[Foundation-l] Warrantless (government) surveillance of reader activity. Was: Release of squid log data

Erik Moeller erik at wikimedia.org
Sat Sep 15 22:53:19 UTC 2007


On 9/15/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> Everyone should have the ability to access Wikipedia in privacy, not
> just the few who have the knowledge, patience, and foresight to
> install and use TOR.

Well, they do - we're just not actively promoting SSL. Question: Are
we near the limits of the amount of traffic we can handle via SSL, or
might it be worthwhile to experiment with adding a "Secure login" link
to Special:Userlogin?

> We can take action to reduce these problems, and completely eliminate
> (2),  by running some Tor exists ourselves as I proposed at
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2007-September/080667.html

That might be worthwhile; have you spoken to our tech team or Sue about it?

> But I think it's important that we understand that Tor is not a very
> mainstream solution: it requires expertise unavailable to, a level of
> protection unneeded by (there is little reason to hide that you are
> accessing Wikipedia at all), and performance undesirable to to most
> readers.

I think it would definitely be useful to at least be capable of
handling the amount of traffic from having a "secure login" link on
all user login pages. But if it requires significant investments of
time and money to do so, it wouldn't be in my top 5 tech priority
list.
-- 
Toward Peace, Love & Progress:
Erik

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