Florence writes:

...

As a matter of interest, I had asked Mike to review entirely, and to work on a full update of our privacy policy. We should expect a full draft for this summer. However, I felt that this little update could anticipate the brand new summer version.

We have been in discussions with EFF and other privacy experts, and the feedback has been largely that our privacy policy is pretty good (we keep far less information than most service providers), but that we do need to strengthen our notification policy (e.g., by letting people know their information is being sought, unless we are prevented by law from doing so -- assuming we have the capability of notifying them.).

So in some respects our "brand new summer version" will look similar to the current version, but with some significant changes aimed at (a) improving notification, (b) expressing the philosophy of our approach to personal information (we retain as little of it as possible, consistent with our mission and community norms) and (c) making the policy more readable/accessible to non-technical users.

We plan to continue to adhere to American data-retention norms (very narrow and short-term) rather than the broad data-retention requirements of many other nations in Europe and elsewhere (very broad and long-term).

--Mike