[OpenID] (privacy) endorsement, John Bradley

SitG Admin sysadmin at shadowsinthegarden.com
Sun Dec 14 23:47:38 UTC 2008


>I think anyone who believes that privacy exists 
>online is either stupid or naïve, but I have 
>zero interest in debating that,

How does this work with accountability? Would you 
support penalties for members of the Board who 
disclosed members' personally identifying 
information? Or would you insist that "There was 
no breach of privacy, because the member never 
really had any in the first place."?

>To suggest that you cannot trust the names 
>people use in this community is to me an 
>unacceptable level of paranoia.

Idealist, realist. There is NO EVIDENCE on this 
list that the names given are real names. Period. 
You can go outside the list and look them up, 
provide yourself with a level of assurance that 
YOU accept, but do not tell us that it is 
"unacceptable" to not trust such things based on 
their usage alone.

>There isn't a single active member on this list 
>who participated in actual work (specs, 
>foundation, evangelism) that I haven't either 
>met in person or met someone I trust who can 
>vouch for them.

I have evangelized OpenID locally, but I suppose 
this doesn't count. Out of sight, out of mind. 
Members of the community may have done a lot to 
help OpenID, but if they won't give their real 
names *on this list*, it was never actual WORK.

>For the record, this is exactly what I have wrote before:
>
>"The foundation should not be handing out 
>personal information for any other purposes than 
>to obey its bylaws (for example, sending 
>notifications as legally required will mean 
>giving someone with an administrative capacity 
>access to the mailing lists). Members should 
>have an opt-in way to allow their name and 
>city/country to be listed, with optionally their 
>employer."
>
>How that is different from John's position is beyond me.

Respect for privacy - which, again, you believe 
to not even exist. I won't try to make the case 
(to you) that this means you don't respect US, 
since it's tricky to include, in the definition 
of a person, the right to that which doesn't 
really exist.

Many analogies spring to mind of denying some 
minorities basic human rights because those 
making the decisions thought there was some 
special circumstance that applied. I won't go 
into those, because most of them aren't nice, but 
I do think that decisions about privacy shouldn't 
be made based on the premise that it doesn't 
exist.

-Shade



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