2009/3/23 Greg Dekoenigsberg <gdk(a)redhat.com>:
On Mon, 23 Mar 2009, Yaakov Nemoy wrote:
> My main issues are perceived ideas of privacy on IRC. It's a
> quasi-ethical one that has to do with what people expect from an IRC
> channel vs. mail.
We need to make it clear to people that they have no expectation of
privacy on IRC.
We had this debate over at Sugar Labs not too long ago. Which is worse:
having a public record that everyone knows about, or having several
private records that can be used for the same purpose, but not as
transparently, which is the status quo? There is no privacy on public IRC
channels, period, and people who convince themselves otherwise are fooling
themselves.
My $0.02 there, fwiw.
Freenode Channel guidelines (
http://freenode.net/channel_guidelines.shtml ) :
If you're considering publishing channel logs, think it through. The
freenode network is an interactive environment. Even on public
channels, most users don't weigh their comments with the idea that
they'll be enshrined in perpetuity. For that reason, few participants
publish logs.
If you're publishing logs on an ongoing basis, your channel topic
should reflect that fact. Be sure to provide a way for users to make
comments without logging, and get permission from the channel owners
before you start. If you're thinking of "anonymizing" your logs
(removing information that identifies the specific users), be aware
that it's difficult to do it well—replies and general context often
provide identifying information which is hard to filter.
If you just want to publish a single conversation, be careful to get
permission from each participant. Provide as much context as you can.
Avoid the temptation to publish or distribute logs without permission
in order to portray someone in a bad light. The reputation you save
will most likely be your own.
As my own comments, while i think it's silly that in the US it
requires consent and notification to record phone calls, it's been
determined that people have a reasonable expectation of privacy on the
phone. Likewise, government agencies need warrants and other
permissions to do pen-register and traps on a phone line, even though
the phone company could theoretically give out that information
freely. The ethical question is on what is the expectation on privacy,
and in 2009, ideas can be very different than they were in 1995.
With that in mind, should we automatically publish everything by
default so that there are no expectations of privacy in the first
place? Freenode guidelines suggest no. The reasons for it are because
of prevailing attitudes where people can get upset and inflamed on IRC
(mailing lists as well) and say things they probably shouldn't have
said. It's really just a courtesy.
That said, you and the people at Sugar Labs who would rather open up
everything are probably right.
-Yaakov