http://imagej.273.s1.nabble.com/ImageJ-2-0-0-rc-11-released-tp5009074p5009112.html
after reading through the email-thread I agree with Herbie, Gabriel and Stephan being myself very skeptical of any kind of data collection that I do not explicitly agree on and was not given the chance to opt out. But I feel that at the same time everyone agrees that this is extremely helpful and many users are not that concerned about useage statistics - right dear gmail users? ;)
Therefore, why not show a Scifio-like dialog in the beginning as suggested by Gabriel. As a privacy-aware person I would enjoy the following options:
a) Please collect my data, I love to help this Open-Source project as much as possible as it has helped me a lot as well.
b) Please do not collect my data, but still let the project know that I opted out (no other data sent).
I would even add some hint like: "If you choose (c) you might not want to use the updater but instead use anonymization tools like TOR or JAP to download the current Fiji build from the website."
I highly appreciate as well all the work that went into this project and I hope that this will be a constructive discussion that resolves existing doubts and helps the developers as good as possible at the same time.
Dr. Stephan Preibisch
Robert H. Singer / Eugene Myers lab
> I fully support Gabriel and Herbie in their strong rejection of this
> sort of data collection and, in particular, the way it aims to dupe the
> clueless, introducing it default on.
>
> Nobody questions that this kind of data is extremely interesting and
> useful. I strongly believe that every plugin developer drools over
> knowing how much their plugins got used, and when, and where. This
> lust, however, does by now means justify to actually do it.
>
> I am also pretty sure that your intentions about this procedure are
> perfectly honorable and that you're not planning any evil. However,
> that does not mean that everybody else does at any time in the future
> and the data will be there, exposed to those hacking into your servers.
>
> Please ask yourself whether you would feel comfortable about your
> operating system reporting back which applications you've used when,
> where and how often. I would feel spied on.
>
> It would be great if you could consider switching that functionality off
> by default and offer interested users the choice to contribute
> consciously and voluntarily. That way, you would consciously make the
> decision to gather significantly less data but in the most honorable
> way, withstanding the (understandable) desire to get more faster. In
> addition to that, I would ask you to, in spirit of full Open Source and
> Open Policy make the collected data (the data, not the derived
> statistics) read-accessible to everybody in full and license it under an
> Open Data license, e.g.
>
>
http://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/>
> or one of the CCs
>
>
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/>
> Everybody can then test whether the data is truly harmless, but I
> actually believe that we may find interesting ways to identify
> individuals by their ImageJ usage patterns.
>
> If you would change the usage data collection policy in this spirit, I
> would consider switching it on, for a while.
>
> I am very sorry to be so negative in this particular aspect. I
> appreciate a lot the immense amount of work you are spending to make
> ImageJ2 a better analysis tool freely available to the community.
>
> Best regards,
> Stephan
>
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, 2014-08-11 at 22:53 +0100, Gabriel Landini wrote:
>> On Monday 11 Aug 2014 14:18:11 Mark Hiner wrote:
>>>> SCIFIO was opt in, but usage tracking is opt out? It does not make sense.
>>>
>>> To be clear, SCIFIO is enabled by default.. you have to uncheck a box to
>>> disable SCIFIO, so it is opt out.
>>
>> Right, but it was impossible to miss as I had to answer the SCIFIO dialog when
>> the update came.
>> What is the problem in showing a similar dialog and let people know what will
>> be going on?
>>
>>> I think there is a difference in the questions "what do you do with the
>>> software" and "what do users do with the software". I don't believe we will
>>> ever ask the former question.
>>
>> Mark, what you or me personally *believe* somebody will ask in the future does
>> not matter. It is the process of getting informed consent on the data
>> collection; IJ2 is assuming and makes it less obvious than it could be.
>>
>>> we can ask:
>>> "How many times was Bio-Formats used with Java 7"?
>>> we *can not* ask:
>>> "how many times did Gabriel Landini run Bio-Formats?"
>>
>> Even with my poor knowledge of network traffic I can imagine that it might
>> trivial to script something using time stamps and ip addresses of the
>> uploading machine as well as plenty of emails also ip addresses from users.
>> Not that I remotely think that the devel team would have the time or
>> inclination to do this, but if we are talking about what is impossible, I
>> suspect it is not. So whether that is potentially identifiable information is
>> probably debatable. If there is then you would be effectively logging in a
>> database their location every hour (!) IJ2 runs. Doesn't that sound a bit
>> creepy?
>>
>> My issue was (and remains) that data collection needs to be fully informed
>> before it takes place, not to be On by default.
>>
>>>> If this happens to be something people want to adhere to, then there is
>>>> nothing to worry about as there will be lots of users opting in when given
>>>> the chance.
>>
>>> I believe this is actually hard to predict.
>>
>> Ask the users in a similar way SCIFIO was done and you will have the answer.
>> Then we would not be having this conversation.
>>
>>> If usage statistics were presented similarly - with a pop up on launch and
>>> an options menu - my expectations for opt-in numbers would be very low. Not
>>> because people don't want to contribute but because we created a barrier to
>>> the process.
>>
>> The issue that does not seem to stick after all this typing is that IJ2 should
>> not make that decision for the users. IJ2 is not the owner of the processes
>> happening in a user's computer. You need to ask, not assume, that people will
>> be happy for their computers to contact a database every hour and letting it
>> know they are there and doing this or that.
>>
>>> A more successful alternative might be, when statistics are actually being
>>> uploaded, to display a dialog asking to proceed or not - with yes/no/don't
>>> ask me again options. That sounds promising, but also potentially annoying
>>> or confusing to get that pop up, and we can still expect statistics
>>> reporting to drop.
>>
>> But if the reporting statistics drop, that would have to do. Make estimates
>> instead of collecting all possible data.
>>
>>> So since we are not sending or storing use-specific data, and provided and
>>> publicized the opt-out mechanism, we decided to go with the option that was
>>> un-disruptive at the workflow level and maximized data collection.
>>
>> Yes, you said that before, and I am sure I am not alone thinking it is not the
>> desirable way of doing it.
>>
>>> Especially given, as you mentioned, that users ultimately need to agree to
>>> communicate with an external server to download these applications and
>>> updates.
>>
>> But there is an obvious difference between the two situations. One is
>> requesting an update. The other is broadcasting to a database.
>>
>>> I hope it's clear that I am not saying we are unwilling to change how
>>> permissions are exposed.. but if we can circumvent that need via discussion
>>> it would certainly be my preference. And if we do end up making any
>>> changes, I would like them to be as minimally damaging to the quality of
>>> the data gathering as possible.
>>
>> I sounds like it is preferable not to ask people about the data collection.
>> That is in my view an error of judgement that can be resolved easily.
>>
>>> To me, there has to be actual user data being exposed to be a matter of
>>> privacy. Can you clarify what you believe to be the concern here?
>>
>> Sure: that the process of collecting usage data is not made clear from the
>> beginning and it should have informed consent before the collection starts.
>>
>> If there are no privacy issues, why is the function to switch it Off called
>> "Privacy"?
>>
>> Regards
>>
>> Gabriel
>>
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