[WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia privacy

Fri Apr 4 19:15:23 UTC 2003

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On Friday 04 April 2003 12:42 pm, koyaanis qatsi wrote:
> Daniel Ehrenberg writes:
> >Actually, for anonymity, I think we shouldn't store
>
> any information
>
> >potentially linking names and IP addresses to
>
> messages. According to the
>
> >"patriot" act, the government can search anything
>
> (like servers) with
>
> >automatic permission from a judge to find evidence
>
> for terrorist
>
> >suspects. If someone were to write on a talk page "I
>
> love Sadam Hussein and
> Osama bin Laden", then the government would try to
>
> >trace it to someone,
>
> and if they have DSL, they might find someone and
>
> >"detain" them.  Don't
>
> Oh, it's not hypothetical at all; they'll even
> "detain" (or, more properly, "disappear" [and q.v.
> Argentinian history for those not understanding that
> term] people for something as innocuous as
> contributing to certain charities.  It happened
> recently with an Intel employee.)
>
> In fact, one (e.g. this one writing) could go so far
> as to argue that the U.S. is sprinting towards a
> police state, with terrorism already redefined as
> "damaging property" and states proposing legislation
> to sentence people to 25 years for protesting (oregon)
> and to outlaw hiding the content or source of any
> transmission online (FL, TX, others.  and note that
> this, if passed, would outlaw PGP, firewalls, and
> SSL).
>
> I'd argue that now is the time to be proactive, while
> it's still legal.  I think it woul be great to encrypt
> *all* IP addresses in the database, and to *chronjob
> scrap server logs every 24 hours (this is a policy
> Bear Pond Books has taken up with customer info.
> Agents can request the info, even with no suspicion
> the customer has committed a crime; booksellers are
> under an immediate gag order about the visit.  no
> info?  nothing to give.  and, for those worried about
> death threats?  Mav's and Zoe's did not go unnoticed;
> they were instead immediately noticed).
>
> I sound like a hopeless paranoiac, I know.
> Unbelievers should check out the text of the PATRIOT
> Act and the text of the proposed PATRIOT Act II, which
> would allow the U.S. government to strip citizenship
> from people born in the country, but who at some point
> endorse a group the government deems "terrorist" (I'm
> assuming they're not yet counting themselves in this
> group.)  The hapless Intel employee, under Patriot Act
> II would, instead of being disappeared, would be
> disappeared and stateless.  Good for prison labor, I
> guess.
>
> cheers (or not),
>
> kq
>
> q.v. PATRIOT ACT I
> http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID=11835&c=206
>
> and the exciting sequel, PATRIOT ACT II
> http://publicintegrity.org/dtaweb/report.asp?ReportID=502&L1=10&L2=10&L3=0&
>L4=0&L5=0

cryptome.org has some interesting (as always) documents on web page access 
logging and log retention:

http://cryptome.org/usage-logs.htm
and
http://cryptome.org/no-logs.htm

I agree with one of the person quoted in the above documents that rather than 
logging by default, there should be a concrete need for logging to justify 
its use.

What does wikipedia log, and for how long are the logs retained?

Sascha Noyes
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