On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 4:11 PM, Michael Snow <wikipe...@frontier.com>wrote:
> >> Now if you imagine the puzzle globe on that slide implies that >> Wikipedia traffic is retained for intelligence analysis, it's a short >> hop to assume that the Wikimedia Foundation is also the subject of a >> blanket order transferring its server logs to the NSA. >> > Facebook, Google, Yahoo, and Twitter, yes. But mail.ru? The shift from > "most" to "all" in the first paragraph may make it easy to assume the > similarity is universal, but it's ignoring the full context. That kind of > rhetorical shift is a favorite trick of conspiracy theorists, it's how they > get you to make those short hops to unwarranted conclusions. Thanks for the voice of reason, Michael. As a quick reminder here, before any conspiracy theories about orders and data retention get out of control: 1) We've flat-out denied any sort of involvement in this, and we continue to stand by that denial: https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/06/14/prism-surveillance-wikimedia/ 2) Take with a grain of salt, of course, but our understanding (based on the few gag orders that have been made public) is that we could be forced to not confirm having received a National Security Letter, but we can't actually be forced to lie about it. In other words, if we'd received one we would not be allowed to say "we've received one", but we also could not be forced to deny it - we'd always have the option to remain silent instead. 3) We understand that the rules cause some people not to trust our denial, and can't entirely blame them! That is why we've asked the government to change the rules, so that you can have more trust in us next time we issue the same denial: https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/07/18/wikimedia-foundation-letter-transparency-nsa-prism/ This is not to say that the http/https issue isn't important; like Engineering, we think progress on that issue is important. But it is important to keep "we don't yet deploy https as widely as we'd like" separate from "there are secret orders to transfer all our logs to the NSA." Thanks- Luis -- Luis Villa Deputy General Counsel Wikimedia Foundation 415.839.6885 ext. 6810 NOTICE: *This message may be confidential or legally privileged. If you have received it by accident, please delete it and let us know about the mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation, for legal/ethical reasons I cannot give legal advice to, or serve as a lawyer for, community members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity.* _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>