[Wikimedia-l] PRISM

[Anthony]

On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 6:15 PM, Luis Villa <lvilla at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> We should have a blog post up within the next few days to discuss
> PRISM and our values in more detail; we will pass that along here when
> it is posted.


Thanks.  I do appreciate this.  And it seems to be better worded than the
statements of the Google and Facebook founders (which said that they had
never heard of PRISM, not that they hadn't participated in it, and
certainly not that they've never received a FISA subpoena).

One thing I'd also appreciate is that if indeed Wikipedia access logs are
not even collected in the first place (except for 1/1000 samples), that
this be stated officially, rather than relying on a two-year-old comment by
a single, now-former employee.

Anyone who truly needs to keep their Wikipedia use confidential should, of
course, still take measures to anonymize their access.  But for the rest of
the time, an assurance that these logs are simply not being kept is
reassuring.

Something in the privacy policy saying this would be best.  But I've
suggested this in the past, and WMF has declined on the grounds that they
want to leave flexibility should they decide to do full logging in the
future.