[Foundation-l] Re: Privacy concerns

[Lars Aronsson]

W. Guy Finley wrote:

> An IP address cannot in any way, shape, or form be considered to 
> be private information and I'm amazed there can be rants back 
> and forth about this.

In Europe this is not about "private" but "personal" information, 
meaning anything that can be connected with your person, such as 
names, addresses, phone numbers, and -perhaps- IP addresses. 
Storing and processing such information is not illegal, but has to 
follow some rules.  Apparently we still use the Internet all over 
this continent, so these rules are possible to comply with.

In a case last week a Swedish court ruled that IP addresses were 
not personal information.  But this outcome was far from obvious, 
and later rulings could go the other way. 
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/21/hunt_for_swedish_filesharers/

> It's as simple as this -- you elect to visit Wikipedia, in turn 
> your IP and your activity is stored.

If Wikipedia were a Swedish website (it is not), it would be 
required by law to provide information about how it uses cookies 
and for what purposes.  No problem, a short notice is enough.  
The Foundation's privacy policy document already complies with 
this, http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Privacy_policy#Cookies
as does the Swedish Wikipedia's cookie information page,
http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Cookies

> Make admins sign NDA's about log info?  Unbelievable.  There is 
> NOTHING personally identifying there

If it were really harmless, we should ask for all logs to be 
published openly, and IP addresses could be listed in articles' 
revision history.


-- 
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se