I believe that such a "precise list" is an illusion.
The servers as well as the legal bodies are in the US and thus are subject to
US law.
Therefore the operators of these servers will do anything the law requires them
to do, just as an operator ("provider") in Switzerland would have to follow the
Swiss laws (BÜPF, Nachrichtendienst-Gesetz, ...). The US law does not - like
the Swiss or European privacy laws - require these operators to reveal to the
person whose data are stored, how they are used or to whom they are given.
Quite the contrary some of these US laws require the operators to keep this
kind of information secret. It is unreasonable to believe, that Wikimedia
Foundation would break such US laws, just because some Europeans have a
different idea of privacy.
Besides the Internet technology is "open". So the operators of these "cloud"
servers have absolutely no control over the path any TCP/IP package takes
between here and their server. So even if they did give us a "precise list", it
would be worth nothing, because the eavesdropping can take place one step
removed from these servers.
So if you want European style privacy - and if you believe in its honest
reinforcement in Europe or in Switzerland - then you should not store your data
on a server in the US or encrypt it. If, however, the data are public anyway,
as is the case with most Wikimedia content, then this kind of privacy is not a
concern. The main risk I see in this more realistic scenario, is that the US
government might "arrest" such data and delete them or make them otherwise
inaccessible. Therefore it is certainly useful, if the publicdomainproject
keeps a copy of its data on Wikimedia Commons on some European server as a
backup.
Hartwig
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Emmanuel
Engelhart
Sent: Monday, June 10, 2013 11:42 AM
To: Mailing list for Wikimedia CH
Subject: [Wikimediach-l] Do we use (american) cloud solutions at WMCH Q
Hi
The last PRISM scandal show us again how the american governement and
web companies don't care about our private data:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_%28surveillance_program%29
On the other side, our members deserve a total privacy regarding their data.
So, my question is pretty simple and for Manuel, who is certainly the
only one with the right overview: Which precise usage does the
association internally do of (American) cloud solutions (Facebook,
Twitter, Google, Dropbox, Skype...)?
Setting-up a precise list of services with use cases would be IMO
extremely useful to evaluate our current dependance.
Regards
Emmanuel
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