change.

IEEE S&P 2026: My reply to an account being created in HotCRP (2025-04-17)

Thank you for considering me for the IEEE S&P 2026 program committee and the trust it implies!

Unfortunately, as IEEE S&P 2026 will again be hosted in San Francisco, I have to decline. One fact is that the US is not currently a safe country to travel to for a signification subset of the global academic security research community (youtube.com/watch theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/19/trump-musk-french-scientist-detained; nytimes.com/2025/03/21/nyregion/columbia-response-trump-demands.html: “special officers who will be empowered to remove people from campus or arrest them”). With very high probability, I will not travel to the US for the time being, even though my Austrian passport and tenured position put me in one of the most privileged non-US-citizen classes. Another fact is that 3 out of the “big 4” security conferences do not yet seem to have any plans to start a hopping-around-the-globe schedule that all the other academic fields I have been involved with have adopted long ago. Combined with the relative cost of US-hosted conference travel, this currently makes that part of the academic security community one of the least globally inclusive I am aware of.

As I mentioned in my role of IEEE S&P 2024 Research Ethics Committee chair at the opening of the conference last year, this is ethically highly problematic. As a community, we need to have a conversation on changing for the better. Recent US politics and actions have made this ever more urgent. In support of driving such change, I therefore feel morally obliged to stop my engagement with affected conference organizations as long as this conversation and process towards improvement is not happening.

Please accept my personal apologies to the two of you, who were not the decision makers for the hosting location, but have other concerns in getting this event organized. I would very much like to continue to work with both of you, but would ask you to pass on these concerns and resulting decision to the conference chairs as a - potentially small - signal for the strong desire of initiating necessary change.

MetaCRiSP'26 PC (co-located with IEEE S&P): My reply to being invited to the workshop PC (2025-12-15)

That will work for me and I’m happy to help out with this one, because meta-science is important and has long been neglected in S&P - so thanks for initiating that!

However, I feel obliged to state that I most likely won’t be able to make it to the actual workshop itself. Given the current geopolitical climate (and particularly with the rumors that the US might be actively trying to push Austria to leave the EU…), I am not going to travel to the US at this time. In case the situation improves again before May, I may make it, but consider it unlikely at the current time. Nonetheless, I am happy to help out with the PC in this case.