[OSM-talk] privacy policy

[Lars Aronsson]

SteveC wrote:

> One major thing I don't see addressed is that we won't release 
> GPS traces that people have not made public.

Before this can be fully explored, trac ticket 260 needs to be 
resolved and then people with many private tracks need to be 
contacted and asked if they really intended those tracks to be 
private or if they were made private by accident because of ticket 
260.  After they had time to respond (say, 2-3 weeks), we can make 
some statistics on how many tracks are public and how many are 
kept private.  By the way, it could be interesting to do this 
count now, before ticket 260 is fixed, to compare the numbers.

(OK, does it show I'm a statistics junkie?)

> There is a clear problem with attribution too, as I've said 
> before. Publishing everyones email address is not cool and 
> invasive, but it's implied in publishing all the OSM data under 
> the license we have (attribution). How are we going to solve 
> this?

I think attribution is the least problem, since we have agreed 
that attributing "users of the OpenStreetMap project" is enough.  
Or haven't we?  I'm not sure.

For privacy, I suggest this is done the same way Wikipedia does.  
E-mail (and password) is private information and not published, 
but login name is public.  For people who don't yet have a login 
name, e-mail them and tell them to register one, then wait 2-3 
weeks.  If they don't respond, use some user ID number instead of 
a login name.


-- 
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se