Hi All,
I’m writing to let you know that today the Wikimedia Foundation[1] is filing suit against the National Security Agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency, the Department of Justice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Justice, and the U.S. Attorney General https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Attorney_General[2] in order to challenge certain mass surveillance practices carried out by the U.S. government. We believe these practices are impinging the freedom to learn, inquire, and explore on Wikimedia sites.
Since the 2013 mass surveillance disclosures, we’ve heard concerns from the community about privacy on Wikipedia. This lawsuit is a step towards addressing the community's justified concerns. We believe that the surveillance methods being employed by the NSA under the authority of the FISA Amendments Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Act_of_1978_Amendments_Act_of_2008 negatively impact our users' ability and willingness to participate in our projects. Today, we fight back.
An op-ed http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/10/opinion/stop-spying-on-wikipedia-users.html?_r=0 by Lila and Jimmy about the lawsuit, and Wikimedia's stance on government surveillance, appeared in The New York Times this morning. Additionally, we just published a blog post https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/03/10/wikimedia-v-nsa/ with more information about the suit. (The post will also up on Meta for translation).
Best,
Michelle Paulson
Senior Legal Counsel
Wikimedia Foundation
mpaulson@wikimedia.org
[1] We are being represented by the American Civil Liberties Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_Liberties_Union (ACLU). Other plaintiffs include The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers http://www.nacdl.org/, Human Rights Watch http://www.hrw.org/, Amnesty International USA http://www.amnestyusa.org/, Pen American Center https://www.pen.org/, Global Fund for Women http://www.globalfundforwomen.org/, The Nation Magazine http://www.thenation.com/, The Rutherford Institute https://www.rutherford.org/, and Washington Office on Latin America http://www.wola.org/.
[2] Other named defendants include: Michael Rogers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_S._Rogers, in his official capacity as Director of the National Security Agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Director_of_the_National_Security_Agency and Chief of the Central Security Service; Office of the Director of National Intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Director_of_National_Intelligence; James Clapper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_R._Clapper, in his official capacity as Director of National Intelligence; and Eric Holder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Holder, in his official capacity as Attorney General https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Attorney_General of the United States.
*NOTICE: This message may be confidential or legally privileged. If you have received it by accident, please delete it and let us know about the mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation and for legal/ethical reasons, I cannot give legal advice to, or serve as a lawyer for, community members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity. For more on what this means, please see our legal disclaimer https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Legal_Disclaimer.*
Hi,
Wow! I am proud to be a volunteer working with an organisation daring to take such steps.
I hope that this will bring concrete results.
Best regards,
Yann
2015-03-10 8:53 GMT+01:00 Michelle Paulson mpaulson@wikimedia.org:
Hi All,
I’m writing to let you know that today the Wikimedia Foundation[1] is filing suit against the National Security Agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency, the Department of Justice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Justice, and the U.S. Attorney General https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Attorney_General[2] in order to challenge certain mass surveillance practices carried out by the U.S. government. We believe these practices are impinging the freedom to learn, inquire, and explore on Wikimedia sites.
Since the 2013 mass surveillance disclosures, we’ve heard concerns from the community about privacy on Wikipedia. This lawsuit is a step towards addressing the community's justified concerns. We believe that the surveillance methods being employed by the NSA under the authority of the FISA Amendments Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Act_of_1978_Amendments_Act_of_2008 negatively impact our users' ability and willingness to participate in our projects. Today, we fight back.
An op-ed http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/10/opinion/stop-spying-on-wikipedia-users.html?_r=0 by Lila and Jimmy about the lawsuit, and Wikimedia's stance on government surveillance, appeared in The New York Times this morning. Additionally, we just published a blog post https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/03/10/wikimedia-v-nsa/ with more information about the suit. (The post will also up on Meta for translation).
Best,
Michelle Paulson
Senior Legal Counsel
Wikimedia Foundation
mpaulson@wikimedia.org
[1] We are being represented by the American Civil Liberties Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_Liberties_Union (ACLU). Other plaintiffs include The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers http://www.nacdl.org/, Human Rights Watch http://www.hrw.org/, Amnesty International USA http://www.amnestyusa.org/, Pen American Center https://www.pen.org/, Global Fund for Women http://www.globalfundforwomen.org/, The Nation Magazine http://www.thenation.com/, The Rutherford Institute https://www.rutherford.org/, and Washington Office on Latin America http://www.wola.org/.
[2] Other named defendants include: Michael Rogers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_S._Rogers, in his official capacity as Director of the National Security Agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Director_of_the_National_Security_Agency and Chief of the Central Security Service; Office of the Director of National Intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Director_of_National_Intelligence; James Clapper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_R._Clapper, in his official capacity as Director of National Intelligence; and Eric Holder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Holder, in his official capacity as Attorney General https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Attorney_General of the United States.
*NOTICE: This message may be confidential or legally privileged. If you have received it by accident, please delete it and let us know about the mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation and for legal/ethical reasons, I cannot give legal advice to, or serve as a lawyer for, community members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity. For more on what this means, please see our legal disclaimer https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Legal_Disclaimer.* _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Michelle and Geoff - thank you. This is a big step; I am glad that WMF can help move this case forward.
Chris Keating writes:
I'm not American, but the other co-plaintiffs seem to be civil rights / human rights organisations who are firmly at the left-wing/progressive end of US politics, some of them probably take the US government to court fairly often. So being seen in this company might identify the WMF a
little
with that part of the US political spectrum.
More likely identified with the 'free speech + freedom from surveillance' part of the spectrum, I would think. Which includes both conservative & progressive views.
Equally, the fact that WMF isn't a political organisation and isn't in the habit of suing the US Government probably adds a lot of weight to the campaign!
Let's hope so. A key point is that the extraordinary overreach of this surveillance affects everyone.
Sam
On Tue, Mar 10, 2015 at 4:27 AM, Yann Forget yannfo@gmail.com wrote:
Hi,
Wow! I am proud to be a volunteer working with an organisation daring to take such steps.
I hope that this will bring concrete results.
Best regards,
Yann
2015-03-10 8:53 GMT+01:00 Michelle Paulson mpaulson@wikimedia.org:
Hi All,
I’m writing to let you know that today the Wikimedia Foundation[1] is filing suit against the National Security Agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency, the
Department of
Justice <
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Justice%3E,
and the U.S. Attorney General https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Attorney_General[2] in
order
to challenge certain mass surveillance practices carried out by the U.S. government. We believe these practices are impinging the freedom to
learn,
inquire, and explore on Wikimedia sites.
Since the 2013 mass surveillance disclosures, we’ve heard concerns from
the
community about privacy on Wikipedia. This lawsuit is a step towards addressing the community's justified concerns. We believe that the surveillance methods being employed by the NSA under the authority of
the FISA
Amendments Act <
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Act_of_1978_...
negatively impact our users' ability and willingness to participate in
our
projects. Today, we fight back.
An op-ed <
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/10/opinion/stop-spying-on-wikipedia-users.htm...
by Lila and Jimmy about the lawsuit, and Wikimedia's stance on government surveillance, appeared in The New York Times this morning. Additionally,
we
just published a blog post https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/03/10/wikimedia-v-nsa/ with more information about the suit. (The post will also up on Meta for
translation).
Best,
Michelle Paulson
Senior Legal Counsel
Wikimedia Foundation
mpaulson@wikimedia.org
[1] We are being represented by the American Civil Liberties Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_Liberties_Union (ACLU). Other plaintiffs include The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers http://www.nacdl.org/, Human Rights Watch http://www.hrw.org/, Amnesty International USA http://www.amnestyusa.org/, Pen American Center https://www.pen.org/, Global Fund for Women http://www.globalfundforwomen.org/, The Nation Magazine http://www.thenation.com/, The Rutherford Institute https://www.rutherford.org/, and Washington Office on Latin America http://www.wola.org/.
[2] Other named defendants include: Michael Rogers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_S._Rogers, in his official
capacity
as Director of the National Security Agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Director_of_the_National_Security_Agency and Chief of the Central Security Service; Office of the Director of National Intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Director_of_National_Intelligence; James Clapper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_R._Clapper, in his
official
capacity as Director of National Intelligence; and Eric Holder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Holder, in his official capacity as Attorney General https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Attorney_General
of
the United States.
*NOTICE: This message may be confidential or legally privileged. If you have received it by accident, please delete it and let us know about the mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation and for
legal/ethical
reasons, I cannot give legal advice to, or serve as a lawyer for,
community
members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity. For
more
on what this means, please see our legal disclaimer https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Legal_Disclaimer.* _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
On Wed, Mar 11, 2015 at 6:40 AM, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
Let's hope so. A key point is that the extraordinary overreach of this surveillance affects everyone.
I am absolutely delighted that the Wikimedia Foundation has taken this courageous step - precisely because surveillance affects us all, and more specifically Wikipedia users. For me, the value lies in taking the step: regardless of whether we win or lose. I have no doubt it will be a tough battle and that the legal team has taken this into calculation.
Congratulations, Michelle and Geoff and may the force be with you! Bishakha
Thank you for taking this action.
All the best,
Michael
Michelle Paulson mailto:mpaulson@wikimedia.org 10 March 2015 07:53 Hi All,
I’m writing to let you know that today the Wikimedia Foundation[1] is filing suit against the National Security Agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency, the Department of Justice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Justice, and the U.S. Attorney General https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Attorney_General[2] in order to challenge certain mass surveillance practices carried out by the U.S. government. We believe these practices are impinging the freedom to learn, inquire, and explore on Wikimedia sites.
Since the 2013 mass surveillance disclosures, we’ve heard concerns from the community about privacy on Wikipedia. This lawsuit is a step towards addressing the community's justified concerns. We believe that the surveillance methods being employed by the NSA under the authority of the FISA Amendments Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Act_of_1978_Amendments_Act_of_2008 negatively impact our users' ability and willingness to participate in our projects. Today, we fight back.
An op-ed http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/10/opinion/stop-spying-on-wikipedia-users.html?_r=0 by Lila and Jimmy about the lawsuit, and Wikimedia's stance on government surveillance, appeared in The New York Times this morning. Additionally, we just published a blog post https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/03/10/wikimedia-v-nsa/ with more information about the suit. (The post will also up on Meta for translation).
Best,
Michelle Paulson
Senior Legal Counsel
Wikimedia Foundation
mpaulson@wikimedia.org
[1] We are being represented by the American Civil Liberties Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_Liberties_Union (ACLU). Other plaintiffs include The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers http://www.nacdl.org/, Human Rights Watch http://www.hrw.org/, Amnesty International USA http://www.amnestyusa.org/, Pen American Center https://www.pen.org/, Global Fund for Women http://www.globalfundforwomen.org/, The Nation Magazine http://www.thenation.com/, The Rutherford Institute https://www.rutherford.org/, and Washington Office on Latin America http://www.wola.org/.
[2] Other named defendants include: Michael Rogers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_S._Rogers, in his official capacity as Director of the National Security Agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Director_of_the_National_Security_Agency and Chief of the Central Security Service; Office of the Director of National Intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Director_of_National_Intelligence; James Clapper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_R._Clapper, in his official capacity as Director of National Intelligence; and Eric Holder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Holder, in his official capacity as Attorney General https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Attorney_General of the United States.
Hoi, I applaud this action. Great.
The next step is making it not so easy for the NSA to harvest their ill gotten gains. We could and should share our data from cache servers that are much closer to our users ie outside the USA. The benefit would not be so much in frustrating the NSA but more in providing our readers, even our editors with a better service. So far the argument NOT to do is that everything in the USA was peachy. Thanks, GerardM
On 10 March 2015 at 08:53, Michelle Paulson mpaulson@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi All,
I’m writing to let you know that today the Wikimedia Foundation[1] is filing suit against the National Security Agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency, the Department of Justice <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Justice
,
and the U.S. Attorney General https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Attorney_General[2] in order to challenge certain mass surveillance practices carried out by the U.S. government. We believe these practices are impinging the freedom to learn, inquire, and explore on Wikimedia sites.
Since the 2013 mass surveillance disclosures, we’ve heard concerns from the community about privacy on Wikipedia. This lawsuit is a step towards addressing the community's justified concerns. We believe that the surveillance methods being employed by the NSA under the authority of the FISA Amendments Act < https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Act_of_1978_...
negatively impact our users' ability and willingness to participate in our projects. Today, we fight back.
An op-ed < http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/10/opinion/stop-spying-on-wikipedia-users.htm...
by Lila and Jimmy about the lawsuit, and Wikimedia's stance on government surveillance, appeared in The New York Times this morning. Additionally, we just published a blog post https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/03/10/wikimedia-v-nsa/ with more information about the suit. (The post will also up on Meta for translation).
Best,
Michelle Paulson
Senior Legal Counsel
Wikimedia Foundation
mpaulson@wikimedia.org
[1] We are being represented by the American Civil Liberties Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_Liberties_Union (ACLU). Other plaintiffs include The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers http://www.nacdl.org/, Human Rights Watch http://www.hrw.org/, Amnesty International USA http://www.amnestyusa.org/, Pen American Center https://www.pen.org/, Global Fund for Women http://www.globalfundforwomen.org/, The Nation Magazine http://www.thenation.com/, The Rutherford Institute https://www.rutherford.org/, and Washington Office on Latin America http://www.wola.org/.
[2] Other named defendants include: Michael Rogers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_S._Rogers, in his official capacity as Director of the National Security Agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Director_of_the_National_Security_Agency and Chief of the Central Security Service; Office of the Director of National Intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Director_of_National_Intelligence; James Clapper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_R._Clapper, in his official capacity as Director of National Intelligence; and Eric Holder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Holder, in his official capacity as Attorney General https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Attorney_General of the United States.
*NOTICE: This message may be confidential or legally privileged. If you have received it by accident, please delete it and let us know about the mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation and for legal/ethical reasons, I cannot give legal advice to, or serve as a lawyer for, community members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity. For more on what this means, please see our legal disclaimer https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Legal_Disclaimer.* _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
this sounds exactly as a thing we, as a movement, need institutional support of WMF for. Thanks for doing that.
dariusz "pundit"
On Tue, Mar 10, 2015 at 8:53 AM, Michelle Paulson mpaulson@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi All,
I’m writing to let you know that today the Wikimedia Foundation[1] is filing suit against the National Security Agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency, the Department of Justice <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Justice
,
and the U.S. Attorney General https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Attorney_General[2] in order to challenge certain mass surveillance practices carried out by the U.S. government. We believe these practices are impinging the freedom to learn, inquire, and explore on Wikimedia sites.
Since the 2013 mass surveillance disclosures, we’ve heard concerns from the community about privacy on Wikipedia. This lawsuit is a step towards addressing the community's justified concerns. We believe that the surveillance methods being employed by the NSA under the authority of the FISA Amendments Act < https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Act_of_1978_...
negatively impact our users' ability and willingness to participate in our projects. Today, we fight back.
An op-ed < http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/10/opinion/stop-spying-on-wikipedia-users.htm...
by Lila and Jimmy about the lawsuit, and Wikimedia's stance on government surveillance, appeared in The New York Times this morning. Additionally, we just published a blog post https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/03/10/wikimedia-v-nsa/ with more information about the suit. (The post will also up on Meta for translation).
Best,
Michelle Paulson
Senior Legal Counsel
Wikimedia Foundation
mpaulson@wikimedia.org
[1] We are being represented by the American Civil Liberties Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_Liberties_Union (ACLU). Other plaintiffs include The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers http://www.nacdl.org/, Human Rights Watch http://www.hrw.org/, Amnesty International USA http://www.amnestyusa.org/, Pen American Center https://www.pen.org/, Global Fund for Women http://www.globalfundforwomen.org/, The Nation Magazine http://www.thenation.com/, The Rutherford Institute https://www.rutherford.org/, and Washington Office on Latin America http://www.wola.org/.
[2] Other named defendants include: Michael Rogers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_S._Rogers, in his official capacity as Director of the National Security Agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Director_of_the_National_Security_Agency and Chief of the Central Security Service; Office of the Director of National Intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Director_of_National_Intelligence; James Clapper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_R._Clapper, in his official capacity as Director of National Intelligence; and Eric Holder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Holder, in his official capacity as Attorney General https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Attorney_General of the United States.
*NOTICE: This message may be confidential or legally privileged. If you have received it by accident, please delete it and let us know about the mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation and for legal/ethical reasons, I cannot give legal advice to, or serve as a lawyer for, community members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity. For more on what this means, please see our legal disclaimer https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Legal_Disclaimer.* _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
for an organization taking on the NSA for "spying"..why are we using https? doesn't that show that we are already scared of them and running with our tail between our legs?
On 3/10/15, Dariusz Jemielniak darekj@alk.edu.pl wrote:
this sounds exactly as a thing we, as a movement, need institutional support of WMF for. Thanks for doing that.
dariusz "pundit"
On Tue, Mar 10, 2015 at 8:53 AM, Michelle Paulson mpaulson@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi All,
I’m writing to let you know that today the Wikimedia Foundation[1] is filing suit against the National Security Agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency, the Department of Justice <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Justice
,
and the U.S. Attorney General https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Attorney_General[2] in order to challenge certain mass surveillance practices carried out by the U.S. government. We believe these practices are impinging the freedom to learn, inquire, and explore on Wikimedia sites.
Since the 2013 mass surveillance disclosures, we’ve heard concerns from the community about privacy on Wikipedia. This lawsuit is a step towards addressing the community's justified concerns. We believe that the surveillance methods being employed by the NSA under the authority of the FISA Amendments Act < https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Act_of_1978_...
negatively impact our users' ability and willingness to participate in our projects. Today, we fight back.
An op-ed < http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/10/opinion/stop-spying-on-wikipedia-users.htm...
by Lila and Jimmy about the lawsuit, and Wikimedia's stance on government surveillance, appeared in The New York Times this morning. Additionally, we just published a blog post https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/03/10/wikimedia-v-nsa/ with more information about the suit. (The post will also up on Meta for translation).
Best,
Michelle Paulson
Senior Legal Counsel
Wikimedia Foundation
mpaulson@wikimedia.org
[1] We are being represented by the American Civil Liberties Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_Liberties_Union (ACLU). Other plaintiffs include The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers http://www.nacdl.org/, Human Rights Watch http://www.hrw.org/, Amnesty International USA http://www.amnestyusa.org/, Pen American Center https://www.pen.org/, Global Fund for Women http://www.globalfundforwomen.org/, The Nation Magazine http://www.thenation.com/, The Rutherford Institute https://www.rutherford.org/, and Washington Office on Latin America http://www.wola.org/.
[2] Other named defendants include: Michael Rogers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_S._Rogers, in his official capacity as Director of the National Security Agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Director_of_the_National_Security_Agency and Chief of the Central Security Service; Office of the Director of National Intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Director_of_National_Intelligence; James Clapper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_R._Clapper, in his official capacity as Director of National Intelligence; and Eric Holder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Holder, in his official capacity as Attorney General https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Attorney_General of the United States.
*NOTICE: This message may be confidential or legally privileged. If you have received it by accident, please delete it and let us know about the mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation and for legal/ethical reasons, I cannot give legal advice to, or serve as a lawyer for, community members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity. For more on what this means, please see our legal disclaimer https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Legal_Disclaimer.* _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
--
prof. dr hab. Dariusz Jemielniak kierownik katedry Zarządzania Międzynarodowego i centrum badawczego CROW Akademia Leona Koźmińskiego http://www.crow.alk.edu.pl
członek Akademii Młodych Uczonych Polskiej Akademii Nauk członek Komitetu Polityki Naukowej MNiSW
Wyszła pierwsza na świecie etnografia Wikipedii "Common Knowledge? An Ethnography of Wikipedia" (2014, Stanford University Press) mojego autorstwa http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=24010
Recenzje Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/fdc/welcome_mjx.shtml Pacific Standard: http://www.psmag.com/navigation/books-and-culture/killed-wikipedia-93777/ Motherboard: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/an-ethnography-of-wikipedia The Wikipedian: http://thewikipedian.net/2014/10/10/dariusz-jemielniak-common-knowledge _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
https is generaly increasing privacy of the users. http can be "listen" by anyone. It is like using walkie-talkie - anyone with radio-scanner can listen :-)
2015-03-10 13:26 GMT+01:00 Comet styles cometstyles@gmail.com:
for an organization taking on the NSA for "spying"..why are we using https? doesn't that show that we are already scared of them and running with our tail between our legs?
On 3/10/15, Dariusz Jemielniak darekj@alk.edu.pl wrote:
this sounds exactly as a thing we, as a movement, need institutional support of WMF for. Thanks for doing that.
dariusz "pundit"
On Tue, Mar 10, 2015 at 8:53 AM, Michelle Paulson <
mpaulson@wikimedia.org>
wrote:
Hi All,
I’m writing to let you know that today the Wikimedia Foundation[1] is filing suit against the National Security Agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency, the
Department
of Justice <
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Justice
,
and the U.S. Attorney General https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Attorney_General[2] in
order
to challenge certain mass surveillance practices carried out by the U.S. government. We believe these practices are impinging the freedom to
learn,
inquire, and explore on Wikimedia sites.
Since the 2013 mass surveillance disclosures, we’ve heard concerns from the community about privacy on Wikipedia. This lawsuit is a step towards addressing the community's justified concerns. We believe that the surveillance methods being employed by the NSA under the authority of
the
FISA Amendments Act <
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Act_of_1978_...
negatively impact our users' ability and willingness to participate in
our
projects. Today, we fight back.
An op-ed <
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/10/opinion/stop-spying-on-wikipedia-users.htm...
by Lila and Jimmy about the lawsuit, and Wikimedia's stance on
government
surveillance, appeared in The New York Times this morning. Additionally, we just published a blog post https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/03/10/wikimedia-v-nsa/ with more information about the suit. (The post will also up on Meta for translation).
Best,
Michelle Paulson
Senior Legal Counsel
Wikimedia Foundation
mpaulson@wikimedia.org
[1] We are being represented by the American Civil Liberties Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_Liberties_Union (ACLU). Other plaintiffs include The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers http://www.nacdl.org/, Human Rights Watch http://www.hrw.org/, Amnesty International USA http://www.amnestyusa.org/, Pen American Center https://www.pen.org/, Global Fund for Women http://www.globalfundforwomen.org/, The Nation Magazine http://www.thenation.com/, The Rutherford Institute https://www.rutherford.org/, and Washington Office on Latin America http://www.wola.org/.
[2] Other named defendants include: Michael Rogers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_S._Rogers, in his official capacity as Director of the National Security Agency <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Director_of_the_National_Security_Agency
and Chief of the Central Security Service; Office of the Director of National Intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Director_of_National_Intelligence;
James
Clapper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_R._Clapper, in his
official
capacity as Director of National Intelligence; and Eric Holder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Holder, in his official capacity as Attorney General https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Attorney_General
of
the United States.
*NOTICE: This message may be confidential or legally privileged. If you have received it by accident, please delete it and let us know about the mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation and for
legal/ethical
reasons, I cannot give legal advice to, or serve as a lawyer for, community members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity. For
more
on what this means, please see our legal disclaimer https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Legal_Disclaimer.* _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
--
prof. dr hab. Dariusz Jemielniak kierownik katedry Zarządzania Międzynarodowego i centrum badawczego CROW Akademia Leona Koźmińskiego http://www.crow.alk.edu.pl
członek Akademii Młodych Uczonych Polskiej Akademii Nauk członek Komitetu Polityki Naukowej MNiSW
Wyszła pierwsza na świecie etnografia Wikipedii "Common Knowledge? An Ethnography of Wikipedia" (2014, Stanford University Press) mojego autorstwa http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=24010
Recenzje Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/fdc/welcome_mjx.shtml Pacific Standard:
http://www.psmag.com/navigation/books-and-culture/killed-wikipedia-93777/
Motherboard:
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/an-ethnography-of-wikipedia
The Wikipedian: http://thewikipedian.net/2014/10/10/dariusz-jemielniak-common-knowledge _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
-- Cometstyles
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Greatly done! This is not just news. It is a mark that will be recorded in bold letters in the history of human's quest for knowledge.
-user:ViswaPrabha https://ml.wikipedia.org
On 10 March 2015 at 18:15, Tomasz Ganicz polimerek@gmail.com wrote:
https is generaly increasing privacy of the users. http can be "listen" by anyone. It is like using walkie-talkie - anyone with radio-scanner can listen :-)
2015-03-10 13:26 GMT+01:00 Comet styles cometstyles@gmail.com:
for an organization taking on the NSA for "spying"..why are we using https? doesn't that show that we are already scared of them and running with our tail between our legs?
On 3/10/15, Dariusz Jemielniak darekj@alk.edu.pl wrote:
this sounds exactly as a thing we, as a movement, need institutional support of WMF for. Thanks for doing that.
dariusz "pundit"
On Tue, Mar 10, 2015 at 8:53 AM, Michelle Paulson <
mpaulson@wikimedia.org>
wrote:
Hi All,
I’m writing to let you know that today the Wikimedia Foundation[1] is filing suit against the National Security Agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency, the
Department
of Justice <
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Justice
,
and the U.S. Attorney General https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Attorney_General[2] in
order
to challenge certain mass surveillance practices carried out by the
U.S.
government. We believe these practices are impinging the freedom to
learn,
inquire, and explore on Wikimedia sites.
Since the 2013 mass surveillance disclosures, we’ve heard concerns
from
the community about privacy on Wikipedia. This lawsuit is a step towards addressing the community's justified concerns. We believe that the surveillance methods being employed by the NSA under the authority of
the
FISA Amendments Act <
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Act_of_1978_...
negatively impact our users' ability and willingness to participate in
our
projects. Today, we fight back.
An op-ed <
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/10/opinion/stop-spying-on-wikipedia-users.htm...
by Lila and Jimmy about the lawsuit, and Wikimedia's stance on
government
surveillance, appeared in The New York Times this morning.
Additionally,
we just published a blog post https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/03/10/wikimedia-v-nsa/ with more information about the suit. (The post will also up on Meta for translation).
Best,
Michelle Paulson
Senior Legal Counsel
Wikimedia Foundation
mpaulson@wikimedia.org
[1] We are being represented by the American Civil Liberties Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_Liberties_Union
(ACLU).
Other plaintiffs include The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers http://www.nacdl.org/, Human Rights Watch http://www.hrw.org/, Amnesty International USA http://www.amnestyusa.org/, Pen American Center https://www.pen.org/, Global Fund for Women http://www.globalfundforwomen.org/, The Nation Magazine http://www.thenation.com/, The Rutherford Institute https://www.rutherford.org/, and Washington Office on Latin America http://www.wola.org/.
[2] Other named defendants include: Michael Rogers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_S._Rogers, in his official capacity as Director of the National Security Agency <
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Director_of_the_National_Security_Agency
and Chief of the Central Security Service; Office of the Director of National Intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Director_of_National_Intelligence;
James
Clapper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_R._Clapper, in his
official
capacity as Director of National Intelligence; and Eric Holder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Holder, in his official capacity as Attorney General <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Attorney_General
of
the United States.
*NOTICE: This message may be confidential or legally privileged. If
you
have received it by accident, please delete it and let us know about
the
mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation and for
legal/ethical
reasons, I cannot give legal advice to, or serve as a lawyer for, community members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity. For
more
on what this means, please see our legal disclaimer https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Legal_Disclaimer.* _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
,
mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
--
prof. dr hab. Dariusz Jemielniak kierownik katedry Zarządzania Międzynarodowego i centrum badawczego CROW Akademia Leona Koźmińskiego http://www.crow.alk.edu.pl
członek Akademii Młodych Uczonych Polskiej Akademii Nauk członek Komitetu Polityki Naukowej MNiSW
Wyszła pierwsza na świecie etnografia Wikipedii "Common Knowledge? An Ethnography of Wikipedia" (2014, Stanford University Press) mojego autorstwa http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=24010
Recenzje Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/fdc/welcome_mjx.shtml Pacific Standard:
http://www.psmag.com/navigation/books-and-culture/killed-wikipedia-93777/
Motherboard:
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/an-ethnography-of-wikipedia
The Wikipedian:
http://thewikipedian.net/2014/10/10/dariusz-jemielniak-common-knowledge
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
-- Cometstyles
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
-- Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerek http://www.ganicz.pl/poli/ http://www.cbmm.lodz.pl/work.php?id=29&title=tomasz-ganicz _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
I created draft of the article about the case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Wikimedia_v._NSAin English Wikipedia. I'm not sure it's not too soon to move this draft to the main namespace. Please add content and then move it to main ns when you think it's ready.
Best
On Tue, Mar 10, 2015 at 4:31 PM, ViswaPrabha (വിശ്വപ്രഭ) vp2007@gmail.com wrote:
Greatly done! This is not just news. It is a mark that will be recorded in bold letters in the history of human's quest for knowledge.
-user:ViswaPrabha https://ml.wikipedia.org
On 10 March 2015 at 18:15, Tomasz Ganicz polimerek@gmail.com wrote:
https is generaly increasing privacy of the users. http can be "listen"
by
anyone. It is like using walkie-talkie - anyone with radio-scanner can listen :-)
2015-03-10 13:26 GMT+01:00 Comet styles cometstyles@gmail.com:
for an organization taking on the NSA for "spying"..why are we using https? doesn't that show that we are already scared of them and running with our tail between our legs?
On 3/10/15, Dariusz Jemielniak darekj@alk.edu.pl wrote:
this sounds exactly as a thing we, as a movement, need institutional support of WMF for. Thanks for doing that.
dariusz "pundit"
On Tue, Mar 10, 2015 at 8:53 AM, Michelle Paulson <
mpaulson@wikimedia.org>
wrote:
Hi All,
I’m writing to let you know that today the Wikimedia Foundation[1]
is
filing suit against the National Security Agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency, the
Department
of Justice <
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Justice
,
and the U.S. Attorney General https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Attorney_General[2]
in
order
to challenge certain mass surveillance practices carried out by the
U.S.
government. We believe these practices are impinging the freedom to
learn,
inquire, and explore on Wikimedia sites.
Since the 2013 mass surveillance disclosures, we’ve heard concerns
from
the community about privacy on Wikipedia. This lawsuit is a step towards addressing the community's justified concerns. We believe that the surveillance methods being employed by the NSA under the authority
of
the
FISA Amendments Act <
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Act_of_1978_...
negatively impact our users' ability and willingness to participate
in
our
projects. Today, we fight back.
An op-ed <
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/10/opinion/stop-spying-on-wikipedia-users.htm...
by Lila and Jimmy about the lawsuit, and Wikimedia's stance on
government
surveillance, appeared in The New York Times this morning.
Additionally,
we just published a blog post https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/03/10/wikimedia-v-nsa/ with more information about the suit. (The post will also up on Meta for translation).
Best,
Michelle Paulson
Senior Legal Counsel
Wikimedia Foundation
mpaulson@wikimedia.org
[1] We are being represented by the American Civil Liberties Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_Liberties_Union
(ACLU).
Other plaintiffs include The National Association of Criminal
Defense
Lawyers http://www.nacdl.org/, Human Rights Watch http://www.hrw.org/, Amnesty International USA http://www.amnestyusa.org/, Pen American Center https://www.pen.org/, Global Fund for Women http://www.globalfundforwomen.org/, The Nation Magazine http://www.thenation.com/, The Rutherford Institute https://www.rutherford.org/, and Washington Office on Latin
America
[2] Other named defendants include: Michael Rogers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_S._Rogers, in his official capacity as Director of the National Security Agency <
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Director_of_the_National_Security_Agency
and Chief of the Central Security Service; Office of the Director of National Intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Director_of_National_Intelligence;
James
Clapper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_R._Clapper, in his
official
capacity as Director of National Intelligence; and Eric Holder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Holder, in his official
capacity
as Attorney General <
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Attorney_General
of
the United States.
*NOTICE: This message may be confidential or legally privileged. If
you
have received it by accident, please delete it and let us know about
the
mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation and for
legal/ethical
reasons, I cannot give legal advice to, or serve as a lawyer for, community members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity.
For
more
on what this means, please see our legal disclaimer https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Legal_Disclaimer.* _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
,
<mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org
?subject=unsubscribe>
--
prof. dr hab. Dariusz Jemielniak kierownik katedry Zarządzania Międzynarodowego i centrum badawczego CROW Akademia Leona Koźmińskiego http://www.crow.alk.edu.pl
członek Akademii Młodych Uczonych Polskiej Akademii Nauk członek Komitetu Polityki Naukowej MNiSW
Wyszła pierwsza na świecie etnografia Wikipedii "Common Knowledge? An Ethnography of Wikipedia" (2014, Stanford University Press) mojego autorstwa http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=24010
Recenzje Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/fdc/welcome_mjx.shtml Pacific Standard:
http://www.psmag.com/navigation/books-and-culture/killed-wikipedia-93777/
Motherboard:
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/an-ethnography-of-wikipedia
The Wikipedian:
http://thewikipedian.net/2014/10/10/dariusz-jemielniak-common-knowledge
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
-- Cometstyles
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
-- Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerek http://www.ganicz.pl/poli/ http://www.cbmm.lodz.pl/work.php?id=29&title=tomasz-ganicz _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Kudos to the Legal Team on this important case!
-greg aka varnent
On Tue, Mar 10, 2015 at 9:01 AM, ViswaPrabha (വിശ്വപ്രഭ) vp2007@gmail.com wrote:
Greatly done! This is not just news. It is a mark that will be recorded in bold letters in the history of human's quest for knowledge.
-user:ViswaPrabha https://ml.wikipedia.org
On 10 March 2015 at 18:15, Tomasz Ganicz polimerek@gmail.com wrote:
https is generaly increasing privacy of the users. http can be "listen"
by
anyone. It is like using walkie-talkie - anyone with radio-scanner can listen :-)
2015-03-10 13:26 GMT+01:00 Comet styles cometstyles@gmail.com:
for an organization taking on the NSA for "spying"..why are we using https? doesn't that show that we are already scared of them and running with our tail between our legs?
On 3/10/15, Dariusz Jemielniak darekj@alk.edu.pl wrote:
this sounds exactly as a thing we, as a movement, need institutional support of WMF for. Thanks for doing that.
dariusz "pundit"
On Tue, Mar 10, 2015 at 8:53 AM, Michelle Paulson <
mpaulson@wikimedia.org>
wrote:
Hi All,
I’m writing to let you know that today the Wikimedia Foundation[1]
is
filing suit against the National Security Agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency, the
Department
of Justice <
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Justice
,
and the U.S. Attorney General https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Attorney_General[2]
in
order
to challenge certain mass surveillance practices carried out by the
U.S.
government. We believe these practices are impinging the freedom to
learn,
inquire, and explore on Wikimedia sites.
Since the 2013 mass surveillance disclosures, we’ve heard concerns
from
the community about privacy on Wikipedia. This lawsuit is a step towards addressing the community's justified concerns. We believe that the surveillance methods being employed by the NSA under the authority
of
the
FISA Amendments Act <
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Act_of_1978_...
negatively impact our users' ability and willingness to participate
in
our
projects. Today, we fight back.
An op-ed <
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/10/opinion/stop-spying-on-wikipedia-users.htm...
by Lila and Jimmy about the lawsuit, and Wikimedia's stance on
government
surveillance, appeared in The New York Times this morning.
Additionally,
we just published a blog post https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/03/10/wikimedia-v-nsa/ with more information about the suit. (The post will also up on Meta for translation).
Best,
Michelle Paulson
Senior Legal Counsel
Wikimedia Foundation
mpaulson@wikimedia.org
[1] We are being represented by the American Civil Liberties Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_Liberties_Union
(ACLU).
Other plaintiffs include The National Association of Criminal
Defense
Lawyers http://www.nacdl.org/, Human Rights Watch http://www.hrw.org/, Amnesty International USA http://www.amnestyusa.org/, Pen American Center https://www.pen.org/, Global Fund for Women http://www.globalfundforwomen.org/, The Nation Magazine http://www.thenation.com/, The Rutherford Institute https://www.rutherford.org/, and Washington Office on Latin
America
[2] Other named defendants include: Michael Rogers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_S._Rogers, in his official capacity as Director of the National Security Agency <
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Director_of_the_National_Security_Agency
and Chief of the Central Security Service; Office of the Director of National Intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Director_of_National_Intelligence;
James
Clapper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_R._Clapper, in his
official
capacity as Director of National Intelligence; and Eric Holder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Holder, in his official
capacity
as Attorney General <
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Attorney_General
of
the United States.
*NOTICE: This message may be confidential or legally privileged. If
you
have received it by accident, please delete it and let us know about
the
mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation and for
legal/ethical
reasons, I cannot give legal advice to, or serve as a lawyer for, community members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity.
For
more
on what this means, please see our legal disclaimer https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Legal_Disclaimer.* _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
,
<mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org
?subject=unsubscribe>
--
prof. dr hab. Dariusz Jemielniak kierownik katedry Zarządzania Międzynarodowego i centrum badawczego CROW Akademia Leona Koźmińskiego http://www.crow.alk.edu.pl
członek Akademii Młodych Uczonych Polskiej Akademii Nauk członek Komitetu Polityki Naukowej MNiSW
Wyszła pierwsza na świecie etnografia Wikipedii "Common Knowledge? An Ethnography of Wikipedia" (2014, Stanford University Press) mojego autorstwa http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=24010
Recenzje Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/fdc/welcome_mjx.shtml Pacific Standard:
http://www.psmag.com/navigation/books-and-culture/killed-wikipedia-93777/
Motherboard:
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/an-ethnography-of-wikipedia
The Wikipedian:
http://thewikipedian.net/2014/10/10/dariusz-jemielniak-common-knowledge
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
-- Cometstyles
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
-- Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerek http://www.ganicz.pl/poli/ http://www.cbmm.lodz.pl/work.php?id=29&title=tomasz-ganicz _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
2015-03-10 13:26 GMT+01:00 Comet styles cometstyles@gmail.com:
for an organization taking on the NSA for "spying"..why are we using https? doesn't that show that we are already scared of them and running with our tail between our legs?
(For non-technical readers: the HTTP protocol is the normal way to send around information on the web. HTTPS is the secure way of sending said information, adding encryption among other things, to avoid eavesdropping.)
HTTP traffic can easily be tracked by people sharing the same network, by your Internet service provider and so on. If one cares about privacy, HTTPS is always important. It's worth noting that the NSA is not the only government agency in the world. I'd be even more worried about a number of countries where there would be little chance to fight the intruding party in the courtroom.
Side note: you could probably track most HTTPS traffic to Wikipedia as well, even if you're not the NSA. Normally you would see that the user has accessed Wikipedia, but not which article. A way around that would be to let a spider (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_crawler) track the byte size of Wikipedia articles, which should be individual enough as soon as images are involved and compare it to the size of the page the user just accessed. If two articles happen to be of exactly the same size, compare with incoming and outgoing wiki links and see if the user accessed any page linking to or linked from one the articles to determine which one. But it would at least take some sort of effort, and wouldn't be perfect.
//Johan Jönsson --
Probably a good time for everyone to know about EFF's HTTPS Everywhere:
HTTPS Everywhere is a Firefox, Chrome, and Opera extension that encrypts your communications with many major websites, making your browsing more secure. Encrypt the web: Install HTTPS Everywhere today.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
On Tue, Mar 10, 2015 at 10:02 AM, Johan Jönsson brevlistor@gmail.com wrote:
2015-03-10 13:26 GMT+01:00 Comet styles cometstyles@gmail.com:
for an organization taking on the NSA for "spying"..why are we using https? doesn't that show that we are already scared of them and running with our tail between our legs?
(For non-technical readers: the HTTP protocol is the normal way to send around information on the web. HTTPS is the secure way of sending said information, adding encryption among other things, to avoid eavesdropping.)
HTTP traffic can easily be tracked by people sharing the same network, by your Internet service provider and so on. If one cares about privacy, HTTPS is always important. It's worth noting that the NSA is not the only government agency in the world. I'd be even more worried about a number of countries where there would be little chance to fight the intruding party in the courtroom.
Side note: you could probably track most HTTPS traffic to Wikipedia as well, even if you're not the NSA. Normally you would see that the user has accessed Wikipedia, but not which article. A way around that would be to let a spider (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_crawler) track the byte size of Wikipedia articles, which should be individual enough as soon as images are involved and compare it to the size of the page the user just accessed. If two articles happen to be of exactly the same size, compare with incoming and outgoing wiki links and see if the user accessed any page linking to or linked from one the articles to determine which one. But it would at least take some sort of effort, and wouldn't be perfect.
//Johan Jönsson
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
There's a relevant research project outlined on Meta, about HTTPS:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikimedia_referrer_policy
Here's the "nutshell" description:
"Since we started switching to HTTPS and an increasing portion of inbound traffic happens over SSL, Wikimedia sites stopped advertising themselves as sources of referred traffic to external sites. While this is a literal implication of HTTPS, it means that Wikimedia's impact on traffic directed to other sites is becoming largely invisible: *is Wikimedia turning into a large source of dark traffic?* I review a use case (traffic directed to CrossRef) and discuss how other top web properties deal with this issue by adopting a so-called "Referrer Policy"."
I don't know anything about this beyond what I've read on Meta, but I think it offers some useful background for this discussion.
Pete -- Pete Forsyth [[User:Peteforsyth]] on English Wikipedia, Wikisource, Commons, etc.
On Tue, Mar 10, 2015 at 7:58 AM, Andrew Lih andrew.lih@gmail.com wrote:
Probably a good time for everyone to know about EFF's HTTPS Everywhere:
HTTPS Everywhere is a Firefox, Chrome, and Opera extension that encrypts your communications with many major websites, making your browsing more secure. Encrypt the web: Install HTTPS Everywhere today.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
On Tue, Mar 10, 2015 at 10:02 AM, Johan Jönsson brevlistor@gmail.com wrote:
2015-03-10 13:26 GMT+01:00 Comet styles cometstyles@gmail.com:
for an organization taking on the NSA for "spying"..why are we using https? doesn't that show that we are already scared of them and running with our tail between our legs?
(For non-technical readers: the HTTP protocol is the normal way to send around information on the web. HTTPS is the secure way of sending said information, adding encryption among other things, to avoid
eavesdropping.)
HTTP traffic can easily be tracked by people sharing the same network, by your Internet service provider and so on. If one cares about privacy,
HTTPS
is always important. It's worth noting that the NSA is not the only government agency in the world. I'd be even more worried about a number
of
countries where there would be little chance to fight the intruding party in the courtroom.
Side note: you could probably track most HTTPS traffic to Wikipedia as well, even if you're not the NSA. Normally you would see that the user
has
accessed Wikipedia, but not which article. A way around that would be to let a spider (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_crawler) track the byte size of Wikipedia articles, which should be individual enough as soon as images are involved and compare it to the size of the page the user just accessed. If two articles happen to be of exactly the same size, compare with incoming and outgoing wiki links and see if the user accessed any
page
linking to or linked from one the articles to determine which one. But it would at least take some sort of effort, and wouldn't be perfect.
//Johan Jönsson
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
That's great! Pending for translation.
2015-03-10 10:21 GMT-06:00 Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com:
There's a relevant research project outlined on Meta, about HTTPS:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikimedia_referrer_policy
Here's the "nutshell" description:
"Since we started switching to HTTPS and an increasing portion of inbound traffic happens over SSL, Wikimedia sites stopped advertising themselves as sources of referred traffic to external sites. While this is a literal implication of HTTPS, it means that Wikimedia's impact on traffic directed to other sites is becoming largely invisible: *is Wikimedia turning into a large source of dark traffic?* I review a use case (traffic directed to CrossRef) and discuss how other top web properties deal with this issue by adopting a so-called "Referrer Policy"."
I don't know anything about this beyond what I've read on Meta, but I think it offers some useful background for this discussion.
Pete
Pete Forsyth [[User:Peteforsyth]] on English Wikipedia, Wikisource, Commons, etc.
On Tue, Mar 10, 2015 at 7:58 AM, Andrew Lih andrew.lih@gmail.com wrote:
Probably a good time for everyone to know about EFF's HTTPS Everywhere:
HTTPS Everywhere is a Firefox, Chrome, and Opera extension that encrypts your communications with many major websites, making your browsing more secure. Encrypt the web: Install HTTPS Everywhere today.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
On Tue, Mar 10, 2015 at 10:02 AM, Johan Jönsson brevlistor@gmail.com wrote:
2015-03-10 13:26 GMT+01:00 Comet styles cometstyles@gmail.com:
for an organization taking on the NSA for "spying"..why are we using https? doesn't that show that we are already scared of them and running with our tail between our legs?
(For non-technical readers: the HTTP protocol is the normal way to send around information on the web. HTTPS is the secure way of sending said information, adding encryption among other things, to avoid
eavesdropping.)
HTTP traffic can easily be tracked by people sharing the same network,
by
your Internet service provider and so on. If one cares about privacy,
HTTPS
is always important. It's worth noting that the NSA is not the only government agency in the world. I'd be even more worried about a number
of
countries where there would be little chance to fight the intruding
party
in the courtroom.
Side note: you could probably track most HTTPS traffic to Wikipedia as well, even if you're not the NSA. Normally you would see that the user
has
accessed Wikipedia, but not which article. A way around that would be
to
let a spider (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_crawler) track the
byte
size of Wikipedia articles, which should be individual enough as soon
as
images are involved and compare it to the size of the page the user
just
accessed. If two articles happen to be of exactly the same size,
compare
with incoming and outgoing wiki links and see if the user accessed any
page
linking to or linked from one the articles to determine which one. But
it
would at least take some sort of effort, and wouldn't be perfect.
//Johan Jönsson
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
I think that making us not-a-source-of-referred-traffic might be a good thing. (It disincentivises those who should be disincentivised, while not harming anyone else)
sincerely, Kim Bruning
On Tue, Mar 10, 2015 at 09:21:57AM -0700, Pete Forsyth wrote:
There's a relevant research project outlined on Meta, about HTTPS:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikimedia_referrer_policy
Here's the "nutshell" description:
"Since we started switching to HTTPS and an increasing portion of inbound traffic happens over SSL, Wikimedia sites stopped advertising themselves as sources of referred traffic to external sites. While this is a literal implication of HTTPS, it means that Wikimedia's impact on traffic directed to other sites is becoming largely invisible: *is Wikimedia turning into a large source of dark traffic?* I review a use case (traffic directed to CrossRef) and discuss how other top web properties deal with this issue by adopting a so-called "Referrer Policy"."
I don't know anything about this beyond what I've read on Meta, but I think it offers some useful background for this discussion.
Pete
Pete Forsyth [[User:Peteforsyth]] on English Wikipedia, Wikisource, Commons, etc.
On Tue, Mar 10, 2015 at 7:58 AM, Andrew Lih andrew.lih@gmail.com wrote:
Probably a good time for everyone to know about EFF's HTTPS Everywhere:
HTTPS Everywhere is a Firefox, Chrome, and Opera extension that encrypts your communications with many major websites, making your browsing more secure. Encrypt the web: Install HTTPS Everywhere today.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
On Tue, Mar 10, 2015 at 10:02 AM, Johan J??nsson brevlistor@gmail.com wrote:
2015-03-10 13:26 GMT+01:00 Comet styles cometstyles@gmail.com:
for an organization taking on the NSA for "spying"..why are we using https? doesn't that show that we are already scared of them and running with our tail between our legs?
(For non-technical readers: the HTTP protocol is the normal way to send around information on the web. HTTPS is the secure way of sending said information, adding encryption among other things, to avoid
eavesdropping.)
HTTP traffic can easily be tracked by people sharing the same network, by your Internet service provider and so on. If one cares about privacy,
HTTPS
is always important. It's worth noting that the NSA is not the only government agency in the world. I'd be even more worried about a number
of
countries where there would be little chance to fight the intruding party in the courtroom.
Side note: you could probably track most HTTPS traffic to Wikipedia as well, even if you're not the NSA. Normally you would see that the user
has
accessed Wikipedia, but not which article. A way around that would be to let a spider (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_crawler) track the byte size of Wikipedia articles, which should be individual enough as soon as images are involved and compare it to the size of the page the user just accessed. If two articles happen to be of exactly the same size, compare with incoming and outgoing wiki links and see if the user accessed any
page
linking to or linked from one the articles to determine which one. But it would at least take some sort of effort, and wouldn't be perfect.
//Johan J??nsson
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
2015-03-10 8:53 GMT+01:00 Michelle Paulson mpaulson@wikimedia.org:
Hi All,
I’m writing to let you know that today the Wikimedia Foundation[1] is filing suit against the National Security Agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency, the Department of Justice <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Justice
,
and the U.S. Attorney General https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Attorney_General[2] in order to challenge certain mass surveillance practices carried out by the U.S. government. We believe these practices are impinging the freedom to learn, inquire, and explore on Wikimedia sites.
Since the 2013 mass surveillance disclosures, we’ve heard concerns from the community about privacy on Wikipedia. This lawsuit is a step towards addressing the community's justified concerns. We believe that the surveillance methods being employed by the NSA under the authority of the FISA Amendments Act < https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Act_of_1978_...
negatively impact our users' ability and willingness to participate in our projects. Today, we fight back.
An op-ed < http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/10/opinion/stop-spying-on-wikipedia-users.htm...
by Lila and Jimmy about the lawsuit, and Wikimedia's stance on government surveillance, appeared in The New York Times this morning. Additionally, we just published a blog post https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/03/10/wikimedia-v-nsa/ with more information about the suit. (The post will also up on Meta for translation).
Curious question, by the way: how controversial would you expect this move to be domestically? From e.g. a Swedish perspective, the NSA is an intelligence agency of a foreign power and the other mentioned organizations are either largely uncontroversial and seen in a positive light (Amnesty, PEN, HRW) or unknown, but will it affect how the WMF is seen in the US?
//Johan Jönsson --
Curious question, by the way: how controversial would you expect this move to be domestically? From e.g. a Swedish perspective, the NSA is an intelligence agency of a foreign power and the other mentioned organizations are either largely uncontroversial and seen in a positive light (Amnesty, PEN, HRW) or unknown, but will it affect how the WMF is seen in the US?
I'm not American, but the other co-plaintiffs seem to be civil rights / human rights organisations who are firmly at the left-wing/progressive end of US politics, some of them probably take the US government to court fairly often. So being seen in this company might identify the WMF a little with that part of the US political spectrum.
Equally, the fact that WMF isn't a political organisation and isn't in the habit of suing the US Government probably adds a lot of weight to the campaign!
Chris
//Johan Jönsson
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
On Tue, Mar 10, 2015 at 1:15 PM, Chris Keating chriskeatingwiki@gmail.com wrote:
I'm not American, but the other co-plaintiffs seem to be civil rights / human rights organisations who are firmly at the left-wing/progressive end of US politics
I am an American, and I'm not so sure about that characterization. Here are the co-plaintiffs:
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF CRIMINAL DEFENSE LAWYERS HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL USA PEN AMERICAN CENTER GLOBAL FUND FOR WOMEN THE NATION MAGAZINE THE RUTHERFORD INSTITUTE WASHINGTON OFFICE ON LATIN AMERICA
The one organization that describes itself as "the flagship of the left" is The Nation magazine; I'm curious why they would be involved, without a balancing conservative publication. Other than them, these seem like non-partisan entities. You might describe a couple as left-leaning, but others might be described as right-leaning.
In American politics, it seems to me that there is a similar (if not greater) level of mistrust of the NSA and government surveillance among right wing groups like the Tea Party, as there is among left wing groups.[1] I think it's safe to say this is an issue that has significant resonance across the political spectrum, and it would be interesting to watch any effort to spin it as partisan for one side or the other. I doubt such an attempt would be successful, but I could be wrong...it would be interesting to watch it play out.
Speaking for myself, I'm less concerned about public perception of Wikipedia's brand name on something like this, than success. Will this lead to better policy? I'd be interested to hear more about the calculations and predictions that went into it.
I believe people's judgments of Wikipedia, the Wikimedia movement, and the Wikimedia Foundation will generally be formed on less politically charged issues. Wikimedia is founded on collaborative practices; I believe the way we treat stakeholders in the context of our various project-focused activities, and the quality and reach of the projects themselves, have a bigger impact on public perception.
If the Wikimedia Foundation gets an apparent "win" here, as it did with SOPA, there may be some significant upside. If not, I think the only downside would be expended resources; and (by design), WMF does not have much accountability for poorly spent resources. So I don't see much of a practical downside.
Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]]
[1] Lawrence Lessig has had compelling things to say about Occupy (generally considered left-leaning) and the Tea Party (right wing): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/19/lawrence-lessig-occupy-tea-party_n_...
It's difficult to overstate how much people love us. We tell them everything about everything, and we're mostly right and try to stay neutral. But it's all written by just people! So it's cosy as well.
With SOPA, we discovered that: when Wikipedia says you suck, you *suck*.
So I'd expect that this will only look good for us. But I don't claim to have numbers to this effect.
On 10 March 2015 at 19:55, Johan Jönsson brevlistor@gmail.com wrote:
2015-03-10 8:53 GMT+01:00 Michelle Paulson mpaulson@wikimedia.org:
Hi All,
I’m writing to let you know that today the Wikimedia Foundation[1] is filing suit against the National Security Agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency, the Department of Justice <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Justice
,
and the U.S. Attorney General https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Attorney_General[2] in order to challenge certain mass surveillance practices carried out by the U.S. government. We believe these practices are impinging the freedom to learn, inquire, and explore on Wikimedia sites.
Since the 2013 mass surveillance disclosures, we’ve heard concerns from the community about privacy on Wikipedia. This lawsuit is a step towards addressing the community's justified concerns. We believe that the surveillance methods being employed by the NSA under the authority of the FISA Amendments Act < https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Act_of_1978_...
negatively impact our users' ability and willingness to participate in our projects. Today, we fight back.
An op-ed < http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/10/opinion/stop-spying-on-wikipedia-users.htm...
by Lila and Jimmy about the lawsuit, and Wikimedia's stance on government surveillance, appeared in The New York Times this morning. Additionally, we just published a blog post https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/03/10/wikimedia-v-nsa/ with more information about the suit. (The post will also up on Meta for translation).
Curious question, by the way: how controversial would you expect this move to be domestically? From e.g. a Swedish perspective, the NSA is an intelligence agency of a foreign power and the other mentioned organizations are either largely uncontroversial and seen in a positive light (Amnesty, PEN, HRW) or unknown, but will it affect how the WMF is seen in the US?
//Johan Jönsson
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
In the U.S., there is also a strong minority contingent of Libertarians, who tend to be on the right-wing/conservative part of the political spectrum. These are natural allies for both privacy & governmental non-intrunsion. I think that they would welcome WMF joining this legal action.
Yours, Peaceray
On Tue, Mar 10, 2015 at 1:15 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
It's difficult to overstate how much people love us. We tell them everything about everything, and we're mostly right and try to stay neutral. But it's all written by just people! So it's cosy as well.
With SOPA, we discovered that: when Wikipedia says you suck, you *suck*.
So I'd expect that this will only look good for us. But I don't claim to have numbers to this effect.
On 10 March 2015 at 19:55, Johan Jönsson brevlistor@gmail.com wrote:
2015-03-10 8:53 GMT+01:00 Michelle Paulson mpaulson@wikimedia.org:
Hi All,
I’m writing to let you know that today the Wikimedia Foundation[1] is filing suit against the National Security Agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency, the
Department
of Justice <
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Justice
,
and the U.S. Attorney General https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Attorney_General[2] in
order
to challenge certain mass surveillance practices carried out by the U.S. government. We believe these practices are impinging the freedom to
learn,
inquire, and explore on Wikimedia sites.
Since the 2013 mass surveillance disclosures, we’ve heard concerns from
the
community about privacy on Wikipedia. This lawsuit is a step towards addressing the community's justified concerns. We believe that the surveillance methods being employed by the NSA under the authority of
the
FISA Amendments Act <
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Act_of_1978_...
negatively impact our users' ability and willingness to participate in
our
projects. Today, we fight back.
An op-ed <
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/10/opinion/stop-spying-on-wikipedia-users.htm...
by Lila and Jimmy about the lawsuit, and Wikimedia's stance on
government
surveillance, appeared in The New York Times this morning.
Additionally, we
just published a blog post https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/03/10/wikimedia-v-nsa/ with more information about the suit. (The post will also up on Meta for translation).
Curious question, by the way: how controversial would you expect this
move
to be domestically? From e.g. a Swedish perspective, the NSA is an intelligence agency of a foreign power and the other mentioned organizations are either largely uncontroversial and seen in a positive light (Amnesty, PEN, HRW) or unknown, but will it affect how the WMF is seen in the US?
//Johan Jönsson
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Aye, I also only have anecdotal evidince at this point (from my father who has been messaging me and myself) but the comments I've seen in the american press have been 10:1 (higher on tech sites) with generally more thoughtful comments then usual and where there are critiques they are not bad ones. So far it looks like folks are very supportive of it.
This of course comes with the usual caveats of possible filter bubbles and "commenters on american news sites not necessarily equating to a range of american views".
James
On Tue, Mar 10, 2015 at 1:15 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
It's difficult to overstate how much people love us. We tell them everything about everything, and we're mostly right and try to stay neutral. But it's all written by just people! So it's cosy as well.
With SOPA, we discovered that: when Wikipedia says you suck, you *suck*.
So I'd expect that this will only look good for us. But I don't claim to have numbers to this effect.
On 10 March 2015 at 19:55, Johan Jönsson brevlistor@gmail.com wrote:
2015-03-10 8:53 GMT+01:00 Michelle Paulson mpaulson@wikimedia.org:
Hi All,
I’m writing to let you know that today the Wikimedia Foundation[1] is filing suit against the National Security Agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency, the
Department
of Justice <
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Justice
,
and the U.S. Attorney General https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Attorney_General[2] in
order
to challenge certain mass surveillance practices carried out by the U.S. government. We believe these practices are impinging the freedom to
learn,
inquire, and explore on Wikimedia sites.
Since the 2013 mass surveillance disclosures, we’ve heard concerns from
the
community about privacy on Wikipedia. This lawsuit is a step towards addressing the community's justified concerns. We believe that the surveillance methods being employed by the NSA under the authority of
the
FISA Amendments Act <
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Act_of_1978_...
negatively impact our users' ability and willingness to participate in
our
projects. Today, we fight back.
An op-ed <
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/10/opinion/stop-spying-on-wikipedia-users.htm...
by Lila and Jimmy about the lawsuit, and Wikimedia's stance on
government
surveillance, appeared in The New York Times this morning.
Additionally, we
just published a blog post https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/03/10/wikimedia-v-nsa/ with more information about the suit. (The post will also up on Meta for translation).
Curious question, by the way: how controversial would you expect this
move
to be domestically? From e.g. a Swedish perspective, the NSA is an intelligence agency of a foreign power and the other mentioned organizations are either largely uncontroversial and seen in a positive light (Amnesty, PEN, HRW) or unknown, but will it affect how the WMF is seen in the US?
//Johan Jönsson
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Hi.
I'm of two minds here. I would love for mass surveillance to stop; the revelations of the past few years are disgusting. However, this lawsuit has the appearance of being the start of a completely un-winnable case that's merely an expensive political stunt. Perhaps especially due to the SOPA protests, I'm very wary of the Wikimedia Foundation engaging in stunts like this. I have a few questions.
Has the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees passed a resolution authorizing the Wikimedia Foundation general counsel and executive director to pursue this lawsuit? I understand that one board member (Jimmy) is involved, of course, but something of this scale seems like it would require explicit authorization.
What's the projected financial cost of this lawsuit for the Wikimedia Foundation?
What's the projected length of time that this lawsuit will take to resolve?
What specifically is the Wikimedia Foundation hoping to accomplish with this lawsuit? I read about "filing this suit [...] to end this mass surveillance program in order to protect the rights of our users around the world," but what's a best-case scenario here? What could a federal judge do here?
How does the Wikimedia Foundation intend to protect the rights of users around the world when it will have a nearly impossible time of protecting Americans, much less non-Americans? U.S. courts and the U.S. Congress have made it very clear that spying on non-Americans is completely acceptable, so when I read that the aim is to protect users worldwide, I'm pretty skeptical.
Is there any indication from prior court cases that this lawsuit will be successful? Reading https://www.eff.org/node/84572 about Jewel v. NSA leads to me to think that we already know almost exactly what's likeliest to happen here.
Aside from standing, U.S. government agencies (even outside of intelligence agencies) have broad immunity from lawsuits. How does the Wikimedia Foundation intend to penetrate immunity here? It seems very unlikely that a single slide in a classified presentation, which honestly references Wikipedia only in passing as an example of a site using HTTP, will convince any judge that there's enough to establish standing and penetrate immunity.
My concern is that this will be an expensive, decade-long lawsuit that will eat donor money and ultimately accomplish nothing.
Nearly all of the "surveillance" that takes place on our projects comes from our users. We're radically transparent and we make it trivial to track and audit any user's actions. This is by design, as it allows us to prevent vandalism and other harm to the projects. Given Wikimedia's particular setup, including the fact that we, for example, willfully expose IP addresses if a user chooses to not log in, it seems that the Wikimedia Foundation would have an even higher bar to clear in order to establish harm.
But more to the point: even if by some miracle, this case were resolved in 2015 with a very explicit federal court order instructing the National Security Agency to cease mass surveillance, is there anyone who believes that this will end mass surveillance?
Our mission is to try to bring free educational content to the world. Wouldn't it be a much smarter investment of donor resources to focus on building Wikimedia? Surely there's plenty to do in that arena without us needing to fight a battle we can't win in the courtroom.
MZMcBride
Hoi, The fact that law suits like this actually happen is a wonderful improvement in and of itself.
Our aim is to freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Free has many meaning, one of them is free to share without consequences.It is not only about free of cost.In the past we implemented https for the very reason that we did not want eavesdropping on the content from our Wikis. I think nobody ever suggested that we should not do this because of the cost. Now we know that even with https organisations like the NSA have a capability to listen in. There are many technical ways to make it more complicated to eavesdrop including using a multitude of cache servers that serve our content locally.
Organisations like the NSA are thought to be good for the status quo, for the USA. They share their intel widely. In arguments it is always said that US-Americans have nothing to fear. Our public is largely not in the US By going to court, the Wikimedia Foundation make it clear that it cares for the people who by definition are free game for the NSA. The argument "Why is the WMF in the USA" has been made before. I am happy that because of the WMF being in the USA it has standing to go to a US court. The least it does is make it obvious that the NSA is not behaving in a way that is conducive to propagating democracy and its associated values in our world. It shames the current practices and the donkey may sing.
Thanks, GerardM
On 11 March 2015 at 06:03, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
Hi.
I'm of two minds here. I would love for mass surveillance to stop; the revelations of the past few years are disgusting. However, this lawsuit has the appearance of being the start of a completely un-winnable case that's merely an expensive political stunt. Perhaps especially due to the SOPA protests, I'm very wary of the Wikimedia Foundation engaging in stunts like this. I have a few questions.
Has the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees passed a resolution authorizing the Wikimedia Foundation general counsel and executive director to pursue this lawsuit? I understand that one board member (Jimmy) is involved, of course, but something of this scale seems like it would require explicit authorization.
What's the projected financial cost of this lawsuit for the Wikimedia Foundation?
What's the projected length of time that this lawsuit will take to resolve?
What specifically is the Wikimedia Foundation hoping to accomplish with this lawsuit? I read about "filing this suit [...] to end this mass surveillance program in order to protect the rights of our users around the world," but what's a best-case scenario here? What could a federal judge do here?
How does the Wikimedia Foundation intend to protect the rights of users around the world when it will have a nearly impossible time of protecting Americans, much less non-Americans? U.S. courts and the U.S. Congress have made it very clear that spying on non-Americans is completely acceptable, so when I read that the aim is to protect users worldwide, I'm pretty skeptical.
Is there any indication from prior court cases that this lawsuit will be successful? Reading https://www.eff.org/node/84572 about Jewel v. NSA leads to me to think that we already know almost exactly what's likeliest to happen here.
Aside from standing, U.S. government agencies (even outside of intelligence agencies) have broad immunity from lawsuits. How does the Wikimedia Foundation intend to penetrate immunity here? It seems very unlikely that a single slide in a classified presentation, which honestly references Wikipedia only in passing as an example of a site using HTTP, will convince any judge that there's enough to establish standing and penetrate immunity.
My concern is that this will be an expensive, decade-long lawsuit that will eat donor money and ultimately accomplish nothing.
Nearly all of the "surveillance" that takes place on our projects comes from our users. We're radically transparent and we make it trivial to track and audit any user's actions. This is by design, as it allows us to prevent vandalism and other harm to the projects. Given Wikimedia's particular setup, including the fact that we, for example, willfully expose IP addresses if a user chooses to not log in, it seems that the Wikimedia Foundation would have an even higher bar to clear in order to establish harm.
But more to the point: even if by some miracle, this case were resolved in 2015 with a very explicit federal court order instructing the National Security Agency to cease mass surveillance, is there anyone who believes that this will end mass surveillance?
Our mission is to try to bring free educational content to the world. Wouldn't it be a much smarter investment of donor resources to focus on building Wikimedia? Surely there's plenty to do in that arena without us needing to fight a battle we can't win in the courtroom.
MZMcBride
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
On 11 March 2015 at 08:37, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, The fact that law suits like this actually happen is a wonderful improvement in and of itself.
Our aim is to freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Free has many meaning, one of them is free to share without consequences.It is not only about free of cost.In the past we implemented https for the very reason that we did not want eavesdropping on the content from our Wikis.
Partially implemented https
I think nobody ever suggested that we should not do this because of the cost.
So for what reason wasn't it done?
The least it does is make it obvious that the NSA is not behaving in a way that is conducive to propagating democracy and its associated values in our world. It shames the current practices and the donkey may sing.
Being spied on by AIVD on the other hand is just fine.
Seriously people if you aren't American pick your words with care. Your domestic agencies are either worse or activity incompetent.
Hoi, Sigh ... being spied upon by the AIVD is not fine. However, they have a duty to Dutch people and the argument that the NSA is benign to US-Americans "equally applies" to the AIVD. We do serve Wikimedia content from Amsterdam.
The notion that the AIVD is incompetent is based on what ? It is however beside the point. Thanks, GerardM
On 11 March 2015 at 10:09, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 11 March 2015 at 08:37, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, The fact that law suits like this actually happen is a wonderful improvement in and of itself.
Our aim is to freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Free has many meaning, one of them is free to share without consequences.It is not only about free of cost.In the past we implemented https for the very reason that we did not want eavesdropping on the content from our Wikis.
Partially implemented https
I think nobody ever suggested that we should not do this because of the cost.
So for what reason wasn't it done?
The least it does is make it obvious that the NSA is not behaving in a way that is
conducive
to propagating democracy and its associated values in our world. It
shames
the current practices and the donkey may sing.
Being spied on by AIVD on the other hand is just fine.
Seriously people if you aren't American pick your words with care. Your domestic agencies are either worse or activity incompetent. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Hoi, Please read this article by the Volkskrant (in the translation of your tools) and you see that a review by a judge can be extremely useful. It also shows that organisations like the NSA can and do lose.
http://www.volkskrant.nl/tech/rechter-zet-streep-door-bewaarplicht-voor-prov...
Thanks, GerardM
On 11 March 2015 at 11:28, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, Sigh ... being spied upon by the AIVD is not fine. However, they have a duty to Dutch people and the argument that the NSA is benign to US-Americans "equally applies" to the AIVD. We do serve Wikimedia content from Amsterdam.
The notion that the AIVD is incompetent is based on what ? It is however beside the point. Thanks, GerardM
On 11 March 2015 at 10:09, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 11 March 2015 at 08:37, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, The fact that law suits like this actually happen is a wonderful improvement in and of itself.
Our aim is to freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Free has many meaning, one of them is free to share without consequences.It is not
only
about free of cost.In the past we implemented https for the very reason that we did not want eavesdropping on the content from our Wikis.
Partially implemented https
I think nobody ever suggested that we should not do this because of the cost.
So for what reason wasn't it done?
The least it does is make it obvious that the NSA is not behaving in a way that is
conducive
to propagating democracy and its associated values in our world. It
shames
the current practices and the donkey may sing.
Being spied on by AIVD on the other hand is just fine.
Seriously people if you aren't American pick your words with care. Your domestic agencies are either worse or activity incompetent. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/GuidelinesWikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
On 3/11/15 12:03 AM, MZMcBride wrote:
<snip>
But more to the point: even if by some miracle, this case were resolved in 2015 with a very explicit federal court order instructing the National Security Agency to cease mass surveillance, is there anyone who believes that this will end mass surveillance?
I'm interested in hearing answers to lots of MZ's questions here, but this particular argument doesn't concern me much. Such a decision probably wouldn't end surveillance immediately, but it would inform the implementers that they are criminals. That matters, if only to provide encouragement and comfort to future whistle-blowers.
Any political battle like this will be a long, pitched struggle that most likely lasts decades. The fact that there's no simple immediate victory condition isn't a great argument against fighting.
-A
I agree that it is good for someone to stand up to the NSA, though I am also very sympathetic to the point that taking legal action may require the WMF to devote considerable time and money to this project, and distract from other goals. Perhaps the ACLU and the other plaintiffs are going to shoulder a significant part of that burden? After all, we may have the public clout but other organizations have more lawyers and more experience fighting the government in court than we do.
On that tack, I find it somewhat surprising that there are no other technology organizations as partners to the suit. The same Snowden-leaked slide that mentioned Wikipedia also mentioned Google, Facebook, Yahoo, etc. While NSA snooping may have some chilling scenarios for Wikipedia editors living in certain countries, I would expect that NSA snooping through email and social networks would seem like a much more severe intrusion for the typical reader than capturing their Wikipedia activity. Thus it would seem that many of the big tech companies would have more to fear, and be in a better position to argue the potential harm caused by pervasive surveillance than Wikimedia. At the same time, many tech companies also have more financial resources and larger legal departments than WMF.
I suppose other tech companies might have been invited to participate but declined for various reasons. Or there might be non-obvious arguments for thinking this suit will do better without large corporations being involved. I can imagine there might be many good reasons for choosing certain partners and excluding other possible partners. Though, it does seem somewhat surprising to me that WMF would be lead plaintiff on a case like this.
I don't really expect that the WMF is going to explain their legal strategy or provide much detail on how they expect to share the cost / time burden associated with pursuing this suit. So let me just say that I hope that everyone at the WMF has thought through the logistics of this endeavor and is doing it for all the right reasons with an eye towards maximizing the chance of success (ideally in court, though possibly though the court of public opinion and political action). Fighting the government is not a small thing, so let's hope the ideological motivations aren't causing people to lose sight of the practical concerns.
Anyway, the die is cast, so good luck with it.
-Robert Rohde
On Tue, Mar 10, 2015 at 10:03 PM, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
Hi.
I'm of two minds here. I would love for mass surveillance to stop; the revelations of the past few years are disgusting. However, this lawsuit has the appearance of being the start of a completely un-winnable case that's merely an expensive political stunt. Perhaps especially due to the SOPA protests, I'm very wary of the Wikimedia Foundation engaging in stunts like this. I have a few questions.
Has the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees passed a resolution authorizing the Wikimedia Foundation general counsel and executive director to pursue this lawsuit? I understand that one board member (Jimmy) is involved, of course, but something of this scale seems like it would require explicit authorization.
What's the projected financial cost of this lawsuit for the Wikimedia Foundation?
What's the projected length of time that this lawsuit will take to resolve?
What specifically is the Wikimedia Foundation hoping to accomplish with this lawsuit? I read about "filing this suit [...] to end this mass surveillance program in order to protect the rights of our users around the world," but what's a best-case scenario here? What could a federal judge do here?
How does the Wikimedia Foundation intend to protect the rights of users around the world when it will have a nearly impossible time of protecting Americans, much less non-Americans? U.S. courts and the U.S. Congress have made it very clear that spying on non-Americans is completely acceptable, so when I read that the aim is to protect users worldwide, I'm pretty skeptical.
Is there any indication from prior court cases that this lawsuit will be successful? Reading https://www.eff.org/node/84572 about Jewel v. NSA leads to me to think that we already know almost exactly what's likeliest to happen here.
Aside from standing, U.S. government agencies (even outside of intelligence agencies) have broad immunity from lawsuits. How does the Wikimedia Foundation intend to penetrate immunity here? It seems very unlikely that a single slide in a classified presentation, which honestly references Wikipedia only in passing as an example of a site using HTTP, will convince any judge that there's enough to establish standing and penetrate immunity.
My concern is that this will be an expensive, decade-long lawsuit that will eat donor money and ultimately accomplish nothing.
Nearly all of the "surveillance" that takes place on our projects comes from our users. We're radically transparent and we make it trivial to track and audit any user's actions. This is by design, as it allows us to prevent vandalism and other harm to the projects. Given Wikimedia's particular setup, including the fact that we, for example, willfully expose IP addresses if a user chooses to not log in, it seems that the Wikimedia Foundation would have an even higher bar to clear in order to establish harm.
But more to the point: even if by some miracle, this case were resolved in 2015 with a very explicit federal court order instructing the National Security Agency to cease mass surveillance, is there anyone who believes that this will end mass surveillance?
Our mission is to try to bring free educational content to the world. Wouldn't it be a much smarter investment of donor resources to focus on building Wikimedia? Surely there's plenty to do in that arena without us needing to fight a battle we can't win in the courtroom.
MZMcBride
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
On Tue, Mar 10, 2015 at 10:03 PM, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
Hi.
I'm of two minds here. I would love for mass surveillance to stop; the revelations of the past few years are disgusting. However, this lawsuit has the appearance of being the start of a completely un-winnable case that's merely an expensive political stunt. Perhaps especially due to the SOPA protests, I'm very wary of the Wikimedia Foundation engaging in stunts like this. I have a few questions.
Has the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees passed a resolution authorizing the Wikimedia Foundation general counsel and executive director to pursue this lawsuit? I understand that one board member (Jimmy) is involved, of course, but something of this scale seems like it would require explicit authorization.
The board hasn't passed a resolution -- approving actions proposed by the ED (and in this case general counsel) don't generally require a resolution -- but we do support this action.
As for cost, remember that the ACLU is filing the suit on the plaintiffs' (us) behalf. My understanding is our major investment here is coordination time and our good name.
Whether it's worth us getting involved -- I'd argue of course it is. The developments of the last few years about mass surveillance have been egregious, even for the cynical among us. We (Wikimedia) are in a rare position for an online organization -- of being widely used, international, beloved, not beholden to corporate or government interests, and with strong values of privacy, inclusion and openness, which is reflected in everything from allowing anonymous editor accounts to not tracking what our readers read. We also happen to be based in the U.S., so can do things like file lawsuits here.
I trust our legal team to make decisions about what legal actions to participate in. I also know and acknowledge that this is far from the only thing that we can do on our own projects to support reader and user privacy, and also far from the only thing that will have to happen -- in the courts, in the congress, in technology circles -- to make any change to policy. But if we could predict the outcome of every suit before it was filed, the world would be a different place, and the potential gain here is, I think, certainly worth the risk of losing.
best, Phoebe
Personally I am not convinced this is an optimal action in order for us to reach our goals, mission and vision. To attack the Intellectual property laws would be more spot on and this action can put our image/brand at risk (but also strengthen it).
From a tactical viewpoint, I personally have many question marks. The choice of partners, the unclear key message in the suit and I do believe there should have been a Board resolution to back this up.
But i still find it is great. We should act boldly and strongly when relevant. And we should use our fully independence (which also include the donators) to raise our voice when appropriate.
And we will learn a lot by doing a thing like this, which enables us to became in the future a respected stakeholder in issues like this one
Good luck Michelle and Geoff!
Anders
phoebe ayers skrev den 2015-03-12 02:34:
On Tue, Mar 10, 2015 at 10:03 PM, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
Hi.
I'm of two minds here. I would love for mass surveillance to stop; the revelations of the past few years are disgusting. However, this lawsuit has the appearance of being the start of a completely un-winnable case that's merely an expensive political stunt. Perhaps especially due to the SOPA protests, I'm very wary of the Wikimedia Foundation engaging in stunts like this. I have a few questions.
Has the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees passed a resolution authorizing the Wikimedia Foundation general counsel and executive director to pursue this lawsuit? I understand that one board member (Jimmy) is involved, of course, but something of this scale seems like it would require explicit authorization.
The board hasn't passed a resolution -- approving actions proposed by the ED (and in this case general counsel) don't generally require a resolution -- but we do support this action.
As for cost, remember that the ACLU is filing the suit on the plaintiffs' (us) behalf. My understanding is our major investment here is coordination time and our good name.
Whether it's worth us getting involved -- I'd argue of course it is. The developments of the last few years about mass surveillance have been egregious, even for the cynical among us. We (Wikimedia) are in a rare position for an online organization -- of being widely used, international, beloved, not beholden to corporate or government interests, and with strong values of privacy, inclusion and openness, which is reflected in everything from allowing anonymous editor accounts to not tracking what our readers read. We also happen to be based in the U.S., so can do things like file lawsuits here.
I trust our legal team to make decisions about what legal actions to participate in. I also know and acknowledge that this is far from the only thing that we can do on our own projects to support reader and user privacy, and also far from the only thing that will have to happen -- in the courts, in the congress, in technology circles -- to make any change to policy. But if we could predict the outcome of every suit before it was filed, the world would be a different place, and the potential gain here is, I think, certainly worth the risk of losing.
best, Phoebe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
phoebe ayers wrote:
As for cost, remember that the ACLU is filing the suit on the plaintiffs' (us) behalf. My understanding is our major investment here is coordination time and our good name.
The fact that the Wikimedia Foundation is being used as a convenient vehicle makes me feel a bit more uneasy in some ways.
Whether it's worth us getting involved -- I'd argue of course it is. The developments of the last few years about mass surveillance have been egregious, even for the cynical among us. We (Wikimedia) are in a rare position for an online organization -- of being widely used, international, beloved, not beholden to corporate or government interests, and with strong values of privacy, inclusion and openness, which is reflected in everything from allowing anonymous editor accounts to not tracking what our readers read. We also happen to be based in the U.S., so can do things like file lawsuits here.
You make a number of good points here. But I think the larger question is whether the Wikimedia Foundation should be involved in political advocacy. Yes, I've read the arguments about Wikimedia's existence itself being a political statement, but I'm not sure I buy this line of thought.
Education is apolitical. 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.
Education is apolitical.
I beg to differ.
Saying that Wikipedia is apolitical is like saying democracy is apolitical. Control of information is at the heart of politics, and the knowledge that people have access to profoundly changes the way that they interact with society over their lifetimes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_revisionism_(negationism) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_manipulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malala_Yousafzai etc
*Edward Saperia* Conference Director Wikimania 2014 http://www.wikimanialondon.org email edsaperia@gmail.com • facebook http://www.facebook.com/edsaperia • twitter http://www.twitter.com/edsaperia • 07796955572 133-135 Bethnal Green Road, E2 7DG
2015-03-13 10:36 GMT+01:00 Edward Saperia edsaperia@gmail.com:
Education is apolitical.
I beg to differ.
Me too.
«Growing up, you know, I slowly had this process realizing that all the things around me that people had told me were just the natural way of things were, or the way things would be, weren't natural at all. There were things that could be changed.
And there were things, more importantly, were WRONG and should change. And once I realized that, there was really kind of no going back
[...]
once I questioned the school I was in, I questioned the society that built the school, I questioned the businesses that the schools were training people for, I questioned the government that set up this whole structure.» (Aaron Swartz, from the documentary :"The Intenet's Own Boy")[*]
I can hardly thing of anything less apolitical as giving the access to every human being to the sum of all knowledge, let alone education.
C
[*] (min 01:59 --> 02:14 and 12:14 --> 12:24)
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.
Hi all,
On Thu, Mar 12, 2015 at 9:54 PM, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
phoebe ayers wrote:
I trust our legal team to make decisions about what legal actions to participate in.
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.
Since there's been some discussion -- let me expand a little bit on what I meant.
For all the specific questions people have asked about whether this particular lawsuit is likely to be effective, what the likely progression through the courts is, whether it would be possible to sue in a foreign court and make a difference, etc. -- I trust our legal team's opinion entirely. That is why we have professional (and in this case, world-class-expert) staff.
I *also* trust (and in fact expect, as a trustee) the legal team to surface large-scale risks, threats, and legal issues that affect our community and operating model -- in other words, figuring out *what* to act on.
But this surfacing and deciding whether to be active in a broad issue is also something that I agree we *all* have a role in: as MZ says, community, board and staff. I think we have clear community values, but it takes debate and strategic judgement to decide what to focus on out of all of the constant issues (IP laws and copyright, internet restrictions, etc.) that affect us, and it will take all of us to surface all of the things that are going on in our world and what's important.
From the board side, here's my thought process about things like this,
other than asking about logistics: if I thought that this particular lawsuit was either a) against our community values (rather than reinforcing the near-universal concern and disapproval about mass surveillance that we've heard); or b) likely to significantly distract the WMF from other core work; or c) would significantly blacken our reputation in the US or globally to the extent that it would harm our ability to do other work (rather than reinforcing our current reputation as something of a hero of the internet), I would have raised concerns. But I do not think any of these things are likely to happen. I think the other risks (we lose, it takes a long time, etc.) are manageable, the potential gain is worth the risk, and as I articulated earlier, I think this is a morally important issue that we have a role to play in.
(I should also add that the legal team *of course* has thought through all of these concerns as well; their job is to give the board and the organization a thorough analysis of everything that could possibly go wrong, and they do :) )
But here's additional things that I've gotten from this community discussion, both in this thread and privately: what else could we be doing in Wikimedia to support reader/editor privacy? (And yes, these are thorny technical/social issues). What other unfortunate laws are happening elsewhere in the world and how do we track and maybe act on those? And how do we articulate our role as an open educational institution: recognizing, as Yann says, that education and openness can be -- often are -- political issues?
I don't have great answers to the above questions. But I think they're worth discussing :)
best, Phoebe
On Sun, Mar 15, 2015 at 5:53 PM, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
What other unfortunate laws are happening elsewhere in the world and how do we track and maybe act on those?
I gave a very specific example in an earlier post this month:[1]
"A [Kazakh] law that took effect in January 2012 required owners of internet cafés to obtain users’ names and monitor and record their activity, and to share their information with the security services if requested," as noted by Freedom House in its 2013 report on freedom of the press in Kazakhstan, among many other issues.
In July 2012, Kazakh media reported that Jimmy Wales had "thanked the Kazakh government for creating conditions for significant achievements in the development of the Kazakh language Wikipedia".
And how do we articulate our role as an open educational institution: recognizing, as Yann says, that education and openness can be -- often are -- political issues?
I don't have great answers to the above questions. But I think they're
worth discussing :)
I do think this is an issue worth discussing, as is the fact that the (currently locked) biography of the President of Azerbaijan in the Azeri Wikipedia[2] is devoid of criticism, despite that same president being named the most corrupt person of the year in 2012[3] and human rights abuses under his regime repeatedly making headline news.[4][5]
Yet I see no such discussion happening.
Nor do I see the Wikimedia Foundation stepping up to the plate to issue, say, consumer warnings when Wikipedias become co-opted by political interests, as in the recent case of the Croatian Wikipedia, to give another example.[6]
I think that is the least the Wikimedia Foundation could do. But rather than flagging and discussing problems openly with the community and the public, and devising solutions, the Foundation seems to be terminally resistant to the idea of saying anything that might be perceived as criticism of its own product.
A bit of honest self-reflection would go a long way. You'd be surprised how much respect that would earn you.
[1] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2015-March/077053.html [2] https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_... [3] http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=4cc_1359101045 [4] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-30888135 [5] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1364372/Prince-Andrews-close-friends... [6] http://www.dailydot.com/politics/croatian-wikipedia-fascist-takeover-controv...
On Sun, Mar 15, 2015 at 10:14 PM, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
On Sun, Mar 15, 2015 at 5:53 PM, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
What other unfortunate laws are happening elsewhere in the world and how do we track and maybe act on those?
Here is a concrete suggestion:
Reach out to the most reputable human rights organisations.
Starting with the countries at the bottom of the press freedom league table, have the human rights organisations form working groups to assess the relevant Wikipedia language versions for their coverage of the human rights situation in the countries they serve.
If a working group finds that a Wikipedia language version does not accurately reflect the government's human rights record, issue a public warning that – in the human rights organisations' opinion – the Wikipedia in question appears to be subject to undue political manipulation.
Provide funding for this work. Ensure high visibility for the resulting reports. Ideally, place a superprotected link to the report in the Wikipedia itself.
This will increase the chances that the content will be accurate, while relieving pressure on activists in the countries concerned.
Think of it as a "Wikipedia freedom index."
On Sun, Mar 15, 2015 at 11:55 PM, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
On Sun, Mar 15, 2015 at 10:14 PM, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
On Sun, Mar 15, 2015 at 5:53 PM, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
What other unfortunate laws are happening elsewhere in the world and how do we track and maybe act on those?
Here is a concrete suggestion:
Reach out to the most reputable human rights organisations.
Starting with the countries at the bottom of the press freedom league table, have the human rights organisations form working groups to assess the relevant Wikipedia language versions for their coverage of the human rights situation in the countries they serve.
If a working group finds that a Wikipedia language version does not accurately reflect the government's human rights record, issue a public warning that – in the human rights organisations' opinion – the Wikipedia in question appears to be subject to undue political manipulation.
Provide funding for this work. Ensure high visibility for the resulting reports. Ideally, place a superprotected link to the report in the Wikipedia itself.
This will increase the chances that the content will be accurate, while relieving pressure on activists in the countries concerned.
Think of it as a "Wikipedia freedom index."
One more case to illustrate the need.
Human Rights Watch summarizes the situation in Uzbekistan[1] as follows:
---o0o---
Uzbekistan’s human rights record is atrocious. Torture is endemic in the criminal justice system. Authorities intensified their crackdown on civil society activists, opposition members, and journalists. Muslims and Christians who practice their religion outside strict state controls are persecuted, and freedom of expression is severely limited. The government forces more than one million adults and children to harvest cotton under abusive conditions. Authorities still deny justice for the 2005 Andijan massacre, in which government forces shot and killed hundreds of protesters, most of them unarmed. Despite this, the United States and European Union continue to advance closer relations with Uzbekistan, seeking cooperation with the war in Afghanistan.
---o0o---
Here is the biography of Uzbekistan's president in the Uzbek Wikipedia, as translated by Google:
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_...
Even from this broken translation, it is quite evident that this is another hagiography, devoid of any hint of criticism. Here are some samples:
---o0o---
... a well-thought-out program to build the country's economic foundation ...
Karimov initiative promoting global policy is always the best ideas in the world, regardless of their point of view, it is known as a person who can achieve the desired goal. He has been committed to peace and unity policy.
Karimov new residential construction, including a great step-by Jolanda prosperity of our ancestors, plays an important role in the implementation of the economic capacity to build large enterprises, cities, towns, and above all, a radical transformation of the capital, Tashkent, https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&hl=en&ie=UTF8&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=auto&tl=en&u=https://uz.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshkent&usg=ALkJrhguDlungYjoz2D8dUf12x2v7u6qjA supervises the work.
Karimov to establish an independent state and a democratic civil society based on the construction of the new century, the main directions of development of the country has developed into a bright future in the way of the people, it is the great goals.
---o0o---
The English Wikipedia biography of the president[2] mentions dissidents being boiled alive.
Peter Hitchens wrote about this some years ago, in an article titled "Our new best friends boil dissidents alive".[3]
Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan were among the countries represented at the "Turkic Wikimedia Conference 2012", which according to the documentation on Meta[4] was coordinated by "Wikipedian of the Year" winners Wikibilim, and financially supported by the Wikimedia Foundation.
[1] http://www.hrw.org/europecentral-asia/uzbekistan [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_Karimov#Human_rights_and_press_freedom [3] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/columnists/article-228241/Our-new-best-friends-bo... [4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Turkic_Wikimedia_Conference_2012
I do not think that WMF's filing a suit against NSA should be a starting point for demanding the WMF to cure all the evils of the World, political or otherwise . Even handling the recognized problems of some minor Wikipedias fall outside the scope of the WMF.
Wikipedia is the Encyclopedia anyone can edit - except the WMF! (if they want to uphold their status as service provider).
Regards, Thyge
2015-03-18 14:03 GMT+01:00 Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com:
On Sun, Mar 15, 2015 at 11:55 PM, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
On Sun, Mar 15, 2015 at 10:14 PM, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
On Sun, Mar 15, 2015 at 5:53 PM, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
What other unfortunate laws are happening elsewhere in the world and how do we track and maybe act on those?
Here is a concrete suggestion:
Reach out to the most reputable human rights organisations.
Starting with the countries at the bottom of the press freedom league table, have the human rights organisations form working groups to assess the relevant Wikipedia language versions for their coverage of the human rights situation in the countries they serve.
If a working group finds that a Wikipedia language version does not accurately reflect the government's human rights record, issue a public warning that – in the human rights organisations' opinion – the Wikipedia in question appears to be subject to undue political manipulation.
Provide funding for this work. Ensure high visibility for the resulting reports. Ideally, place a superprotected link to the report in the Wikipedia itself.
This will increase the chances that the content will be accurate, while relieving pressure on activists in the countries concerned.
Think of it as a "Wikipedia freedom index."
One more case to illustrate the need.
Human Rights Watch summarizes the situation in Uzbekistan[1] as follows:
---o0o---
Uzbekistan’s human rights record is atrocious. Torture is endemic in the criminal justice system. Authorities intensified their crackdown on civil society activists, opposition members, and journalists. Muslims and Christians who practice their religion outside strict state controls are persecuted, and freedom of expression is severely limited. The government forces more than one million adults and children to harvest cotton under abusive conditions. Authorities still deny justice for the 2005 Andijan massacre, in which government forces shot and killed hundreds of protesters, most of them unarmed. Despite this, the United States and European Union continue to advance closer relations with Uzbekistan, seeking cooperation with the war in Afghanistan.
---o0o---
Here is the biography of Uzbekistan's president in the Uzbek Wikipedia, as translated by Google:
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_...
Even from this broken translation, it is quite evident that this is another hagiography, devoid of any hint of criticism. Here are some samples:
---o0o---
... a well-thought-out program to build the country's economic foundation ...
Karimov initiative promoting global policy is always the best ideas in the world, regardless of their point of view, it is known as a person who can achieve the desired goal. He has been committed to peace and unity policy.
Karimov new residential construction, including a great step-by Jolanda prosperity of our ancestors, plays an important role in the implementation of the economic capacity to build large enterprises, cities, towns, and above all, a radical transformation of the capital, Tashkent, < https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&hl=en&ie...
supervises the work.
Karimov to establish an independent state and a democratic civil society based on the construction of the new century, the main directions of development of the country has developed into a bright future in the way of the people, it is the great goals.
---o0o---
The English Wikipedia biography of the president[2] mentions dissidents being boiled alive.
Peter Hitchens wrote about this some years ago, in an article titled "Our new best friends boil dissidents alive".[3]
Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan were among the countries represented at the "Turkic Wikimedia Conference 2012", which according to the documentation on Meta[4] was coordinated by "Wikipedian of the Year" winners Wikibilim, and financially supported by the Wikimedia Foundation.
[1] http://www.hrw.org/europecentral-asia/uzbekistan [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_Karimov#Human_rights_and_press_freedom [3]
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/columnists/article-228241/Our-new-best-friends-bo... [4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Turkic_Wikimedia_Conference_2012 _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
On Wed, Mar 18, 2015 at 1:17 PM, Thyge ltl.privat@gmail.com wrote:
I do not think that WMF's filing a suit against NSA should be a starting point for demanding the WMF to cure all the evils of the World, political or otherwise.
Well, not all the evils of the world, obviously. :) But there is certainly precedent for the Foundation tackling problems in Wikipedia itself. Recall past board resolutions on BLP matters, for example.
Even handling the recognized problems of some minor Wikipedias fall outside the scope of the WMF.
Isn't it in the Foundation's long-term interest though? I can't imagine donors being overly happy if a part of their money ends up supporting projects whose function is in any way similar to that of Pravda in the Soviet era.
Wikipedia is the Encyclopedia anyone can edit - except the WMF! (if they want to uphold their status as service provider).
I don't recall suggesting that WMF edit those Wikipedias. I suggested that they collaborate with human rights organizations to monitor status, and report on it as part of their stewardship of the Wikipedia project. Is there anything wrong with that idea?
It may be of interest to note that Rauan Kenzhekhanuly, who won Jimmy Wales' Wikipedian of the Year award in 2011[1], was recently appointed the Deputy Governor of the Kyzylorda region in Kazakhstan.[2]
The Governor of the Kyzylorda region, and thus his superior, is the former vice-PM of Kazakhstan, Krymbek Kusherbayev, who was in charge of Mangistau province (oblast) at the time of the Zhanaozen massacre.[3]
Is everyone here comfortable with this?
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVR82uP_f6Q&t=39m0s [2] http://www.inform.kz/eng/article/2730173 [3] http://en.tengrinews.kz/politics_sub/Krymbek-Kusherbayev-appointed-Governor-...
I suggest you take it upon you to have mr. Krymbek Kusherbayev fired and mr. Rauan Kenzhekhanuly promoted.
Regards, Thyge
2015-03-18 19:28 GMT+01:00 Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com:
It may be of interest to note that Rauan Kenzhekhanuly, who won Jimmy Wales' Wikipedian of the Year award in 2011[1], was recently appointed the Deputy Governor of the Kyzylorda region in Kazakhstan.[2]
The Governor of the Kyzylorda region, and thus his superior, is the former vice-PM of Kazakhstan, Krymbek Kusherbayev, who was in charge of Mangistau province (oblast) at the time of the Zhanaozen massacre.[3]
Is everyone here comfortable with this?
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVR82uP_f6Q&t=39m0s [2] http://www.inform.kz/eng/article/2730173 [3]
http://en.tengrinews.kz/politics_sub/Krymbek-Kusherbayev-appointed-Governor-... _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
On Wed, Mar 18, 2015 at 7:41 PM, Thyge ltl.privat@gmail.com wrote:
I suggest you take it upon you to have mr. Krymbek Kusherbayev fired and mr. Rauan Kenzhekhanuly promoted.
Regards, Thyge
At the time, Jimmy Wales said that as far as he knew, the Wikibilim organization was "not politicized". He characterised them as "a great group of volunteer editors - just like you - who are working in a nonpolitical way ...".
Nonpolitical.
Apart from being a deputy governor in Kazakhstan, Rauan is now also the Founding Director of the Eurasian Council on Foreign Affairs (ECFA).[1]
UK Labour politician Jack Straw was last month slammed by human rights activists for taking a paid job advising Rauan's organisation.[2]
Katharine Ainger characterised it as follows yesterday:[3]
---o0o---
PR is also key for the dictatorship of Kazakhstan, which recently created a purportedly independent Brussels think tank for Central Asia, the Eurasian Council on Foreign Affairs (ECFA), that is in reality a front group funded by the Kazakh Finance Ministry.
---o0o---
I still think it was an odd choice for Wikipedian of the Year.
[1] http://www.astanatimes.com/2014/11/new-brussels-based-think-tank-focus-eu-ce... [2] http://www.silkroadreporters.com/2015/02/20/jack-straw-slammed-taking-job-ka... [3] http://www.equaltimes.org/pr-firms-at-the-service-of-human
These off topic emails about the same subject Andreas grinds his axe about perpetually are pretty annoying. Can moderation do something please? On Wed, Mar 18, 2015 at 2:22 PM Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Mar 18, 2015 at 7:41 PM, Thyge ltl.privat@gmail.com wrote:
I suggest you take it upon you to have mr. Krymbek Kusherbayev fired and mr. Rauan Kenzhekhanuly promoted.
Regards, Thyge
At the time, Jimmy Wales said that as far as he knew, the Wikibilim organization was "not politicized". He characterised them as "a great group of volunteer editors - just like you - who are working in a nonpolitical way ...".
Nonpolitical.
Apart from being a deputy governor in Kazakhstan, Rauan is now also the Founding Director of the Eurasian Council on Foreign Affairs (ECFA).[1]
UK Labour politician Jack Straw was last month slammed by human rights activists for taking a paid job advising Rauan's organisation.[2]
Katharine Ainger characterised it as follows yesterday:[3]
---o0o---
PR is also key for the dictatorship of Kazakhstan, which recently created a purportedly independent Brussels think tank for Central Asia, the Eurasian Council on Foreign Affairs (ECFA), that is in reality a front group funded by the Kazakh Finance Ministry.
---o0o---
I still think it was an odd choice for Wikipedian of the Year.
[1] http://www.astanatimes.com/2014/11/new-brussels-based- think-tank-focus-eu-central-asia-relationship/ [2] http://www.silkroadreporters.com/2015/02/20/jack-straw- slammed-taking-job-kazakhstan/ [3] http://www.equaltimes.org/pr-firms-at-the-service-of-human _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/GuidelinesWikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
On Thu, Mar 19, 2015 at 8:26 AM, Steven Walling steven.walling@gmail.com wrote:
These off topic emails about the same subject Andreas grinds his axe about perpetually are pretty annoying. Can moderation do something please?
Rather than ostracism and censorship, Andreas' idea should be written up as an IdeaLab project, or research grant proposal, etc., so Wikimedia can avoid repeating mistakes.
On Wed, Mar 18, 2015 at 10:34 PM, John Mark Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
Andreas' idea should be written up as an IdeaLab project, or research grant proposal, etc.
Thanks. For those interested in getting involved, I've added it on IdeaLab:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Wikipedia_Freedom_Index
I used the wizard, but would be grateful if someone more familiar with that page could check that it's formatted correctly.
At the moment, the idea doesn't show up on https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Ideas
Article in Eurasianet today: "Wikipedia Founder Distances Himself from Kazakhstan PR Machine"
http://www.eurasianet.org/node/72831
---o0o---
[...]
On March 20, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales hosted an Ask Me Anything http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2zpkxx/we_are_jameel_jaffer_of_the_aclu_wikipedia/cpl4maq conversation (AMA) on Reddit, a social-networking platform. Before long the audience was questioning Wales’s and Wikipedia’s roles in helping to improve Kazakhstan’s image. Back in 2011, Wales awarded http://www.eurasianet.org/node/66343 a once-and-future Kazakh government employee, Rauan Kenzhekhanuly, the inaugural “Wikipedian of the Year” for his work with WikiBilim, a Kazakh-language platform criticized both for receiving state funds and for publishing multiple articles toeing the authoritarian government’s line. At the time, Wales told EurasiaNet.org, “As far as I know, the WikiBilim organization is not politicized.”
But during the AMA, Wales backpedaled on his decision to name Kenzhekhanuly the first Wikipedian of the Year.
Wales was on the receiving end of a fresh round of criticism last year when Kenzhekhanuly was named deputy governor of Kazakhstan’s Kyzylorda region. During the AMA, a commenter asked Wales if he would have bestowed the award had he known Kenzhekhanuly would go on to serve as deputy governor. “If I had known in 2011 that someone would get a job that I disapprove of in 2014, would I refuse to give them an award in 2011?” Wales responded. “Yes, I would have refused to give that award.”
Wales also clarified that Kenzhekhanuly “was not a government official” at the time of the award – which is, technically, true. However, according to Kenzhekhanuly’s LinkedIn profile https://www.linkedin.com/pub/rauan-kenzhekhanuly/24/8b7/b16, before receiving the award he had served both as a policy adviser to the governor in Kazakhstan’s Mangystau region, as well as first secretary at Kazakhstan’s embassy in Moscow. After the AMA, Wales said by email that he was “not aware” Kenzhekhanuly had held those positions.
[...]
---o0o---
Okay, but seriously, please stop resurrecting this thread. If you think it's important that something be done, start a new one, and *actually suggest something* rather than just copying articles from somewhere else.
Austin
On Fri, Apr 3, 2015 at 1:58 AM, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
Article in Eurasianet today: "Wikipedia Founder Distances Himself from Kazakhstan PR Machine"
http://www.eurasianet.org/node/72831
---o0o---
[...]
On March 20, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales hosted an Ask Me Anything http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2zpkxx/we_are_jameel_jaffer_of_the_aclu_wikipedia/cpl4maq conversation (AMA) on Reddit, a social-networking platform. Before long the audience was questioning Wales’s and Wikipedia’s roles in helping to improve Kazakhstan’s image. Back in 2011, Wales awarded http://www.eurasianet.org/node/66343 a once-and-future Kazakh government employee, Rauan Kenzhekhanuly, the inaugural “Wikipedian of the Year” for his work with WikiBilim, a Kazakh-language platform criticized both for receiving state funds and for publishing multiple articles toeing the authoritarian government’s line. At the time, Wales told EurasiaNet.org, “As far as I know, the WikiBilim organization is not politicized.”
But during the AMA, Wales backpedaled on his decision to name Kenzhekhanuly the first Wikipedian of the Year.
Wales was on the receiving end of a fresh round of criticism last year when Kenzhekhanuly was named deputy governor of Kazakhstan’s Kyzylorda region. During the AMA, a commenter asked Wales if he would have bestowed the award had he known Kenzhekhanuly would go on to serve as deputy governor. “If I had known in 2011 that someone would get a job that I disapprove of in 2014, would I refuse to give them an award in 2011?” Wales responded. “Yes, I would have refused to give that award.”
Wales also clarified that Kenzhekhanuly “was not a government official” at the time of the award – which is, technically, true. However, according to Kenzhekhanuly’s LinkedIn profile https://www.linkedin.com/pub/rauan-kenzhekhanuly/24/8b7/b16, before receiving the award he had served both as a policy adviser to the governor in Kazakhstan’s Mangystau region, as well as first secretary at Kazakhstan’s embassy in Moscow. After the AMA, Wales said by email that he was “not aware” Kenzhekhanuly had held those positions.
[...]
---o0o--- _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
I appreciate Andreas keeping this list updated, and it is not tangential but central to this thread's topic. It is very pertinent that the self-appointed "spokesperson of this community" (who has styled himself in this NSA suit as a worrier for freedom) was snuggling up to a truly despotic regime, helping to polish that turd in the international media and endorsing it's capture of one of the Wikipedias. (What's been done about that, by the way? Anything?) And it is pertinent that our self-appointed spokesperson has finally climbed down from that position ... to a slight degree ... at least when he's backed into a corner and forced to confront his embarrassing misstep. Kazakhstan is not the USA, but the US government is not the only one abusing the privacy of Wikipedia editors and readers.
The question in parenthesis above is a serious one. What actual steps has the foundation taken to address the capture of Kazakh Wikipedia by the Kazakh government?
Anthony Cole http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Anthonyhcole
On Fri, Apr 3, 2015 at 7:58 PM, Austin Hair adhair@gmail.com wrote:
Okay, but seriously, please stop resurrecting this thread. If you think it's important that something be done, start a new one, and *actually suggest something* rather than just copying articles from somewhere else.
Austin
On Fri, Apr 3, 2015 at 1:58 AM, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
Article in Eurasianet today: "Wikipedia Founder Distances Himself from Kazakhstan PR Machine"
http://www.eurasianet.org/node/72831
---o0o---
[...]
On March 20, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales hosted an Ask Me Anything <
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2zpkxx/we_are_jameel_jaffer_of_the_acl...
conversation (AMA) on Reddit, a social-networking platform. Before long the audience
was
questioning Wales’s and Wikipedia’s roles in helping to improve Kazakhstan’s image. Back in 2011, Wales awarded http://www.eurasianet.org/node/66343 a once-and-future Kazakh
government
employee, Rauan Kenzhekhanuly, the inaugural “Wikipedian of the Year” for his work with WikiBilim, a Kazakh-language platform criticized both for receiving state funds and for publishing multiple articles toeing the authoritarian government’s line. At the time, Wales told EurasiaNet.org, “As far as I know, the WikiBilim organization is not politicized.”
But during the AMA, Wales backpedaled on his decision to name
Kenzhekhanuly
the first Wikipedian of the Year.
Wales was on the receiving end of a fresh round of criticism last year
when
Kenzhekhanuly was named deputy governor of Kazakhstan’s Kyzylorda region. During the AMA, a commenter asked Wales if he would have bestowed the award had he known Kenzhekhanuly would go on to serve as deputy governor. “If I had known in 2011 that someone would get a job that I disapprove of in 2014, would I refuse to give them an award in 2011?”
Wales
responded. “Yes, I would have refused to give that award.”
Wales also clarified that Kenzhekhanuly “was not a government official”
at
the time of the award – which is, technically, true. However, according
to
Kenzhekhanuly’s LinkedIn profile https://www.linkedin.com/pub/rauan-kenzhekhanuly/24/8b7/b16, before receiving the award he had served both as a policy adviser to the
governor
in Kazakhstan’s Mangystau region, as well as first secretary at Kazakhstan’s embassy in Moscow. After the AMA, Wales said by email that
he
was “not aware” Kenzhekhanuly had held those positions.
[...]
---o0o--- _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
On Wed, Mar 18, 2015 at 10:26 PM, Steven Walling steven.walling@gmail.com wrote:
These off topic emails about the same subject Andreas grinds his axe about perpetually are pretty annoying. Can moderation do something please?
I'm not sure what forum would be more on-topic, if not this one. I think this particular discussion should have been forked into a new thread three or four messages ago, but apart from that, he's remained civil and hasn't done anything to warrant moderation. (If you've read his messages, in fact, he's not just repeating himself, and has even proposed concrete solutions.)
Feel free to add him to your e-mail blacklist, but "one user finds him 'pretty annoying'" has never by itself been a reason to cut someone off from the list.
Austin
I'm generally supportive of this legal action, but I am troubled by this statement:
"I trust our legal team to make decisions about what legal actions to participate in."
In general I think highly of Michelle, but this statement fits a long-running pattern I percieve in WMF governance of the board being deferential to the ED and staff. This goes back to Sue's tenure and possibly longer. I feel that the Board should respectfully ask tough questions about staff recommendations. Had the board done so, we might all have been saved from the MediaViewer, VisualEditor, and other product dramas because the Board would have been vigilant about project selection and quality control. WMF needs an activist board. All of the guidance that I read about boards in general says that good boards do due diligance, and I would encourage the WMF board to be proactive and ask tough questions. This can be done while maintaining a positive and respectful atmosphere.
Thank you,
Pine
On Fri, Mar 13, 2015 at 12:04 PM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
I'm generally supportive of this legal action, but I am troubled by this statement:
"I trust our legal team to make decisions about what legal actions to participate in."
In general I think highly of Michelle, but this statement fits a long-running pattern I percieve in WMF governance of the board being deferential to the ED and staff. This goes back to Sue's tenure and possibly longer. I feel that the Board should respectfully ask tough questions about staff recommendations. Had the board done so, we might all have been saved from the MediaViewer, VisualEditor, and other product dramas because the Board would have been vigilant about project selection and quality control. WMF needs an activist board. All of the guidance that I read about boards in general says that good boards do due diligance, and I would encourage the WMF board to be proactive and ask tough questions. This can be done while maintaining a positive and respectful atmosphere.
Thank you,
Pine
I think I would disagree Pine. Our board will always have a bit of an odd place because of our movement (this is not a bad thing) and will therefore be more hands on, however, a good board needs to be about oversight and strategic direction. They are NOT, very explicitly NOT about day to day management and they can not be because if they are they are unable to focus on the strategic direction part that is their primary responsibility. This includes the fact that while they should be consulted and notified about major decisions and actions (just like they were here, and if they had said that this was a bad mood I imagine that the staff would have reconsidered :) ). They should not be having votes or making resolutions about staff decisions like that, that is not the boards role. It is also not their role to challenge the staff in public, so therefore the fact that you see them saying they trust the staff to do X or Y does not actually mean that they are not challenging them behind the scenes and giving them a hard time/making them adjust things.
Also, the only individual employee in the entire organization they oversee is the CEO/ED and it is through him or her that they do their work. If they think the organization is going in the wrong direction and needs correction then they should certainly take action (since they are ultimately responsible) but they work with the ED or they get rid of them if the ED isn't working with them. This is an important separation between the staff and the board and further encourages their distinct roles.
Now this IS a bit different for very small organizations (including many of our chapters for example) but the foundation has been large enough to need the separation for quite some time now (this isn't a "new" thing because of our recent growth, I would say that WMDE and probably a couple of the other chapters are also at this level). I DO think we have an activist board, that's a good thing (not a bad thing) but I'm not sure you'd generally SEE when they decide to be activists and that is ALSO a good thing, not a bad thing. The board and staff disagreeing publicly and trying to hash out their differences causes enormous rifts within the organization and the community that are even harder to heal then the current ones between the foundation and the community (which we most definitely need to heal).
James Alexander Community Advocacy Wikimedia Foundation (415) 839-6885 x6716 @jamesofur
(Personal capacity)
Pine: I think you're reading far more into Phoebe's comment than it actually contained. What she said was "I trust our legal team to make decisions about what legal actions to participate in." In other words, to make evaluations about the probability of success, the necessity of the thing that's being (defended|challenged) to the legal framework that lets the projects exist, and act on that basis.
Unless I missed an election and the board now contains the equivalent expertise in internet law and the intricacies of our governing frameworks to an entire legal department, it seems entirely appropriate that these kinds of evaluations be left to the, you know, lawyers. I agree that boards should ask tough questions, but I've never been in a WMF board meeting and, to my knowledge, neither have you. There's a wide range of options between "directly making decisions about legal questions" and "not asking questions"; it's not as binary as you seem to believe. This applies to the VE as much as it does anything else. If you think the WMF needs a more activist board - which seems to mean "a board that makes individual, specific product decisions and assumes legal expertise", I encourage you to run in the next election and we'll see what the movement as a whole thinks of that position.
On Fri, Mar 13, 2015 at 3:04 PM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
I'm generally supportive of this legal action, but I am troubled by this statement:
"I trust our legal team to make decisions about what legal actions to participate in."
In general I think highly of Michelle, but this statement fits a long-running pattern I percieve in WMF governance of the board being deferential to the ED and staff. This goes back to Sue's tenure and possibly longer. I feel that the Board should respectfully ask tough questions about staff recommendations. Had the board done so, we might all have been saved from the MediaViewer, VisualEditor, and other product dramas because the Board would have been vigilant about project selection and quality control. WMF needs an activist board. All of the guidance that I read about boards in general says that good boards do due diligance, and I would encourage the WMF board to be proactive and ask tough questions. This can be done while maintaining a positive and respectful atmosphere.
Thank you,
Pine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Oliver,
I have thought about running more than once (:
Perhaps I am reading more into that comment than was intended.
James,
I have mixed feelings about having discussions behind closed doors. Sometimes it's convenient or emotionally easier to do so, but I worry about losing our value of openness in the process. The majority of my evaluation is based on what I've seen in writing from board minutes, which seem pretty sparse on Q&A with the ED and staff. By contrast, I'm accustomed to our generally open meetings of government entities here in Washington State where we have some pretty expansive open records and open meetings laws, and these seem to viewed in a positive light by the public which wants to understand the positions of its elected officials. A mice toward more openness about board discussions might ease some of my concerns.
Thanks, Pine On Mar 13, 2015 12:32 PM, "Oliver Keyes" ironholds@gmail.com wrote:
(Personal capacity)
Pine: I think you're reading far more into Phoebe's comment than it actually contained. What she said was "I trust our legal team to make decisions about what legal actions to participate in." In other words, to make evaluations about the probability of success, the necessity of the thing that's being (defended|challenged) to the legal framework that lets the projects exist, and act on that basis.
Unless I missed an election and the board now contains the equivalent expertise in internet law and the intricacies of our governing frameworks to an entire legal department, it seems entirely appropriate that these kinds of evaluations be left to the, you know, lawyers. I agree that boards should ask tough questions, but I've never been in a WMF board meeting and, to my knowledge, neither have you. There's a wide range of options between "directly making decisions about legal questions" and "not asking questions"; it's not as binary as you seem to believe. This applies to the VE as much as it does anything else. If you think the WMF needs a more activist board - which seems to mean "a board that makes individual, specific product decisions and assumes legal expertise", I encourage you to run in the next election and we'll see what the movement as a whole thinks of that position.
On Fri, Mar 13, 2015 at 3:04 PM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
I'm generally supportive of this legal action, but I am troubled by this statement:
"I trust our legal team to make decisions about what legal actions to participate in."
In general I think highly of Michelle, but this statement fits a long-running pattern I percieve in WMF governance of the board being deferential to the ED and staff. This goes back to Sue's tenure and possibly longer. I feel that the Board should respectfully ask tough questions about staff recommendations. Had the board done so, we might
all
have been saved from the MediaViewer, VisualEditor, and other product dramas because the Board would have been vigilant about project selection and quality control. WMF needs an activist board. All of the guidance
that
I read about boards in general says that good boards do due diligance,
and
I would encourage the WMF board to be proactive and ask tough questions. This can be done while maintaining a positive and respectful atmosphere.
Thank you,
Pine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Pardon the mobile device mistype. A *move* toward more openness.
Pine On Mar 13, 2015 12:49 PM, "Pine W" wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Oliver,
I have thought about running more than once (:
Perhaps I am reading more into that comment than was intended.
James,
I have mixed feelings about having discussions behind closed doors. Sometimes it's convenient or emotionally easier to do so, but I worry about losing our value of openness in the process. The majority of my evaluation is based on what I've seen in writing from board minutes, which seem pretty sparse on Q&A with the ED and staff. By contrast, I'm accustomed to our generally open meetings of government entities here in Washington State where we have some pretty expansive open records and open meetings laws, and these seem to viewed in a positive light by the public which wants to understand the positions of its elected officials. A mice toward more openness about board discussions might ease some of my concerns.
Thanks, Pine On Mar 13, 2015 12:32 PM, "Oliver Keyes" ironholds@gmail.com wrote:
(Personal capacity)
Pine: I think you're reading far more into Phoebe's comment than it actually contained. What she said was "I trust our legal team to make decisions about what legal actions to participate in." In other words, to make evaluations about the probability of success, the necessity of the thing that's being (defended|challenged) to the legal framework that lets the projects exist, and act on that basis.
Unless I missed an election and the board now contains the equivalent expertise in internet law and the intricacies of our governing frameworks to an entire legal department, it seems entirely appropriate that these kinds of evaluations be left to the, you know, lawyers. I agree that boards should ask tough questions, but I've never been in a WMF board meeting and, to my knowledge, neither have you. There's a wide range of options between "directly making decisions about legal questions" and "not asking questions"; it's not as binary as you seem to believe. This applies to the VE as much as it does anything else. If you think the WMF needs a more activist board - which seems to mean "a board that makes individual, specific product decisions and assumes legal expertise", I encourage you to run in the next election and we'll see what the movement as a whole thinks of that position.
On Fri, Mar 13, 2015 at 3:04 PM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
I'm generally supportive of this legal action, but I am troubled by this statement:
"I trust our legal team to make decisions about what legal actions to participate in."
In general I think highly of Michelle, but this statement fits a long-running pattern I percieve in WMF governance of the board being deferential to the ED and staff. This goes back to Sue's tenure and possibly longer. I feel that the Board should respectfully ask tough questions about staff recommendations. Had the board done so, we might
all
have been saved from the MediaViewer, VisualEditor, and other product dramas because the Board would have been vigilant about project
selection
and quality control. WMF needs an activist board. All of the guidance
that
I read about boards in general says that good boards do due diligance,
and
I would encourage the WMF board to be proactive and ask tough questions. This can be done while maintaining a positive and respectful atmosphere.
Thank you,
Pine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/GuidelinesWikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
So we've now moved from "the board doesn't ask hard enough questions!" to "the board doesn't tell us enough"? Those are distinct concerns. If you have them, I'd suggest spinning off a thread so we can keep this one to what it's meant to be discussing.
On Fri, Mar 13, 2015 at 3:51 PM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Pardon the mobile device mistype. A *move* toward more openness.
Pine On Mar 13, 2015 12:49 PM, "Pine W" wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Oliver,
I have thought about running more than once (:
Perhaps I am reading more into that comment than was intended.
James,
I have mixed feelings about having discussions behind closed doors. Sometimes it's convenient or emotionally easier to do so, but I worry about losing our value of openness in the process. The majority of my evaluation is based on what I've seen in writing from board minutes, which seem pretty sparse on Q&A with the ED and staff. By contrast, I'm accustomed to our generally open meetings of government entities here in Washington State where we have some pretty expansive open records and open meetings laws, and these seem to viewed in a positive light by the public which wants to understand the positions of its elected officials. A mice toward more openness about board discussions might ease some of my concerns.
Thanks, Pine On Mar 13, 2015 12:32 PM, "Oliver Keyes" ironholds@gmail.com wrote:
(Personal capacity)
Pine: I think you're reading far more into Phoebe's comment than it actually contained. What she said was "I trust our legal team to make decisions about what legal actions to participate in." In other words, to make evaluations about the probability of success, the necessity of the thing that's being (defended|challenged) to the legal framework that lets the projects exist, and act on that basis.
Unless I missed an election and the board now contains the equivalent expertise in internet law and the intricacies of our governing frameworks to an entire legal department, it seems entirely appropriate that these kinds of evaluations be left to the, you know, lawyers. I agree that boards should ask tough questions, but I've never been in a WMF board meeting and, to my knowledge, neither have you. There's a wide range of options between "directly making decisions about legal questions" and "not asking questions"; it's not as binary as you seem to believe. This applies to the VE as much as it does anything else. If you think the WMF needs a more activist board - which seems to mean "a board that makes individual, specific product decisions and assumes legal expertise", I encourage you to run in the next election and we'll see what the movement as a whole thinks of that position.
On Fri, Mar 13, 2015 at 3:04 PM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
I'm generally supportive of this legal action, but I am troubled by this statement:
"I trust our legal team to make decisions about what legal actions to participate in."
In general I think highly of Michelle, but this statement fits a long-running pattern I percieve in WMF governance of the board being deferential to the ED and staff. This goes back to Sue's tenure and possibly longer. I feel that the Board should respectfully ask tough questions about staff recommendations. Had the board done so, we might
all
have been saved from the MediaViewer, VisualEditor, and other product dramas because the Board would have been vigilant about project
selection
and quality control. WMF needs an activist board. All of the guidance
that
I read about boards in general says that good boards do due diligance,
and
I would encourage the WMF board to be proactive and ask tough questions. This can be done while maintaining a positive and respectful atmosphere.
Thank you,
Pine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/GuidelinesWikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Hmm. It's more like we have little evidence that the former is happening, perhaps because of the latter. Anyway, yes, I think I've made my point and will let this thread get back on its main track.
Pine On Mar 13, 2015 5:43 PM, "Oliver Keyes" ironholds@gmail.com wrote:
So we've now moved from "the board doesn't ask hard enough questions!" to "the board doesn't tell us enough"? Those are distinct concerns. If you have them, I'd suggest spinning off a thread so we can keep this one to what it's meant to be discussing.
On Fri, Mar 13, 2015 at 3:51 PM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Pardon the mobile device mistype. A *move* toward more openness.
Pine On Mar 13, 2015 12:49 PM, "Pine W" wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Oliver,
I have thought about running more than once (:
Perhaps I am reading more into that comment than was intended.
James,
I have mixed feelings about having discussions behind closed doors. Sometimes it's convenient or emotionally easier to do so, but I worry
about
losing our value of openness in the process. The majority of my
evaluation
is based on what I've seen in writing from board minutes, which seem
pretty
sparse on Q&A with the ED and staff. By contrast, I'm accustomed to our generally open meetings of government entities here in Washington State where we have some pretty expansive open records and open meetings laws, and these seem to viewed in a positive light by the public which wants
to
understand the positions of its elected officials. A mice toward more openness about board discussions might ease some of my concerns.
Thanks, Pine On Mar 13, 2015 12:32 PM, "Oliver Keyes" ironholds@gmail.com wrote:
(Personal capacity)
Pine: I think you're reading far more into Phoebe's comment than it actually contained. What she said was "I trust our legal team to make decisions about what legal actions to participate in." In other words, to make evaluations about the probability of success, the necessity of the thing that's being (defended|challenged) to the legal framework that lets the projects exist, and act on that basis.
Unless I missed an election and the board now contains the equivalent expertise in internet law and the intricacies of our governing frameworks to an entire legal department, it seems entirely appropriate that these kinds of evaluations be left to the, you know, lawyers. I agree that boards should ask tough questions, but I've never been in a WMF board meeting and, to my knowledge, neither have you. There's a wide range of options between "directly making decisions about legal questions" and "not asking questions"; it's not as binary as you seem to believe. This applies to the VE as much as it does anything else. If you think the WMF needs a more activist board - which seems to mean "a board that makes individual, specific product decisions and assumes legal expertise", I encourage you to run in the next election and we'll see what the movement as a whole thinks of that position.
On Fri, Mar 13, 2015 at 3:04 PM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
I'm generally supportive of this legal action, but I am troubled by
this
statement:
"I trust our legal team to make decisions about what legal actions to participate in."
In general I think highly of Michelle, but this statement fits a long-running pattern I percieve in WMF governance of the board being deferential to the ED and staff. This goes back to Sue's tenure and possibly longer. I feel that the Board should respectfully ask tough questions about staff recommendations. Had the board done so, we
might
all
have been saved from the MediaViewer, VisualEditor, and other product dramas because the Board would have been vigilant about project
selection
and quality control. WMF needs an activist board. All of the guidance
that
I read about boards in general says that good boards do due
diligance,
and
I would encourage the WMF board to be proactive and ask tough
questions.
This can be done while maintaining a positive and respectful
atmosphere.
Thank you,
Pine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org <
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/GuidelinesWikimedia-l@lists.wi...
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
On 13 March 2015 at 19:04, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
In general I think highly of Michelle, but this statement fits a long-running pattern I percieve in WMF governance of the board being deferential to the ED and staff. This goes back to Sue's tenure and possibly longer. I feel that the Board should respectfully ask tough questions about staff recommendations. Had the board done so, we might all have been saved from the MediaViewer, VisualEditor, and other product dramas because the Board would have been vigilant about project selection and quality control. WMF needs an activist board. All of the guidance that I read about boards in general says that good boards do due diligance, and I would encourage the WMF board to be proactive and ask tough questions. This can be done while maintaining a positive and respectful atmosphere.
I think you're completely incorrect here. Professional charities desperately need the separation, and being on the board of a professional-level nonprofit board is enough work. This sort of detailed overview of every initiative is precisely what a board needs to evolve the charity to *get away from*.
- d.
On Sat, Mar 14, 2015 at 12:34 AM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
I'm generally supportive of this legal action, but I am troubled by this statement:
"I trust our legal team to make decisions about what legal actions to participate in."
...WMF needs an activist board. All of the guidance that I read about boards in general says that good boards do due diligance, and I would encourage the WMF board to be proactive and ask tough questions. This can be done while maintaining a positive and respectful atmosphere.
Dear Pine,
As a recently-retired board member, I want to briefly chime in here. Apologies for dragging this thread off-course from the announcement.
There seems to be an assumption that board members don't ask good questions unless they are 'activists' - that is simply not true of any board I'm on, and most certainly not of the WMF board. To combine this with James' email replying to yours, 'providing oversight', 'strategic direction' and 'doing due diligence' often means asking the right questions, including 'tough' questions - at board meetings or via email, but not publicly.
Over the last five years, we've seen greater and greater clarity in separating board and staff roles at the WMF - that's a good thing that most organizations need to do as they mature, and helps both the board and the staff do what they should be doing, instead of getting their roles mixed up.
Best Bishakha
In answers to questions on Quora, Jimmy Wales responded to some of the points from my earlier mailing list reply. (I didn't post any questions, including the questions linked below, to Quora.) A page on Meta-Wiki collecting information about this lawsuit might be nice to have.
MZMcBride wrote:
However, this lawsuit has the appearance of being the start of a completely un-winnable case that's merely an expensive political stunt.
At http://qr.ae/jbdw0 Jimmy writes:
--- It is not in any way a publicity stunt. It is a real lawsuit in a real court about a real issue. It is fully backed by the ACLU, and we have a good chance of winning. ---
MZMcBride wrote:
What's the projected length of time that this lawsuit will take to resolve?
At http://qr.ae/jk5me Jimmy writes:
--- I would estimate that it will take 2-3 years in total, including appeals courts and the Supreme Court if necessary.
I think our odds of winning are very good. I assume they and their lawyers think the opposite. :-) ---
MZMcBride
On Thu, Mar 12, 2015 at 10:12 PM, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
A page on Meta-Wiki collecting information about this lawsuit might be nice to have.
When we were rolling out I put the FAQ at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_v._National_Security_Ag... for translation etc. The base page is currently just a redirect until there was more to put there but could certainly get used.
James Alexander Community Advocacy Wikimedia Foundation (415) 839-6885 x6716 @jamesofur
On Wed, Mar 11, 2015 at 5:03 AM, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
How does the Wikimedia Foundation intend to protect the rights of users around the world when it will have a nearly impossible time of protecting Americans, much less non-Americans? U.S. courts and the U.S. Congress have made it very clear that spying on non-Americans is completely acceptable, so when I read that the aim is to protect users worldwide, I'm pretty skeptical.
A good point.
Again, in the case of Kazakhstan, that regime – which by general agreement is orders of magnitude more abusive than the US government – reportedly received nothing but praise from the Wikimedia Foundation.[1] This would have been worrying coming from anyone else, but was all the more so coming from Jimmy Wales.
[1] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2015-March/077053.html
Steven Walling has written an interesting answer on Quora about one aspect of the New York Times op-ed, i.e. the threat NSA surveillance supposedly poses to Wikipedians living under oppressive regimes:
https://www.quora.com/Would-stopping-NSA-surveillance-really-make-Wikipedia-...
On Fri, Mar 13, 2015 at 7:00 AM Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
Steven Walling has written an interesting answer on Quora about one aspect of the New York Times op-ed, i.e. the threat NSA surveillance supposedly poses to Wikipedians living under oppressive regimes:
https://www.quora.com/Would-stopping-NSA-surveillance- really-make-Wikipedia-editors-living-under-repressive- governments-safer/answer/Steven-Walling
Chiming in since this is my answer... Keep in mind questions on Quora are pretty tightly scoped, i.e. this isn't necessarily an indictment of the rationale for suing NSA overall. It's an answer to a specific aspect of the arguments. If we want to argue about whether NSA dragnet surveillance is overall a threat to Wikipedia as an educational project, there's a whole other set of arguments that I think potentially support this action, including the fact that a complete lack of privacy has a chilling effect on editing regardless of what country you reside in, and that we promise readers that their reading activity isn't tracked.**
The big tradeoff for me as a Wikipedian is whether this suit takes time, attention, and funds away from tackling core challenges like the decline in readership, editor recruitment/retention, and modernizing our software platform. I think the fact that this is being led by ACLU, and that the main cost to WMF seems to be in some time/attention of legal, comms, etc. makes me feel a bit more comfortable. I do worry about dragging away Lila's attention from these deep intractable problems with the ecosystem, but I'm not really comfortable standing up to say this whole endeavor is a waste of time or a bad use of the brand. We also don't really know how this is dominating her or any other staffer's time, because we're not their bosses. (Thankfully for them.)
** If anyone here wants to add their 2 cents, please do. There's also a question at https://www.quora.com/Wikimedia-Lawsuit-Against-the-NSA-2015/How-do-Wikipedi... which is relevant.
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/GuidelinesWikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Thanks for the news, Michelle, and good luck to the Legal team as this case moves forward. :)
That being said, I am concerned that the Foundation seems to give unequal airtime to U.S.-specific issues, while not really doing much about similar issues in other parts of the world. Much of my analysis of the issue is on Quora, which everyone on this list may read about here: https://www.quora.com/Wikimedia-Lawsuit-Against-the-NSA-2015/How-do-Wikipedi... https://www.quora.com/Wikimedia-Lawsuit-Against-the-NSA-2015/How-do-Wikipedia-editors-feel-about-the-lawsuit-against-NSA/answer/Josh-Lim-8.
Regards,
Josh
Wiadomość napisana przez Michelle Paulson mpaulson@wikimedia.org w dniu 10 mar 2015, o godz. 15:53:
Hi All,
I’m writing to let you know that today the Wikimedia Foundation[1] is filing suit against the National Security Agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency, the Department of Justice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Justice, and the U.S. Attorney General https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Attorney_General[2] in order to challenge certain mass surveillance practices carried out by the U.S. government. We believe these practices are impinging the freedom to learn, inquire, and explore on Wikimedia sites.
Since the 2013 mass surveillance disclosures, we’ve heard concerns from the community about privacy on Wikipedia. This lawsuit is a step towards addressing the community's justified concerns. We believe that the surveillance methods being employed by the NSA under the authority of the FISA Amendments Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Act_of_1978_Amendments_Act_of_2008 negatively impact our users' ability and willingness to participate in our projects. Today, we fight back.
An op-ed http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/10/opinion/stop-spying-on-wikipedia-users.html?_r=0 by Lila and Jimmy about the lawsuit, and Wikimedia's stance on government surveillance, appeared in The New York Times this morning. Additionally, we just published a blog post https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/03/10/wikimedia-v-nsa/ with more information about the suit. (The post will also up on Meta for translation).
Best,
Michelle Paulson
Senior Legal Counsel
Wikimedia Foundation
mpaulson@wikimedia.org
[1] We are being represented by the American Civil Liberties Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_Liberties_Union (ACLU). Other plaintiffs include The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers http://www.nacdl.org/, Human Rights Watch http://www.hrw.org/, Amnesty International USA http://www.amnestyusa.org/, Pen American Center https://www.pen.org/, Global Fund for Women http://www.globalfundforwomen.org/, The Nation Magazine http://www.thenation.com/, The Rutherford Institute https://www.rutherford.org/, and Washington Office on Latin America http://www.wola.org/.
[2] Other named defendants include: Michael Rogers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_S._Rogers, in his official capacity as Director of the National Security Agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Director_of_the_National_Security_Agency and Chief of the Central Security Service; Office of the Director of National Intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Director_of_National_Intelligence; James Clapper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_R._Clapper, in his official capacity as Director of National Intelligence; and Eric Holder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Holder, in his official capacity as Attorney General https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Attorney_General of the United States.
*NOTICE: This message may be confidential or legally privileged. If you have received it by accident, please delete it and let us know about the mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation and for legal/ethical reasons, I cannot give legal advice to, or serve as a lawyer for, community members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity. For more on what this means, please see our legal disclaimer https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Legal_Disclaimer.* _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
JAMES JOSHUA G. LIM Bachelor of Arts in Political Science Class of 2013, Ateneo de Manila University Quezon City, Metro Manila, Philippines
jamesjoshualim@yahoo.com mailto:jamesjoshualim@yahoo.com | +63 (915) 321-7582 Facebook/Twitter: akiestar | Wikimedia: Sky Harbor http://about.me/josh.lim http://about.me/josh.lim
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org