[Wikimedia-l] PRISM

[Tobias]

On 06/10/2013 04:53 AM, Benoit Landry wrote:
> What "information" could the WMF disclose that isn't already available
> to some volunteers anyhow? The IP addresses of logged-in editors are
> visible to volunteer CUs; deleted revisions and log entries are visible
> to all volunteers admins. Wikipedia's inherently a pretty transparent
> system...

The fact that the information is available to some users is irrelevant.
If I send a private message through facebook, I do not want it to be
read by anyone other than the receipient. Same thing if I send an email
through a WMF wiki.

You are right, some information is available to more than one user. That
doesn't mean it should be available to some three letter agency.

Checkuser is a perfect example, as we have policies and safeguards in
place to make sure its use is limited to a small set of cases. It is
inherently a different kind of use than what the NSA would do, if it
were able to access our logs.

--Tobias