Re: Minutes of the Board Meeting of March 11th, 2014

[Bastien Nocera <hadess hadess net>]

On Mon, 2014-03-24 at 14:29 +0100, Luc Pionchon wrote:
> About privacy issues,
>
> On 24 March 2014 12:50, Emmanuele Bassi <ebassi gmail com> wrote:
> > wiki: https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/20140311
>
> >  * Privacy issues regarding GNOME Software statistics reporting
> >   * The GNOME Software statistics configuration moved to GNOME Control Center
> >   * https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=725912
> >   * The change to send usage stats to distros by default was intentional
>
> I am very surprised to read the argument developed in [1]. Shouldn't
> GNOME preserve user's privacy far before serving distributor/vendor's
> interest? This is worrying.
>
> [1] https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=725912#c2
>
>
> >   * Bastien suggested this be explicitly asked/presented to users in
> > GNOME Initial Setup
>
> I think that this is not enough: The user is not always the one who
> does the initial setup. Also the initial setup may have happened long
> ago, who will remember what he selected during initial setup?
>
> I think that the user must be informed at the same time when
> information is sent. Without having to dig into various settings. It
> could be, for example, a check box in GNOME Software with a label
> like:
>
>     "[x] send usage stats alongside the connection." or alike.
>
> Together with a link to the policy and details about what is actually sent.
>
> This would be clear and transparent, and would allow user to disable
> the "service" anytime, without any extra steps.

You misread the bug report to say "initial setup will be the only place
where we'll ask that question". There will be a toggle in the Privacy
panel obviously.

And your argument is also pretty thin on the ground. The user didn't do
the initial setup and the evil person who installed it is sending your
software usage, in case the keylogger they installed isn't quite enough.