[HCoop-Discuss] Draft data confidentiality policies

[Nathan Kennedy]

Hello everyone, I am back in New York now although I am dog-tired and 
frazzled as has probably come through in the poor editing of my previous 
two emails just now.

Frank, thanks so much for your feedback on the first policy, I will 
definitely review it in more detail later.  Some of the wording feedback 
looks like exactly what I was looking for.  I didn't necessarily want to 
call it an "Anti-FISA policy," that was a temporary descriptive name for it.

Although without reading your feedback in detail it looks like you may 
have misinterpreted my intention before you got to the privacy policy.

Right now we have no official written privacy, confidentiality, 
"cooperation with government" or other really basic policies which are 
may be a PITA and seem like so much red tape to laypersons but you 
realize how important they are.  The "Anti-FISA" policy was intended to 
put a very weak floor on behavior that HCoop will tolerate; basically to 
oppose and not cooperate with any illegal government investigation.  It 
purposely leaves open the situations where we may cooperate and how we 
will do so in the absence of either an illegal government investigation 
or where it would be illegal for us to render the requested assistance.

That is left to a much longer privacy policy.  I split it up like that 
because I think we can all quickly agree on the basic minimums of the 
Anti-FISA policy, once we get it written down appropriately.

Whereas the exact situations where we may or may not want to disclose 
one thing or another or cooperate in one or another way and so on get 
quite technical and may be controversial.  We can pass the "Anti-FISA" 
policy at least (under another name) while we work out the details of 
the privacy policy.

By the way as to 5 and what mechanism is used for removal; a board 
policy can't override the by-laws.  According to our bylaws, to remove a 
boardmember or expel an HCoop member currently requires a 2/3 membership 
vote (other than the non-paying-for-3-months member situation)--for 
expelling a member, it has to be initiated by the board for cause.  
Perhaps that is too hard.  But we have to consider changing this 
carefully.  If we enable the board or even an authorized staff member to 
start expelling members for certain kinds of wrongdoing, we have to 
consider whether we trust that person to act as fact-finder and 
executioner.  The reason I wrote the 2/3 member vote policy in the 
bylaws was a nod to the concerns of those regarding centralization of 
power in a "cabal" and preventing arbitrary and capricious expulsion of 
classes of people on a pretext.

Perhaps as the co-op and the board both become larger we can streamline 
the process and trust the board more as long as we implement a 
standardized process of investigation and appeals.  But for now I think 
we can just have a system whereby the board conducts an investigation 
and decides if expulsion is merited, and then presents the facts to the 
membership to vote on it.

In the case of employees or contractors, all that would be needed 
currently is a board vote.

Anyway I may not be able to do too much for the next couple of days 
until I get caught up with various other responsibilities that I need to 
take care of.

-ntk