Does Wikimedia UK have any intention of participating in the discussions around the Draft Communications Bill?
The bill, if passed, would make it such that the Secretary of State may make an order to "ensure that communications data is available to be obtained from telecommunications providers by relevant public authorities" (§1 (1)(a)). The bill sets out a system for how such a system would operate, which we'll get to in a second, but let's just see whether or not Wikipedia, Wikimedia or anyone related to our projects/movement/etc. is affected. Telecommunications providers are, according to §28 of the draft bill, those who operate a "telecommunications system", which they define as "a system (including the apparatus comprised in it) that exists (whether wholly or partly in the United Kingdom or elsewhere)"—so, that means anywhere since it either wholly or partly exists either in the United Kingdom or it doesn't–"for the purpose of facilitating the transmission of communications by any means involving the use of electrical or electro-magnetic energy". Unless we plan to request the Foundation switch over to servers that run on clockwork and carrier pigeons rather than electricity (if we did, they'd probably still count as a 'postal system' and still be regulated by the act), I think we're pretty much covered. Does Wikimedia UK operate a telecommunications system in this manner? I'm not sure. It might do. I'm not a lawyer. What would happen if the Secretary of State were to send a letter to Wikimedia UK demanding that WMUK, as a provider of a telecommunications system, install a device in the office of the Secretary of State's choosing? Richard has higher permissions on English Wikipedia, meaning that the Secretary of State could have access to CheckUser data, which would most probably count as "traffic data" under the terms of the draft bill: that is, data which "identifies, or purports to identify, any person, apparatus or location to or from which the communications is or may be transmitted". How about if someone who operates a number of, uh, "telecommunications services" - i.e. scripts running on Toolserver - were served with a similar notice and asked to install a backdoor to Toolserver which the Secretary of State were to use to gain access to material on the Toolserver? (Okay, there's nothing *that* juicy on there.) Same for OTRS, same for the third-party services which Brian McNeil operates for the Wikinews community (wikinewsie.org), same for any Wikimedian with a computer (hey, it's an electrical/electro-magnetic device that facilitates communication: that can mean anything from a telephone exchange to an individual smartphone or a stereo speaker). This seems like an extremely broad and non-specific bill: do we have any idea how it might affect Wikimedia and Wikimedians? -- Tom Morris <http://tommorris.org/> _______________________________________________ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
