Florence says:

All we need now is a Wikipedia Identities Protection Act, just like the CIA railroaded through the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act by planting scare stories in the media. Once a law like this is passed, the Wikimedia Foundation could officially qualify as a Secret Intelligence Agency.

The implications of this sort of secrecy at the top should be a source of embarrassment for the Foundation. A strong case could be made that Wikipedia misrepresents itself as an "open encyclopedia." On the contrary, they love secrecy and they hardly resemble an encyclopedia. Misrepresentation that's as serious as this should be grounds for a review of their nonprofit status, either at the state corporate level or the federal tax-exemption level.

Unfortunately, the whole Wikipedia entity is so bizarre that state and federal bureaucrats would have a tough time justifying an investigation. I suspect that there are no precedents for this level of weirdness, and this by itself might make an investigation unlikely.

I believe that Anthere is hinting that some current Checkusers have not revealed their true identities to the foundation because they threatened that they prefered to outright quit.

Also, I suspect that you could bully the Foundation enough about one's supposidly confidential identity that they will never properly validate it, thus allowing one to get away with giving a fake identity.

WIPA ? WIPA Good !

Yeah, all except for the part about Intelligence.

Jonny

Surely Wikipedia would have carried out criminal checks on people who have access to ip data? If they allowed anonymous people who may be convicted felons to do that then surely that must be an illegal act by the foundation?

Despite resolutions and feeble attempts at compliance, I doubt if WMF even knows the IRL of persons with Checkuser privleges. I think it is highly unlikely that they would run criminal background checks. Yes, that would be a prudent thing to do by a website seeking to be diligent and responsible.

i suspect that if they research who has checkuser at all, it does not go farther than a cursory google search.

And how would one do a criminal background check on a non-American?

2ez : Non-American ⇒ Criminal

Jonny

The privacy issue will run deep and it will not stop unitl there is a full investigation, including U.S. government agencies and instrumentalities. The bottle is now open and it will not be closed by a foundation with a net worth of less than $3,000,000. Who is going to donate the money for legal fees? The corporations and government entities that become involved with WP will also be the same ones that will benefit by regulating the oversight of same. It will fall under "National security."

If we find out that some of the people with vital information about our privacy issues are 17 and not finished with high school, we may see some changes at the "top."