On 15/09/2007, Erik Zachte <erikzachte(a)infodisiac.com> wrote:
If a Chinese or Iranian university offered to sign a
confidentiality
agreement, would you accept it? Or an institute in another country where
they exchange students with?
Spain has (multiple) laws which make unauthorised or negligent release
of personally identifiable data a criminal offence, and a government
which generally respects them; Iran and China do not. Invoking the
Evil Totalitarian Bogeyman isn't really helpful, here; there's no
reason we have to treat all applicants the same way.
I am not questioning the integrity of current
applicants at all. I do have
doubts about where the data will ultimately end up, if gradually tens of
institutions carry our viewer data on their portables, or in 2009 on 1 Tb
memory sticks :)
So you make data storage security part of the agreement. Frankly, I
see absolutely no reason we should trust a competent, serious,
university research department any *less* than we trust WMF's ability
to keep tabs on who's got hold of the data...
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk