[Wikimedia-l] PRISM

[MZMcBride]

Fred Bauder wrote:
>> This has come up in the context of database dumps and database
>> replication. We're basically asking for this information to one day be
>> leaked by retaining it indefinitely (including usernames that out
>> individuals, CheckUser logs, content buried inside page histories,
>>etc.).
>
>It is much better to be able to monitor oversighters than to completely
>remove the miniscule portion of suppressed material intelligence agencies
>might have an interest in.

Sorry, that confusion was caused by me. I wasn't speaking in the context
of the NSA or PRISM or anything like that (subject line aside, of course).
I was talking about the general trend of preferring suppression to
(actual) deletion on Wikimedia wikis.

Though to frame it as simply "able to monitor oversighters" misses the
point, I think. Yes, it's a trade-off, but when we think of things like
long-banned usernames (and their associated block log entries) that are
basically vandalism, we can take the approach of hiding them indefinitely
(sweeping them under the rug) or we can take the approach of eventually
deleting them outright (taking out the trash).

The same is true of CheckUser logs, particularly logged direct queries of
IP addresses, which when viewed in a timeline, can often reveal an
editor's IP addresses. This is basically private "user metadata" similar
to the "telephony metadata" at the center of one of these recent
controversies. We can choose to keep these logs around forever, hoping
they'll never be exposed, or we can delete them after a certain period of
Time.

In other words, it's not even outright suppression (in the MediaWiki
sense) that we should consider. Private data can't and won't stay private
forever unless it's actively destroyed. Surely history has taught us this.

My view is that if you continue sweeping things under the rug, eventually
some dirt is going to be exposed. This related to the thread's larger
point about removing liability/culpability by simply deleting things
rather than archiving them indefinitely.

MZMcBride