[WikiEN-l] Privacy Study Looking for Volunteers

[Brian J Mingus]

In general people do not read privacy policies, nor do they understand what
IP addresses are or what you can do with them.

But if you recall, I simply stated that recording IP addresses is invasive.
And it is.

This is especially true when you know that your recordings are faciliating
the active de-anonymization of people who are editing Wikipedia. Not just
de-anonymization, but often public shaming.

For WMF, the principle of neutrality clearly trumps the principles of
privacy and free speech. For the NSA, substitute security for neutrality.
It's hypocritical.

Luckily, it's easy to fix. Just stuff the ip fields with random numbers and
deal with the fallout. Stop tracking people.



On Sun, Mar 29, 2015 at 2:02 PM, Oliver Keyes <okeyes at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> 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
>