Okay, that's enough, Trilliium. You've now made a personal attack against
an identifiable individual based on gossip and rumour.
Stop.
Risker
On 29 June 2014 10:18, Trillium Corsage <trillium2014(a)yandex.com> wrote:
Pine,
An analogous argument to the one you're making is: someone who intends to
rob your home will be able to get in one way or other, so why bother
locking the doors when you go out. This is not a good argument.
You're calling into question the reliability of every identification
document copy ever presented to the WMF by an advanced-rights-seeking
administrator because a really sophisticated wrongdoer (I dunno, Chinese
military intelligence, with whom arbitrator Timotheus Canens is said by
some to be associated?) could make a masterful forgery that beats the
system. The fact is that 95% of them, I'd suppose, are going to be okay and
the identification requirement is going to be an effective deterrent to at
least the casual among the bad apples. And of course, once they've truly
identified, the personal accountability aspects of it are going to keep in
line once well-intentioned administrators that might be tempted to go bad
for some reason.
"Forging identification documents is not impossible" is another variation
of the "perfection is not attainable" and "no policy can be a magical
solution" arguments put forth previously on this mailing list by the WMF's
deputy general counsel Luis Villa. I've attempted to answer those by
explaining that you can have a pretty good and effective policy without
having an infallible one.
Trillium Corsage
29.06.2014, 07:32, "Pine W" <wiki.pine(a)gmail.com>om>:
Trillium,
I am having difficulty understanding how retaining copies of possibly
forged identification documents helps anyone with holding accountable any
rogue functionary or OTRS user. Can you explain that please? Surely
someone
who intends to misuse the tools will be smart
enough to forge an
identification document. Even in the United States, forging
identification
documents is not impossible, and the police
occasionally catch people
creating such documents.
Pine
On Fri, Jun 27, 2014 at 7:42 AM, Trillium Corsage <
trillium2014(a)yandex.com>
wrote:
> @Nathan
>
> You said "so if you want to argue that such users should be positively
> identified, then please make some practical suggestions (which you have
> conspicuously avoided doing so far). How should identities be
confirmed? In
> what circumstances should the ID information
be disclosed, and to whom?
> What, fundamentally, is the usefulness in collecting this information
to
> begin with? What are the use cases in which
it is necessary?"
>
> It would be a good faith evaluation of the copy of the identification
> document provided. There's no need to be quarrelsome about the
practical
> suggestions I've "conspicuously
avoided." I did at least suggest a
secure
> filing cabinet and making use of a removable
hard-drive. As to the
precise
> criteria by which an identification document
is deemed "good enough,"
I'd
> suppose those would be developed on a good
faith basis by the action
> officer. Nobody is depending on perfection by that individual. The
> principle would be that the document appears genuine, has the minimum
> elements settled on by the policy (name, age, address, possibly other
> elements). If the document is in a foreign language, say Swahili, and
the
> WMF person can't read that, I would
think it would be a "do the best
you
> can" and file it by respective
Wikipedia and username. None of these
are
> insurmountable obstacles. The answer to
"this is hard" is not "well,
let's
> just stop doing it." The answer is
"this is important, let's just do
the
> best we can."
>
> I have called for a basic examination of the document, not any
> verification process. I'd suppose if the document looked suspect in
some
> way, then a telephone call or follow-up
could be done, and that would
be a
> "verification," but I would expect
that to be the exception, not the
rule.
> Again, these details would be settled by the
hands-on person, not by me
> attempting to write a ten-page standard operating procedure while
Nathan
> zings me with "what are your
specifics" on the mailing list.
>
> "What is the usefulness in collecting this information to begin with?"
> Well, I thought the premise here was obvious. It was obvious enough to
> those that crafted the previous policy in the first place. It
establishes
> some level of accountability to those
individuals accorded access to
the
> personally-identifying information of
editors. Personal accountability
> encourages acting with self-control and restraint. With apologies to
the
> other person that responded, anonymity
encourages a care-free and
> unrestricted handling of that data, and in fact to some of these
people it
> indeed yields a MMORPG (multimedia online
roleplaying game)
environment,
> and they will do whatever they want, because
they are free from
> accountability.
>
> The other key aspect of usefulness is to the rank and file editors.
They
> will feel better knowing that if some
creepazoid or cyberbully starts
going
> over their IPs, and of course Googling and
otherwise sleuthing for
more on
> them, that at least the WMF knows who they
are, and the rank and file
> editor potentially has some recourse if it finally comes to it. So I
say
> the usefulness there is treating editors
right and furnishing a safer
> environment for them, in which they are not so exposed to anonymous
> administrators.
>
> Thank you for your response.
>
> Trillium Corsage (by the way although "Trillium" is a type of flower,
I am
> in fact a dude. So please use male pronouns
if it occurs to you. It was
> just an email address I picked sort of randomly and then I ran with it
as
pseudonym).
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