[Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

[George Herbert]

On Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 12:49 PM, Joe Szilagyi <szilagyi at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 12:44 PM, Michael Bimmler <mbimmler at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > On Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 9:38 PM, Joe Szilagyi <szilagyi at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> If OTRS is understaffed, then there's an easy fix to that too. Make a
> >> separate queue that this specifically will go to, have less stringent
> >> requirements in place for that, and have the form be explicit that
> >> it's ONLY for articles/issues about living people.
> >>
> > Excuse me? BLPs are one of the most sensitive tickets that arrive in
> > OTRS, because people will often share non-public information on
> > themselves and their "cases", under the implication of
> > confidentiality.
> > If anything, these merit more stringent access requirements!  (I know
> > this doesn't help to address the backlog, but we shouldn't forget
> > this)
> >
> > Michael
>
> I understand that, but there is has to be a way to do this if the
> Foundation for legal reasons (Section 230) can't take ownership of the
> BLP problem directly.
>

More focus on the problem doesn't mean that we can treat it in a more
cavalier manner just to get more attention on it.

What people send to OTRS (and secondarily, the unblock lists like
unblock-en-l) is often highly sensitive material.  I've seen scans of
drivers licenses, passports, etc.  Others mentioned criminal records
printouts, etc.

We can't undo that aspect of that job - so crushing the people doing that
stuff under additional load is unwise.  That should be a restrictive
parameter in solving the other stuff - OTRS can have an additional role to
play here, sure, and it already is a destination for many BLP concerns.  But
we can't funnel through it as the first solution to any article problem.

Finding a balance (technical, policy, user interface) is required...



-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com