George Herbert wrote:
On Nov 28, 2007 2:18 PM, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
The principle that secret evidence should not be the basis for punishments is more important
I'm confused... we do that all the time with Checkuser results. Why would other information of similarly sensitive nature not be both used and treated with care in terms of distribution and privacy concerns?
Checkuser is a defined operation. It has been pre-approved for use under specified circumstances. When it was first introduced there was talk about having at least two users authorized on each project so that they could watch each other. Suggestions of abuse have been raised before, but that too has a limited scope.
The current arguments relate to less well defined processes. When transparency is important the circumstances where information must be restricted need to be made very clear, or people will start to imagine all sorts of conspiracies. Not saying who information came from may be perfectly acceptable, but not saying what the sin was or giving the person an opportunity to defend himself is bound to create problems.
Ec