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From: Thomas Pfeiffer <thomas.pfeiffer@kde.org>
To: informing about and discussing non-technical community topics
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Subject: Re: Telemetry Policy
Date: Thu, 17 Aug 2017 01:46:48 +0200
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On Mittwoch, 16. August 2017 09:33:02 CEST Valorie Zimmerman wrote:
> Hi all, Mozilla has done a lot of work on telemetry, and we might be
> able to use some of their findings. On this page:
> https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Data_Collection they break down the
> data they might possibly collect into four buckets - technical (such
> as crashes), user interaction, web activity, and sensitive (personal
> data).
> 
> This bit might be relevant to our discussion: "Categories 1 & 2
> (Technical & Interaction data)
> Pre-Release & Release: Data may default on, provided the data is
> exclusively in these categories (it cannot be in any other category).
> In Release, an opt-out must be available for most types of Technical
> and Interaction data. "
> 
> I think the entire page might be enlightening to this discussion. I
> believe our analysis of needs should be more fine-grained, and that
> some parts of what we need can be "default on" especially for
> pre-release testing. For releases, we can provide an opt-out.

Hi Valorie,
Even if opt-out for some data is legally and even morally fine, it does not 
align with the values we communicate to our users:
Unlike Mozilla's Mission, our Vision mentions privacy explicitly, and we're 
striving to make privacy our USP.

Therefore I agree with others who replied in this thread: We should respect 
privacy unnecessarily much rather than too little.

In the end, of course, it's a matter of how we present this opt-in. If it's an 
option buried in some settings dialog, we might as well not do it at all.

If we, however - like Firefox does -, pfominently present that choice to users 
the first time they run one of our applications or desktop environment and try 
to make clear why that data collection is important for us, I don't see why we 
could not convince a relevant number of users to opt in.
Sure, we'll get less data than with an opt-out scheme, but let's try it out 
first before we go for the option that carries a significant PR risk.

> Other more sensitive data will need to be opt-in. I think it's a
> mistake to treat all the data we might want all in the same way.

Content (web activity for Mozilla) and personal information should not be opt-
anything but not collected at all.

Cheers,
Thomas