[Foundation-l] Re: checkUser live

[Anthere]

Chris Jenkinson wrote:

> Anthere wrote:
> 
>> I guess that this policy is approved for now. if you have further 
>> comments, please add them in the talk page. I archived all the 
>> discussions, if you wish some to be kept on the live page, please move 
>> them back.
> 
> 
> Can we have some clarifications of "disruptive" (as in "Where the user 
> has been vandalising pages or persistently behaving in a disruptive 
> way") and "reasonably necessary" and "safety" (as in "Where it is 
> reasonably necessary to protect the rights, property or safety of the 
> Wikimedia Foundation, its users or the public.") from the Board 
> regarding the Foundation's privacy policy, just so that everyone is 
> crystal clear about what circumstances this personal information may be 
> released?

Hi

I guess that most points you are raising do not really belong to the 
checkuser policy proper, but to the privacy policy.

More particular, these points are visible here : 
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Privacy_policy#Policy_on_release_of_data_derived_from_page_logs

Maybe this page needs clarification...

> What does "If the user has said they're from somewhere and the IP 
> confirms it, it's not releasing private information to confirm it if 
> needed." mean?

Well... I live in Clermont Ferrand and published this information 
myself. If for some reasons a check is done on my user:Anthere, I can 
not complain that it be publicly revealed that the user:Anthere ips are 
leading to Clermont Ferrand...


> What does "generally" in "Revealing the country is generally not 
> personally identifiable (e.g. "User:Querulous is coming in from the UK, 
> User:Sockpuppet is coming in from Canada")." mean?

The problem with releasing data is to allow others to identify a 
"person". If my ip is fixed and if I edit under another name, such as 
user:antfish, the check will reveal that user:anthere and user:antfish 
are editing from the same ip... which could lead to high suspicion that 
both are the same editor.

Versus, if it is revealed that user:antfish is an editor with an ip in 
France... well, we are only 60 millions or so. This will not publicly 
prove I am user:Antfish.


> I'm still not happy with the idea that access to personal information 
> can be given to people on the say-so that they will behave. Yes, the 
> people who this will be given to are going to be some of the most 
> trustworthy Wikipedians there are, but this is *personal information*. 
> We should have some kind of legal agreement in place so there are no 
> excuses.
> 
> Chris

Difficult to do as I understood...
Amongst things we could do for example, is to require an editor with 
this type of access to provide his real name (privately) and a valid 
email. And have him confirm by email that he read the privacy policy. 
Would that be an idea ? Yes ? No ?