[Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia and the politics of encryption

[George Herbert]

Theo:

> "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?"



No; with "Perfect Forward Security" it is still entirely relevant, and PFS
has been discussed in the game plan for WMF (I don't recall the status of
the long term security roadmap, but it's been widely discussed on technical
lists here).

It's also entirely relevant with or without PFS for any
less-than-NSA-capable agency or third party attempting to watch WMF project
users.  UK and China may be somewhere up there in capability, for example,
but most countries won't be.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_forward_secrecy




On Thu, Sep 5, 2013 at 4:55 PM, Theo10011 <de10011 at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com