[diversity] Proposal for anonymous gender metric question now on RIPE Labs

Hi Shane
Sorry for making this personal, but I grew up in a small working class town where, had my sexuality been known at that time, people would have kicked the s**t out of me. I had an older gay cousin and even some people within the family made fun of him. But that was nothing compared to what can happen to people in many parts of the RIPE region if it is known they have any gender diversity issues. My cousin was laughed at by some members of the family. In some places in 2017, members of a family will murder relatives to protect the 'honour' of their family.
There seems to be some strange disjoint here between 'collecting data' and what this data actually means. As a software developer and analyst I also love to play around with data and find out interesting things. Especially when the results lead on to some significant change or improvement. I did so much of that with the contents of the RIPE Database for so many years. But we are not collecting details of age and colour preferences for shoes. This is sensitive, personal data. If it is leaked or hacked it can cost lives. I am not trying to be melodramatic here. This is the reality of the age we are currently living in. 

I don't know why we are even having to have this conversation. There are reputable companies that will operate surveys and the data they collect is disconnected from any identifiable data. Use one of them. You simply cannot take short cuts with such sensitive data.

cheersdenis

      From: Shane Kerr <shane at time-travellers.org>
 To: denis walker <ripedenis at yahoo.co.uk> 
Cc: Amanda Gowland <agowland at ripe.net>; "diversity at ripe.net" <diversity at ripe.net>
 Sent: Tuesday, 20 June 2017, 0:04
 Subject: Re: [diversity] Proposal for anonymous gender metric question now on RIPE Labs
   
Denis and all,

At 2017-06-15 11:26:15 +0000
denis walker <ripedenis at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> Thanks for the update but it is still not acceptable. Surveymonkey is
> for cheap, diy surveys. The RIPE NCC sets up and operates the survey.
> That is simply NOT acceptable with such sensitive personal data.

I think it's fine.

> First of all you have the possibility of user error in configuration
> and NOT turn off IP address collection. I won't accept the argument
> that "this won't happen" or "we will be very careful". I have been in
> this industry for a long time. Even the most obvious and simple
> configurations are set wrongly at times.

This is not set by each user, but by the survey creator. I think it's a
good idea to require double-checking this is done correctly before
opening registration. (Honestly I find it weird that it's not the
default, but I guess people love data...)

> Secondly you have the option to look at individual results from
> survey users. These include a very precise timestamp. That can be
> correlated with the registration data and you can identify
> individuals.

This is a good point. Maybe we can look to see if there is a way to
disable this level of tracking? Alternately indeed some other survey
company can be used.

> Stop trying to do this on the cheap. If you want to collect such
> highly sensitive personal data, contract a third party company to
> operate a survey for you and send a report back to the RIPE NCC of
> the anonymous data collected. Something like you do for a member or
> staff survey. Yes it costs money to do that, but it is the only
> acceptable way forward.

I disagree. I think this is a reasonable approach.

> You are asking a group of mostly technical people to provide this
> sensitive personal data. They know how software works and how data is
> stored and handled. I doubt anyone from Russia and it's neighbours,
> the middle east and parts of Africa will do anything other than
> respond with their biological gender. It is too risky to do anything
> else, so some will lie. Your results will be meaningless.

Any self-reported data has limitations. We know going in that this
isn't going to be something we can compare with previous or past data
sets, but as I said when I supported this general approach, I think
that some data is better than no data.

Cheers,

--
Shane

   
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