[Imc] steering group minutes 2/9/01

[Mike Lehman]

John,
I'll skip the first part of your post in my reply, other than to say
that of course you have input on this. So do others on the email list
who can't make it to the meetings. But Paul is right in that email just
isn't going to work for making the final determination on this.

I think Paul also did the math rather well on why we have to consider
creative solutions to determining how to keep the Newswire a usable
resource. It takes very little to have a deluge of crap on the Newswire.
So far, we have had, as a fellow staffer put it tonight, "a triumph of
hope over experience." It is a real issue that dictates two
choices--creative urging of the Newswire in a positive direction or
simply abadoning it to the lowest common denominator. And everyone who's
ever been on the Internet knows how low that can be. I think we have
actually had a great deal of luck in fostering a usable and
well-regarded Newswire.

As far as how spam is identified, it's nothing but good 'ol fashioned
manual labor and being to enough of the rest of the IMC netwrok to know
what's going around. This is not rocket science and doesn't need to be.

John Wason wrote:

> >issue 2:
> >Whether to log emails of Bobby Meade; people tend to hope he'll go away.
> >but he seems not to be
> >
> >discussion continues (too difficult to take notes on, sorry) and is
> >eventually tabled. Further discussion on the
> >IP logging issue at the tech meeting 6-7 Wednesday.
> 
> Just one question and one comment here.
> 
> Question:  Is it possible to log ONLY Bobby Meade's posts and not everyone's?
> 
> Comment: If we log everyone's, I have a real problem with it.  Personally,
> I'm more afraid of the FBI than I am of Bobby Meade.  If Bobby Meade shows
> up at the UC-IMC with a shotgun, just give me a call.  I'll come over and
> pretend to be M.L.  I'm being grandiose here - it would be better to call
> the local cops, of course - but I'm being grandiose for a reason.  I'll take
> the risk of Bobby Meade showing up before I'll take the risk of having the
> sources of all the posts on our web site accessible to any government agency
> that feels like looking at them.  That's MY paranoia, not Bobby Meade.

I've got some bad news for you here, John. It is already possible for
the FBI to log whatever they want if you are their target. This is
regardless of any assistance our keeping regular logs might have, which
we do NOT do and are not proposing in any way shape or form. The current
war hysteria has created many more opportunities for police abuse, but
there was little anyone could do about this before then in any case if
you use computer systems. Any use of computer systems for communication
results in logs in many places and all the FBI, etc has to do is probe
where they think they are going to find what they want, provided they
are authorized, which is not much of a problem anymore.

Unlike all these other people (the phone company, your ISP, anyone whose
network you go through, we hope NOT the FBI!), the U-C IMC has taken
great care about the privacy of users of the website. None of the rest
of these people could care less about your input on this issue. We, on
the other hand, seek your input on an transparent basis where you know
exactly what's going on. It is our intention to do do everything we can
in the future to continue to protect the privacy of legitimate users of
the Newswire.

This proposal is specifically to identify abusers of the website. That
is why we thought it necessary to have a discussion about this. There
will be a proposal on implementation of use of our logs to identify
abusers in a seperate email shortly and we will discuss it Wed.,
although we will probably not be able to implement it until sometime
later. The important thing is that we will not be compromising any of
the privacy that users have come to expect, with the specific exception
of those who have been identified as being repetitive abusers.

The other choice is to do nothing and make ourselves the doormats of the
underbelly of the Internet. I admire your courage in volunteering to be
a target, but I doubt if a situation developed anyone will get the time
to act on such a choice. If you want to troll through the spew, go to
the Hidden Files. I think many people are still unfamiliar with the
extent of the problem and a look at what is at issue tends to clarify
the concrerns of us who have become all too familiar with certain
posters.

Simply being an asshole is not enough to make yourself the target of
these measures. A long history of unmitigated and increasing abuse
warrants concern; the escalation into barely and uncovincingly veiled
death threats argues for whatever action it possible to bring some
closure to this affair. Being the Internet, we may strike out anyway; if
we succeed in solving this problem, which includes the entire IMC
network at this point, it would both deal with the specific cause of the
abuse and it will demonstrate that there are some limits to the abuse of
the IMC network. Eventually it will draw a reaction.
Mike Lehman