Privacy was Re: [governance] Who will be in Rio?

[Tapani Tarvainen]

On Tue, Oct 09, 2007 at 12:06:12AM +0900, Adam Peake (ajp at glocom.ac.jp) wrote:

> The registration page says (and think has always said, I believe 
> the secretariat took over a registration system used for WSIS)
> 
> "The IGF Secretariat will publish details of participants contained 
> in mandatory fields marked with * on the IGF website. All other 
> information will be held in strict confidence."

Yes. And that is rather explicit authorization to the publication of
the marked fields, I think. (Note that they do not include contact
information like email address or phone numbers.)

[Vittorio Bertola:]
> >At least in Europe, any disclosure is a privacy breach unless 
> >authorized in advance by the individual.

I would very much like to know what that claim is based on.

I can think of any number of instances where it's perfectly
legal to print in a newspaper the whereabouts of people even 
against their explicit wishes, let alone without asking for
prior permission.

Perhaps you're using "disclosure" in some restricted sense
that isn't obvious from the context.

In any case it certainly legal to organize a conference with
a condition that only those can participate who allow their
participation to be published. That is certainly indicated by
the above-quoted statement in the registration form.

> >The fact that the event is public doesn't matter.

In some points of law it certainly does matter, although
by itself it does not override all other considerations
regarding what may be published.

> >(Of course after
> >the event you can compile a list of people you saw there, but
> >that's different from disclosing an official list.)

Strangely enough, according to Finnish law (which I believe is mostly
based on EU directives here), even compiling such a list yourself
might be illegal (depending on how you'd use it), even when publishing
an official list would be legal (which again depends on...)

> >I would suggest that any list of participants should be opt-in only.

As stated above, I believe the registration form is explicitly opt-in,
even if it bundles opting to participation and allowing publication of
same, and I'm quite certain there's no legal problem in publishing
those *-marked fields of all participants.

It could even be argued that the statement in the registration form
("...will publish...") amounts to a promise, and by failing to publish
the information would be breach of that promise by the secretariat.

But legal issues aside, whether publication is a good idea or not
is another matter.

On one hand, some people might have valid reasons for not having their
participation too public. (Note thought that one really cannot hope
to hide it from governments or indeed anyone who really wants to know.)

On the other hand, the credibility of IGF might be eroded if the
public cannot know who's been there making what (hopefully) amounts to
public policy. I certainly feel queasy about having an UN-sponsored
organization talking about public policy issues under any kind of
secrecy.

I don't have a strong opinion on this yet, but my current feeling is
that the latter argument is heavier and participant lists should be
made public. 

-- 
Tapani Tarvainen
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.cpsr.org
To be removed from the list, send any message to:
     governance-unsubscribe at lists.cpsr.org

For all list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance