Proposal for anonymous gender metric question now on RIPE Labs
Hi all, Based on our discussions here, I've written a post for RIPE Labs on how we can include an anonymous question to gather gender metrics on the RIPE 75 meeting registration form. https://labs.ripe.net/Members/agowland/gathering-gender-metrics-at-ripe-meet... Happy to hear your input. Thanks, Amanda
Hi Amanda 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. I object to using surveymonkey for this survey. cheersdenis From: Amanda Gowland <agowland@ripe.net> To: "diversity@ripe.net" <diversity@ripe.net> Sent: Thursday, 15 June 2017, 11:59 Subject: [diversity] Proposal for anonymous gender metric question now on RIPE Labs Hi all, Based on our discussions here, I've written a post for RIPE Labs on how we can include an anonymous question to gather gender metrics on the RIPE 75 meeting registration form. https://labs.ripe.net/Members/agowland/gathering-gender-metrics-at-ripe-meet... Happy to hear your input. Thanks, Amanda _______________________________________________ Diversity mailing list Diversity@ripe.net https://lists.ripe.net/mailman/listinfo/diversity
Denis and all, At 2017-06-15 11:26:15 +0000 denis walker <ripedenis@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
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@time-travellers.org> To: denis walker <ripedenis@yahoo.co.uk> Cc: Amanda Gowland <agowland@ripe.net>; "diversity@ripe.net" <diversity@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@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
Denis, At 2017-06-20 00:20:22 +0000 denis walker <ripedenis@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
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.
I feel a lot of sympathy for anyone living in an oppressive situation. I don't deny that people are tortured, killed, and their families harmed for many unjust reasons - including their gender identity.
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 think there is an issue. I disagree with your repeated assertion that it is especially sensitive and can cost lives. When I buy an airline ticket I have to say "Dhr." ("sir") or "Mevr." ("madam"). When I check into a hotel I have to hand over my passport, which has my sex on it. Many driver's licenses have sex on them. Swedish national identity number is different depending on whether you are a man or a female. I'm sure others on the list can think of dozens of more examples where your gender or sex are non-private. Further, as has been repeatedly pointed out, this is opt-in. Anyone who feels concerned should not opt-in. I know you feel like people will feel pressured to participate and put false information in, but I cannot imagine any scenario where we could make people feel 100% safe with an Internet-based registration system. So the only options we are left with are to not gather information because maybe someone might feel pressured to lie, or to go ahead with a reasonable balance of privacy & information gathering.
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.
We are having this conversation because there are differing opinions. I think that I understand your concerns, I just do not agree that they are valid. Nevertheless, I am interested to hear of what your suggestions are for such reputable companies, or at least what selection criteria you would recommend for choosing one. Cheers, -- Shane
Hi Shane On 20/06/2017 11:38, Shane Kerr wrote:
Denis,
At 2017-06-20 00:20:22 +0000 denis walker <ripedenis@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
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. I feel a lot of sympathy for anyone living in an oppressive situation. I don't deny that people are tortured, killed, and their families harmed for many unjust reasons - including their gender identity.
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 think there is an issue. I disagree with your repeated assertion that it is especially sensitive and can cost lives.
When I buy an airline ticket I have to say "Dhr." ("sir") or "Mevr." ("madam"). When I check into a hotel I have to hand over my passport, which has my sex on it. Many driver's licenses have sex on them. Swedish national identity number is different depending on whether you are a man or a female.
I'm sure others on the list can think of dozens of more examples where your gender or sex are non-private.
In all of these examples you are referring to your biological gender. This is a simple binary option, male/female. It is set at birth, has legal significance and for many people cannot be changed no matter what happens later in your life. When you start to talk about gender diversity and fluidity you are into territory that some governments and some societies take great issue with. This is one of the things you are trying to measure and are asking people to (opt in to) specify.
Further, as has been repeatedly pointed out, this is opt-in. Anyone who feels concerned should not opt-in.
I know you feel like people will feel pressured to participate and put false information in, but I cannot imagine any scenario where we could make people feel 100% safe with an Internet-based registration system. So the only options we are left with are to not gather information because maybe someone might feel pressured to lie, or to go ahead with a reasonable balance of privacy & information gathering.
I don't have any issue with collecting this type of information, processing it and working to improve diversity at RIPE meetings. My issue is the way you propose to do it. Even here you have subconsciously linked the gathering of this information with the registration. And that is the problem. You are telling people that it is anonymous. But it isn't anonymous. There is a simple cross reference point between this data and the identifiable registration data. Even if the RIPE NCC says "of course no one would make that cross reference", the fact that it is there means it is not anonymous. If you do it this way, you should not tell people it will be collected anonymously. You should tell people the results will be anonymised. That is significantly different.
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. We are having this conversation because there are differing opinions. I think that I understand your concerns, I just do not agree that they are valid.
Nevertheless, I am interested to hear of what your suggestions are for such reputable companies, or at least what selection criteria you would recommend for choosing one.
I have no personal experience of organising such surveys. But I have sat in many presentations of staff survey results while at the RIPE NCC. As far as I could see, these companies managed the survey, processed the results and provided anonymous data back to the RIPE NCC. The criteria is that no one should have access to the raw data from both the survey and the registration. cheers denis
Cheers,
-- Shane
Hi, I see the decision of collecting the Data is already made, so lets move on. Earlier on it was hinted at diversity for a Gender, Sexual and religious point survey, now we are back to solely gender is being discussed. What data will be collected, is it only gender now? What does "diversity" plan to do with the collected data? What is the intention of the data collection? Will the aggregated data per meeting be made public? David Hilario IP Manager Larus Cloud Service Limited p: +852 29888918 m: +359 89 764 1784 f: +852 29888068 a: Flat B5, 11/F, TML Tower, No.3 Hoi Shing Road, Tsuen Wan, HKSAR w: laruscloudservice.net e: d.hilario@laruscloudservice.net On 20 June 2017 at 13:57, denis <ripedenis@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
Hi Shane
On 20/06/2017 11:38, Shane Kerr wrote:
Denis,
At 2017-06-20 00:20:22 +0000 denis walker <ripedenis@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
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.
I feel a lot of sympathy for anyone living in an oppressive situation. I don't deny that people are tortured, killed, and their families harmed for many unjust reasons - including their gender identity.
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 think there is an issue. I disagree with your repeated assertion that it is especially sensitive and can cost lives.
When I buy an airline ticket I have to say "Dhr." ("sir") or "Mevr." ("madam"). When I check into a hotel I have to hand over my passport, which has my sex on it. Many driver's licenses have sex on them. Swedish national identity number is different depending on whether you are a man or a female.
I'm sure others on the list can think of dozens of more examples where your gender or sex are non-private.
In all of these examples you are referring to your biological gender. This is a simple binary option, male/female. It is set at birth, has legal significance and for many people cannot be changed no matter what happens later in your life. When you start to talk about gender diversity and fluidity you are into territory that some governments and some societies take great issue with. This is one of the things you are trying to measure and are asking people to (opt in to) specify.
Further, as has been repeatedly pointed out, this is opt-in. Anyone who feels concerned should not opt-in.
I know you feel like people will feel pressured to participate and put false information in, but I cannot imagine any scenario where we could make people feel 100% safe with an Internet-based registration system. So the only options we are left with are to not gather information because maybe someone might feel pressured to lie, or to go ahead with a reasonable balance of privacy & information gathering.
I don't have any issue with collecting this type of information, processing it and working to improve diversity at RIPE meetings. My issue is the way you propose to do it. Even here you have subconsciously linked the gathering of this information with the registration. And that is the problem. You are telling people that it is anonymous. But it isn't anonymous. There is a simple cross reference point between this data and the identifiable registration data. Even if the RIPE NCC says "of course no one would make that cross reference", the fact that it is there means it is not anonymous. If you do it this way, you should not tell people it will be collected anonymously. You should tell people the results will be anonymised. That is significantly different.
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.
We are having this conversation because there are differing opinions. I think that I understand your concerns, I just do not agree that they are valid.
Nevertheless, I am interested to hear of what your suggestions are for such reputable companies, or at least what selection criteria you would recommend for choosing one.
I have no personal experience of organising such surveys. But I have sat in many presentations of staff survey results while at the RIPE NCC. As far as I could see, these companies managed the survey, processed the results and provided anonymous data back to the RIPE NCC. The criteria is that no one should have access to the raw data from both the survey and the registration.
cheers denis
Cheers,
-- Shane
_______________________________________________ Diversity mailing list Diversity@ripe.net https://lists.ripe.net/mailman/listinfo/diversity
Hi David On 20/06/2017 21:27, David Hilario wrote:
Hi,
I see the decision of collecting the Data is already made, so lets move on.
As I said I have no problem with the concept of collecting this data. But this data must be collected anonymously and not anonymised after collection. cheers denis
Earlier on it was hinted at diversity for a Gender, Sexual and religious point survey, now we are back to solely gender is being discussed.
What data will be collected, is it only gender now? What does "diversity" plan to do with the collected data? What is the intention of the data collection? Will the aggregated data per meeting be made public?
David Hilario
IP Manager Larus Cloud Service Limited
p: +852 29888918 m: +359 89 764 1784 f: +852 29888068 a: Flat B5, 11/F, TML Tower, No.3 Hoi Shing Road, Tsuen Wan, HKSAR w: laruscloudservice.net e: d.hilario@laruscloudservice.net
On 20 June 2017 at 13:57, denis <ripedenis@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
Hi Shane
On 20/06/2017 11:38, Shane Kerr wrote:
Denis,
At 2017-06-20 00:20:22 +0000 denis walker <ripedenis@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
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.
I feel a lot of sympathy for anyone living in an oppressive situation. I don't deny that people are tortured, killed, and their families harmed for many unjust reasons - including their gender identity.
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 think there is an issue. I disagree with your repeated assertion that it is especially sensitive and can cost lives.
When I buy an airline ticket I have to say "Dhr." ("sir") or "Mevr." ("madam"). When I check into a hotel I have to hand over my passport, which has my sex on it. Many driver's licenses have sex on them. Swedish national identity number is different depending on whether you are a man or a female.
I'm sure others on the list can think of dozens of more examples where your gender or sex are non-private.
In all of these examples you are referring to your biological gender. This is a simple binary option, male/female. It is set at birth, has legal significance and for many people cannot be changed no matter what happens later in your life. When you start to talk about gender diversity and fluidity you are into territory that some governments and some societies take great issue with. This is one of the things you are trying to measure and are asking people to (opt in to) specify.
Further, as has been repeatedly pointed out, this is opt-in. Anyone who feels concerned should not opt-in.
I know you feel like people will feel pressured to participate and put false information in, but I cannot imagine any scenario where we could make people feel 100% safe with an Internet-based registration system. So the only options we are left with are to not gather information because maybe someone might feel pressured to lie, or to go ahead with a reasonable balance of privacy & information gathering.
I don't have any issue with collecting this type of information, processing it and working to improve diversity at RIPE meetings. My issue is the way you propose to do it. Even here you have subconsciously linked the gathering of this information with the registration. And that is the problem. You are telling people that it is anonymous. But it isn't anonymous. There is a simple cross reference point between this data and the identifiable registration data. Even if the RIPE NCC says "of course no one would make that cross reference", the fact that it is there means it is not anonymous. If you do it this way, you should not tell people it will be collected anonymously. You should tell people the results will be anonymised. That is significantly different.
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.
We are having this conversation because there are differing opinions. I think that I understand your concerns, I just do not agree that they are valid.
Nevertheless, I am interested to hear of what your suggestions are for such reputable companies, or at least what selection criteria you would recommend for choosing one.
I have no personal experience of organising such surveys. But I have sat in many presentations of staff survey results while at the RIPE NCC. As far as I could see, these companies managed the survey, processed the results and provided anonymous data back to the RIPE NCC. The criteria is that no one should have access to the raw data from both the survey and the registration.
cheers denis
Cheers,
-- Shane
_______________________________________________ Diversity mailing list Diversity@ripe.net https://lists.ripe.net/mailman/listinfo/diversity
participants (5)
-
Amanda Gowland -
David Hilario -
denis -
denis walker
-
Shane Kerr