[Foundation-l] Steward elections: summary, week one

[Ray Saintonge]

geni wrote:
> 2009/2/9 Tomasz Ganicz <polimerek at gmail.com>:
>   
>> The "real danger" is that stewards have access to global checkuser, so
>> they can theoretically be used to trace users when forced by secret
>> police of an non-democratic country.  However, various special forces
>> and secret services of democratic countries also use to force their
>> citizens (and other countries citizens as well) to reveal various
>> information, so we can use this argument against almost any country.
>> Maybe global checkuser function should be given to Wikimedia Office?
>> (Like Wikimedia Office actions function?)
>>     
> For a western government the cost of the PR mess is unlikely to
> outweigh any benefits. There are also various other issues that mean
> that such interference is unlikely (the CIA legally can't touch
> wikipedia since it is US based and I doubt any other intelligence
> agency wants to annoy the US).
>
> So any attack from western countries is going to have to come through
> fairly open legal means. Court orders and the like. Court orders tend
> to be public which gives us a chance to react before the problem
> rather than after.
>
>   
You seem to have forgotten the anti-terrorist paranoia built into the 
Patriot Act where, among other things, a library can be required to 
provide a record of the books you have taken out and forbidden to let 
you know about the demand.

Ec