Suggestions for privacy
The intention of this area of the AltExpo site is to provide a space for private discussion about strategy and tactics for promoting a free society.
If you are able to see this document, you are in a private area of the site. You've been invited in and approved and had all your settings adjusted by the administrator of the site to allow you access to the private area of the site. The admin. will do her best to exercise all due caution and utilize all the features in this content manager software package to maintain that privacy. The purpose of all these precautions is to allow you to feel comfortable to openly discuss things here, given that the internet, in general is not a private environment, but rather is very public - your posts are oftan searchable years later and can be read by anyone in the world!
All that being said, this software and the implementation of it is probably not perfect. We should test, re-test and test again to ensure the continuing security of these communications.
So, what should we consider as important means to insure continuing privacy and security of these communications? We'll post a few ideas, and we welcome your further suggestions, since you may know more about this than us!
1. First, like Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers on NHPR say, their privacy consultant is Donatella Nobody! That is, if you'd like to keep your communications private, don't even create curiosity in other peoples' minds by even mentioning that this area exists. Let's just keep it between ourselves, eh?
2. You may want to create a login (username) on this site that is not your name and is not the same username as you use elsewhere.
3. Please don't give out that username and password information to other people.
4. The administrator will meet you face-to-face before approving your registration as an insider to this site.
5. Other users of this private area of this site may want to meet you face-to-face first before entering into online discussions with you. Please don't be annoyed by others desire to exercise precautions to protect their own privacy. Their care and precautions may be an indication of the care that they would exercise to also protect your privacy.
6. You may want to NOT post in other discussion threads using this persona that you use in the private area. One feature (?) of this software is that these threads will be viewable by only those that are also vetted before being allowed into the private area, but you will also be able to view all the other threads posted by people who are among the great unwashed. So, it may not be immediately apparent that you are in the private area, since you'll see a lot of non-private posts as well. Your admin. would prefer that all the other forum threads were not visible so it would be obvious that we were in an exclusive, private area. She will continue to investigate how to make it more comfortable and obvious that we are in the private area and make improvements, where possible for your benefit.
7. You may want to not have this username and password remembered by your browser when it asks you "Do you want Firefox to remember your password on this computer?"
8. You may ask why anyone would be concerned about all these privacy issues, and we would say that some who will join this list may be concerned that we are seeing a fascist police-state crackdown in America and around the world. We ask you to respect their concern. The expectation of privacy is something that enables us to feel more comfortable to have an honest and open conversation. Conversely, the expectation that all we post will be read over by a "national security" bureaucrat (or worse, computer) that will promptly enter us into a "no fly list" based on what we say will tend to stifle conversation. We don't blame anyone for still being reserved, based on the expectation that this medium is not perfectly secure. We understand.
9. The reason we state all this is to help you understand the need to be disciplined in the active practice of privacy, and to understand why we would immediately cut someone off from their access to this area if we observed breaches of good privacy practice. We'll tend to err on the side of protection of our participants and observing their concerns, as opposed to being concerned about hurting anyone's feelings. To re-instate someone, we'd probably have to have a face-to-face meeting again to up our confidence level again.
10. We could probably best entertain further suggestions to actively pursue privacy by starting a thread about that in the forum area. When good suggestions come up, we will add them to this list and this list can be considered "required training" reading.