[Foundation-l] checkuser

[Florence Devouard]

Dmcdevit wrote:
> oscar van dillen wrote:
>> On 7/30/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>>   
>>> On 7/29/07, Florence Devouard <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>     
>>>> Greetings,
>>>>
>>>> I got several requests about this, so this mail is mostly to get the
>>>> ball rolling. Nothing urgent !
>>>>
>>>> Checkuser ombudsmen have been appointed now a year ago by the board.
>>>> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Ombudsperson_checkuser
>>>>
>>>> I guess it is time for a renewal and little feedback on this, and more
>>>> generally, on checkusers.
>>>>       
>>> Is there currently a similar role for the oversight (hiding revisions)
>>> feature? If not, I believe it should be created alongside the next
>>> update to the policy.
>>> --
>>> Toward Peace, Love & Progress:
>>> Erik
>>>     
>>
>> good idea! yet while we are at it, may i please i suggest to consider having
>> just ONE such body for ALL onwiki privacy-sensitive matters.
>> one [[Privacy_Ombudsman_Commission]] or whatever it will be called.
>> imho one will do, i fail to see why we would need a separate one for each
>> software-function.
>>   
> If you read the resolution, you'll see that that is what the Ombudsman 
> Commission is. Oversight users could conceivably use the access to 
> divulge previously oversighted sensitive material, which would be a 
> privacy matter (note that this does not appear to be a violation of our 
> privacy policy as written, and I think it should be, along with similar 
> breaches by those with developer and OTRS access). The Ombudsman 
> Commission are already the ones to contact about that, though in 
> practice most of their complaints will come from CheckUser. For 
> non-privacy misuses of oversight (like removing something that shouldn't 
> have been), local projects can deal with it adequately enough, I think, 
> just like adminisrator abuse, and as should be the case for non-privacy 
> CheckUser misuse.
> 
> Dominic

Nod. We could just clarify in citing the tools which might make possible 
for someone to reveal private data.

This said, the original resolution was unclear on whether the role was 
only to investigate issues of privacy violation, or other misuse of the 
tools (such as investigating someone with no reasons).

I suggest clarifying this, to make it clear that
* the commission is in charge of investigating privacy issues
* but other users of the tool, or the community by large, are 
responsible of investigating other misuse issues.

ant