Does Wikimedia UK have any intention of participating in the
discussions around the Draft Communications Bill?
The bill, if passed, would make it such that the Secretary of State
may make an order to "ensure that communications data is available to
be obtained from telecommunications providers by relevant public
authorities" (§1 (1)(a)).
The bill sets out a system for how such a system would operate, which
we'll get to in a second, but let's just see whether or not Wikipedia,
Wikimedia or anyone related to our projects/movement/etc. is affected.
Telecommunications providers are, according to §28 of the draft bill,
those who operate a "telecommunications system", which they define as
"a system (including the apparatus comprised in it) that exists
(whether wholly or partly in the United Kingdom or elsewhere)"—so,
that means anywhere since it either wholly or partly exists either in
the United Kingdom or it doesn't–"for the purpose of facilitating the
transmission of communications by any means involving the use of
electrical or electro-magnetic energy".
Unless we plan to request the Foundation switch over to servers that
run on clockwork and carrier pigeons rather than electricity (if we
did, they'd probably still count as a 'postal system' and still be
regulated by the act), I think we're pretty much covered.
Does Wikimedia UK operate a telecommunications system in this manner?
I'm not sure. It might do. I'm not a lawyer.
What would happen if the Secretary of State were to send a letter to
Wikimedia UK demanding that WMUK, as a provider of a
telecommunications system, install a device in the office of the
Secretary of State's choosing? Richard has higher permissions on
English Wikipedia, meaning that the Secretary of State could have
access to CheckUser data, which would most probably count as "traffic
data" under the terms of the draft bill: that is, data which
"identifies, or purports to identify, any person, apparatus or
location to or from which the communications is or may be
transmitted".
How about if someone who operates a number of, uh, "telecommunications
services" - i.e. scripts running on Toolserver - were served with a
similar notice and asked to install a backdoor to Toolserver which the
Secretary of State were to use to gain access to material on the
Toolserver? (Okay, there's nothing *that* juicy on there.)
Same for OTRS, same for the third-party services which Brian McNeil
operates for the Wikinews community (wikinewsie.org), same for any
Wikimedian with a computer (hey, it's an electrical/electro-magnetic
device that facilitates communication: that can mean anything from a
telephone exchange to an individual smartphone or a stereo speaker).
This seems like an extremely broad and non-specific bill: do we have
any idea how it might affect Wikimedia and Wikimedians?
--
Tom Morris
<http://tommorris.org/>
Thanks Charles and Harry for the clarification,
As regards coaching and mentoring, there is an interesting summary here:
http://www.coachingnetwork.org.uk/resourcecentre/whatarecoachingandmentorin…
I think the idea of having Training meetings in Cambridge is a great idea.
I would be happy to attend on either Saturday 14th/Sunday 15th (preferably
Sunday) provided WMUK pay travel expenses.
I found the informal discussion we had last Thursday after the Training
session delivered at the Mozilla premises very useful. One point I
remember in particular was the usefulness of keeping records of who came
on training and having a suitable system of follow up and evaluation.
I feel that we need more discussion amongst those already involved in the
training before incurring additonal expenses by asking people such as
Midas to create extra training packages. I think we already have an
impressive range of experience amongst those who deliver training and
would suggest it would make more sense to develop Team learning (see
Wikipedia for a brief description!) This could be an important part of
helping WMUK develop as a learning organisation.
This involves systems thinking as well as training, with an iterative
process which gets around what Martin Poulter calls the Hard Problem.
What's more, I think this approach fits so well with the collaborative
model which lies at the heart of Wikis.
all the best
Fabian
(User:Leutha)
Hi all,
I would like to know what other people understand as the "open access
ethos of Wikimedia UK". The reason I ask is that I have been informed that
Midas - who are delivering the Training for Trainers programme - have been
arguing that as they chose to use a process which was not written for
WMUK, some of their material is not available under a CC license. They
have suggested that WMUK pay an additional fee which they are happy to
quote for.
As the initial tender specified "An agreement that the training materials
produced will be open access under a CC-BY-SA licence" I do not really
understand how Midas chose to use non CC material in the process for
delivering their course. At first glance it would seem that this is not in
compliance with the temrs of the tender.
I must admit that I find Open access and open content as being quite
fundamental to Wikipedia, the sister projects and WMUK. This is whaqt I
understand by "Supporting Free and Open Knowledge". I personally have a
strong commitment to developing "Open Educational Resources" and was
particularly looking forward to the Eduwiki conference which has this as
one of its themes.
In this context, I don't really understand why WMUK is having difficulty
in making sure that its own training programme sits comfortably into the
CC framework. I would welcome any comments which would help explain this?
all the best
Fabian
(User:Leutha)
> From: Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com>
> On 1 July 2012 21:46, James Forrester <james(a)jdforrester.org> wrote:
> > On 1 July 2012 13:00, Tom Morris <tom(a)tommorris.org> wrote:
> >> None of which will matter if the law is so broadly drawn that
> >> Wikimedia UK or even an individual Wikimedian could be held to be an
> >> operator of a telecommunications system.
> >
> > It's entirely foreseeable that UK police would consider anyone with
> > 'higher' rights (probably +sysop, definitely +bureaucrat, and
> > without-doubt +oversight, +checkuser, and +steward) as having
> > sufficient level of control and access to privileged data that normal
> > members of the public wouldn't that they count as 'operators'.
>
> How about we avoid spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt?
>
> The courts have always been able to subpoena people to provide
> evidence. This act is about requiring people to store information so
> that it is available should someone want to subpoena it.#
Wrong. This act clearly sets out to allow the police access to stored
data without recourse to a judge. And, given the Leveson revelations,
one can assume that such powers would eventually be abused.
I've already contacted Julian Huppert MP, who is to sit on the committee
looking at turning the draft into legislation. He's already voiced
concerns, so I've largely supplied him with ammunition to challenge
Whitehall mandarins with.
Within the next month I'm moving the wikinewsie.org hosting to Iceland.
I won't be complying with any requests for logs, so if they ever came I
assume I'd be subject to indefinite detention under similar clauses to
those in RIPA.
Brian McNeil
--
69/6 Albert Street, Edinburgh. EH7 5LR. SCOTLAND
Wikinews, Accredited Reporter. | GSM: +44 (0)788 987 8314
"Facts don't cease to be facts, but news ceases to be news."
The tender document is at:
http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Training_the_Trainers/Tender
Yes, I agree that the tender document can be interpreted in that way. This
is why I posed the question in terms of the ethos.
If it's just one document as Harry suggests, the maybe someone can
reproduce something which does the job without having to fork out extra
money?
Anyway, the other material will be available with a CC license. Does
anyone know when?
all the best
Fabian
(user:Leutha)
Thomas Dalton wrote:
>The tender said materials *produced* would need to be freely licensed.
>If they are using pre-existing materials for part of the course, then
>not freely licensing those doesn't necessarily contradict the terms of
>the tender. It is unfortunate, though.
Is there a plan in place for how WMUK is going to put together its
2013 annual plan? We need to start work on it very soon.
I see on the agenda for this weekend's meeting that there is an item
for discussing the five year plan (I'm glad that hasn't completely
stalled), but given the delays with it I don't see that being
finalised in time to base the 2013 plan on it. There is also an item
for "Draft budget against fundraising target and meeting the 5 year
plan." but I'm not sure what that means.
I think the natural place to start putting together an annual plan,
especially in the absence of a long-term plan to base it on, is with a
public call for ideas. If Sue's recommended timeline for the FDC [1]
gets adopted (and I expect it will), then WMUK will need to submit its
plan on 1 October. That's only 3 months away, so I suggest that call
for ideas go out ASAP.
1. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Funds_Dissemination_Committee/Master_timeline
> From: Tom Morris <tom(a)tommorris.org>
> The reason I think we should think about it is precisely because it's so very badly worded.
>
> Without some informed legal thinking about what exactly the bill is likely to mean in
> practice, we probably can't know for sure.
Unfortunately, I don't expect informed legal thinking to feature
particularly largely in the government push to get this rammed through.
So-far they've had one twerp stand up and, in response to a query on
https encryption, say the black boxes planned for ISP datacentres will
"just work". And, with all government legislation, they have to provide
an impact assessment. According to the Home Office, implementing the
Communications Data Bill will have zero carbon impact.
On the legal thinking aspect, I've got that covered with one of my dozen
FoIA requests; a submission to the AG's office asking when they were
first contacted, what input they provided, and minutes of all meetings
related to the draft.
On the "make them look like proper charlies" front, I've asked the
Commons, Lords, and Home Office for a spreadsheet of every web page
they've accessed since the coalition came to power, with number of hits
per page. There's a high probability this may dig up something deeply
embarrassing which, from a journalistic viewpoint, makes it worthwhile -
as well as pointedly illustrating the deeply intrusive nature of the
proposal.
As will come as no surprise, one of my requests is now with the
Information Commissioner's Office in the form of a complaint over
failure to comply and disclose.
Brian McNeil
--
69/6 Albert Street, Edinburgh. EH7 5LR. SCOTLAND
Wikinews, Accredited Reporter. | GSM: +44 (0)788 987 8314
"Facts don't cease to be facts, but news ceases to be news."