Hi,
2015-03-13 5:54 GMT+01:00 MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com:
phoebe ayers wrote:
(...)
Education is apolitical.
Education is certainly not apolitical. People with different political opinions support education, but free education like the one promoted by the WMF is certainly more a political issue than social networks. That's why the WMF involvement is more logical than social networks and commercial entities.
Regards,
Yann
I don't see making the leap from being an educational non-profit with an unusually heavy focus on engineering to doing all of this and also engaging in political advocacy as being a very good idea. If anything, we should play to our strengths and use technology to mitigate surveillance as much as is reasonable, if this is a real concern to our users. The extent to which Wikimedia users are concerned still seems arguable, as people have noted that other sites such as Facebook and Google contain far more private and personal information.[*]
I trust our legal team to make decisions about what legal actions to participate in.
It's been noted that there are a lot of legal issues around the world that the Wikimedia Foundation legal team could attempt to resolve. In fact, in probably any case, helping out in some small country would be a lot more likely to have a positive result over trying to fight the U.S. government. Mass surveillance is an abomination, but I think the role of the Wikimedia Foundation is to develop, support, and grow Wikimedia projects and I'm not sure this lawsuit is really doing that.
Whether the Wikimedia Foundation should be engaged in political advocacy, and if so, who decides when and to what extent, seem like issues where there should be Wikimedia community, Board, and staff involvement.
I'm wary of the precedent that we're setting here in terms of this being cited in the future as a reason to join other legal actions around the world. I'm also wary of of the potentially dangerous and unbalanced power it gives staff members to use Wikimedia as a political tool. I happen to sympathize with the position being taken today, but what about the future?
Thank you for the thoughtful and informative reply. :-)
MZMcBride
[*] Just as a side note, tracking users also comes up in the context of trying to determine the number of unique page views for Wikimedia wikis. There are values and principles questions at play, on a global scale.