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/>