A deeper look into the official response by the WMF raises some questions about what it means in practice and whether a plain English reading of the words is sufficient.
Q1: WMF tested open source solutions "[Surveys] [...] we have previously tested and attempted to use open source solutions such as LimeSurvey"
Can someone please provide the list of the multiple open source solutions that the WMF has tested and the reports of why they were each abandoned? This would be incredibly helpful for WMF Affiliates who are doing exactly the same thing.
Q2: Legal objections "[...] our Enterprise agreement with Google prevents Google from accessing the data for their own uses and requires them to inform the Foundation of any requests for data that they receive prior to disclosure, allowing us an opportunity to file a legal objection. [...] we have agreements with other services like Qualtrics" Re-reading this, it seems an astonishingly generous and legally binding commitment from Google, Qualtrics, and presumably other suppliers that have not been named. These suppliers will refuse to cooperate with legal investigations, such as US Government agencies, or their own internal security threats, before consulting with WMF Legal, and will wait for WMF Legal to object.
The question is, can someone please provide a link to a WMF-funded or approved survey where this agreement was in place, or is it a statement of what might happen in the future? Based on my understanding of existing surveys like the still running UCoC survey, the WMF terms and conditions and the referenced Google terms and conditions are in direct contradiction to this assertion by the WMF, and WMF Legal.
Q3: Geographical restriction "[...] we are purposefully not asking questions about sexual orientation or gender in any geographies where same-sex relations or identifying as transgender are criminalized."
Can someone please link to a WMF-funded or approved survey where this happened, or is this an ambition for the future that has not happened yet? In the example of the running UCoC survey (Google docs) this is not in place. There is a question about gender identity that has the potential to out people as transgender, and there is no technical mechanism to filter by geographical location, nor are volunteers asked to limit themselves if they live in a list of "hostile" countries.
Thanks, Fae