On 15/11/2007, Alec Conroy alecmconroy@gmail.com wrote:
Oh Lordy, Durova-- that's true, there are cases like that but it's an incredibly dangerous direction. Secret claims the accused person can't rebut. Secret claims that can't be discussed in public. And as you imply, "doube secret" evidence-- where not only is the specific content of the evidence secret, but even the existence of such evidence might be secret (or at least unknown).
It's usually problematic in the case of checkuser evidence. "Supply your evidence!" "Er, no, I'm not allowed to." "Then unblock!" "Er, no." "FACIST ROUGE ADNIM!" The way around this is to get other checkusers for their opinion. But even two or three doesn't stop the querulous and their supporters from writing megabytes of ANI. Because people seem to think checkuser is magic pixie dust from Heck. When actually it's only something that serves to corroborate (or not) existing suspicion.
- d.