On Mon, 23 Apr 2012, Dave Crocker wrote:
However as much as I appreciate the benefits of privacy and the detriments of
eroding it, I think there is an odd conceptual confusion taking place here:
This is an entirely public event. It makes no sense to participate in a
formal portion of that event and expect privacy.
The IETF meetings are actually not totally public. You must purchase a
'ticket' to attend. We would not allow someone to walk in off the street
and photograph the functions, or even sit in a meeting and take notes.
The hugh amount of publically available data being presented on-line which
becomes significantly less private by creating ease of access. My home
phone number is published w/o an address. I consider it a breach of my
privacy to have some data mining operation match my address with my
phone number just because my name and address are correlated in
public property titles. Etc.
I don't have an objection to the existance of blue sheets and I think
I have long understood the multiple justifications for their use. My
objection is to the making of the content more readily available
than previous procedures. That changes the level of privacy associated
with blue sheets, in my mind significantly. I don't care if scanning
and storing the scans is used, if our legal staff has determined
that scanning is equivalent to having the original document, but
I don't want to see the time to content availablity change
(well, perhaps in response to a supoena). That means no public
online access. And perhaps an artifical delay matching the time
it takes now. Surely there is now a defacto access policy and
the admin folks wouldn't dig out the sheets just because I
wanted to see them. I suspect that they wouldn't provide
access to all sheets for all meetings in a single year.
There might also be a copy charge, etc.
All of that creates a legitimate expection of more privacy
than making the sheets available without restriction on-line.
I also don't think we should make assumptions about how
well future software will do at recognition of sloppy
hand writing on blue paper written with ink of almost
the same color.
Public and transparent have been implemented in a certain
fashion in the past which included a degree of interference
with ease of access. I don't see a written policy that
states we shall make all records as readily available
as future technology allows.
The IETF has traditionally been in favor of encouraging
on-line privacy. (think cookies) We need to lead by
example by not following the lemmings and contributing
to less privacy.
If scans are legally sufficient, then capture the data
to CD/DVD media and stick the data in a warehouse, etc.
That solves the bulk storage issue but doesn't make
the content much easier to access.