I read (skimmed, for the present) Chris Rusbridges comprehensive
treatment of the privacy issues surrounding the 'covert' logging of user
behaviour, an example of which I described in my earlier message on this
thread.
Just in case Chris thought otherwise, I would like to reassure him (and
other eLibbers) that I (and others in the eLib and non-eLib project
teams of which I'm a member) are fully aware of these issues, and the
potential threats to personal privacy represented by the 'information
trails' that we have the power to cause end-users of our systems and
services to leave behind them. And we *are* careful in all the ways he
suggests.
Perhaps it was remiss of me not to include (in my last posting to
LIS-ELIB) a summary of our conclusions (as the Decomate project team)
and policies formed on these issues whilst we were designing the logging
mechanisms - but I was writing a technical answer to help someone with
a technical problem. We discussed it all at great length, including
consideration of end-users in countries less 'politically liberal' than
UK, and agreed a wide range of working practices, including (very
severe) limits on what information is given to content providers -
publishers etc.
Although I included a chunk of 'raw' log in my message, I first ensured
that the end-user concerned (i.e. myself) had no objection to worldwide
dissemination of the information concerned, including to my political
enemies (and anyone who knows about my outside-LSE 'hobbies' should be
able to imagine that I have some political enemies).
We all have responsibilities (legal *and* moral) in this area, more so
because we are often in an 'information priviledged' position.
John Paschoud
HeadLine, etc etc.
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