[Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia and the politics of encryption

[Theo10011]

So, does this have any bearing on the discussion? -
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/us/nsa-foils-much-internet-encryption.html

Or are we just partial to the US surveillance over PRC.

The article does mention SSL, VPNs and 4G security. They even have a "Key
recovery service" and it's been going on for a long while apparently, to
the point that the NSA has been steering the release of encryption
standards and tools. I suppose that should make the "politics of
encryption" a bit less relevant?

-Theo


On Wed, Sep 4, 2013 at 10:09 PM, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> On Wed, Sep 4, 2013 at 7:46 AM, Brion Vibber <bvibber at wikimedia.org>
> wrote:
>
> > I would love to see Wikipedia content made available in China on Chinese
> > infrastructure operated by a Chinese organization, with total ability to
> > determine their own security and censorship policies.
> >
> > "But that's what Baidu did and we hate them!" you say?
> >
> > We could work *with* such an organization to coordinate, share content,
> > etc, without compromising basic web security for our sites or giving up
> our
> > liberal content policies on Wikipedia "proper".
>
> I don't buy the argument. Last time I checked, Hudong (now just
> "Baike") and Baidu Baike were the main wiki-like encyclopedias
> operating out of and serving mainland China. Both use non-free
> licensing terms, and both are subject to local censorship policies and
> practices. That may include turning over contributors if they post
> content that's deemed to be problematic by local authorities.
>
> At least on the surface, the projects are successful, with millions of
> articles and lots of traffic. I have no idea what the quality of the
> content is, but looking at an article like DNA, I'm guessing it
> provides useful value to its readers:
>
> http://www.baike.com/wiki/DNA&prd=button_doc_jinru
>
> Where they are failing to do so, they can improve, if necessary by
> copying Wikipedia content. But the one thing that they _cannot_
> provide, and that a neutral encyclopedia _must_ provide, is precisely
> information of the kind that the Chinese government would censor.
> Neutral information about people, politics and history, irrespective
> of whether that information afflicts a comfortable bureaucrat
> somewhere.
>
> I would posit a different argument. The problem of providing basic
> information about any subject _is_ being solved for by local
> information providers. China isn't some backwater waiting for us to
> educate them about physics and disease control. The problem of
> providing a neutral, uncensored encyclopedia in the Chinese language,
> on the other hand, isn't being solved for by anyone but us. The answer
> is not to water down our security or partner with local information
> providers that allow censorship and are willing to turn over user
> data. It's to find ways to get that information to people, including
> the bits they'd rather have people not see.
>
> Erik
>
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