[WikiEN-l] Privacy Study Looking for Volunteers

[Oliver Keyes]

In order:

1. Yes, the WMF is suing the NSA. There are a few threads/blog posts
about this people here can point you to.
2. Brian: The NSA needs to store data without the permission or
consent of the people generating it, sometimes through forcible
interception, decryption and the introduction and maintenance of
software exploits that allow them to do this but also allow any other
reasonably technical nation or non-nation actor who is paying
attention to exploit the same vulnerability, keeping this data for an
indefinite period, with very little legal or political oversight, in
order to stop terrorism, where very little evidence exists that this
has helped in any way.

The WMF needs to store data for a 90 day period, which is explicitly
set down in a privacy policy that is transparent, human-readable,
linked from every edit interface, written with the involvement of the
people whose data is being stored, administered by a committee of
people who come from this population of editors, and explicitly sets
out what the data may or may not be used for, even within the
Wikimedia Foundation, in order to stop vandalism, where multiple
scientific studies have validated the hypothesis that being able to
make rangeblocks and prohibit sockpuppetry is beneficial to the
community we are all a part of and the wider population of readers.

That's what's actually going on, here. If you thing these situations
are roughly analogous, that's your prerogative. If you think the
storage of this data is unnecessary, I recommend you go to your local
project and explain to them that being able to checkuser potential
sockpuppets or hard-block users is not needed: gaining consensus there
would be a good starting point to changing this.

On 29 March 2015 at 11:57, James Farrar <james.farrar at gmail.com> wrote:
> Wikipedia is suing the NSA? Seriously?
> On 28 Mar 2015 11:23, "Brian J Mingus" <brian.mingus at colorado.edu> wrote:
>
>> It has worked up to now, but I'm thinking that, especially given Wikimedia
>> is suing the NSA, it is no longer justifiable. If the NSA can't track
>> citizens, Wikimedia shouldn't be tracking them either. Seems simple :)
>>
>> On Thu, Mar 26, 2015 at 2:56 PM, Francesco Ariis <fa-ml at ariis.it> wrote:
>>
>> > On Wed, Mar 25, 2015 at 01:19:35PM -0400, Brian J Mingus wrote:
>> > > I think it's rather curious that edits to Wikipedia aren't private. Why
>> > log
>> > > the IP address? Why log anything? It's invasive.
>> >
>> > I guess it's a sensible choice against abuse (vandalism) while still
>> > allowing non registered users editing rights
>> >
>> >
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-- 
Oliver Keyes
Research Analyst
Wikimedia Foundation