On 2014-09-22 10:14:34, Vincent Lefevre wrote:
> On 2014-09-22 09:23:11 -0400, Antoine Beaupré wrote:
>> On 2014-09-22 05:29:10, Vincent Lefevre wrote:
>> > Not your users, but people who connect to the web server. But the
>> > French law requires (required?) / advises to keep the logs for one
>> > year. There's a discussion in French here:
>> >
>> > http://forum.ovh.com/archive/index.php/t-47594.html
>> >
>> > Basically this is needed when:
>> > * Users can create contents.
>> > * In case of security breach, when someone can do bad things
>> > via Apache only.
>>
>> Ouzbekistan law may also require providers to send their logs directly
>> to the state and install backdoors into their servers, are we going to
>> do that for all of Debian by default?
>
> I don't care about Ouzbekistan. In most countries, users are
> responsible for what their servers do, and keeping logs is a
> way to protect them.
I care about Ouzbekistan the same way I care about France.
> Note also that Debian cares about local laws. Otherwise there
> would be no problems with patented algorithms.
Because the servers hosting the source code and binaries, not because of
installed systems so much.
>> > Everyone says that disk space is cheap.
>>
>> I don't. Do you?
>
> Debian devs do.
I'm a debian dev.
>> Not everyone lives in a country that forces their providers to spy on
>> their users.
>
> Please could you avoid saying stupid things?
No, as they are not stupid. I would prefer it if you would refrain from
qualifying what I consider to be reasonable statements as "stupid". That
you disagree doesn't make them stupid.
I do believe that the european logging directives, for example, are a
way to force providers to spy on their users on the behalf of the
state. Other countries do not have such requirements and still have
other legal means of getting to the data they need for criminal
prosecution. Forcing providers to keep logs is a way to force
deanonymisation of our users on the network, and is a fundamental issue
with freedom of speech and association.
>> Yet anyone can be a victim of massive visits on their website (aka
>> "slashdotting") which will basically fill up the drives, regardless
>> of the country they live in.
>
> In such a case, size based rules would be better than date based ones.
It's not a one-sided issues, there are multiple arguments for reducing
the logs we keep, one of them is surveillance, another is disk usage.
>> > IMHO, the default log rotation should be changed back to 1 year,
>> > at least to protect users in case of legal matters. Alternatively,
>> > size-based log rotation could be used, e.g. with:
>> >
>> > rotate 15
>> > size 100M
>>
>> I think keeping logs does not protect users,
>
> By "users", I meant here the responsible of web servers.
>
>> it actually exposes them to undue surveillance. When speaking of
>> "users" here, I refer also to the visitors of the website, which
>> never agreed to install debian, choose how much logs are kept and so
>> on. We have a responsability towards those as well.
>
> Wow! Most web servers keep logs for a long time by choice. Visitors
> who do not agree with that should not use the web.
Webservers that want to choose to keep logs for a long time can do
so. Admins that do not agree can change the policies, visitors cannot.
>> Also, the above configuration, on small sites, could even mean keeping
>> logs even longer than the original configuration.
>
> Not a real problem.
It's actually exactly the problem that was raised in this bug report in
the first place, and it's a real problem.
>> On big sites, it will not respect the legal requirements.
>
> Admins of big sites will probably have a closer look at the config
> anyway.
And we do. But by bringing our (legal) experience to a larger audience,
we hope to share our expertise and hard-learned lessons with everyone.
Besides, the change was done in the package, and unless you are one of
the maintainers, I am not the one you need to argue with, and I do not
need to convince you this is the right way.
A.
--
Lorsque l'on range des objets dans des tiroirs, et que l'on a plus
d'objets que de tiroirs, alors un tiroir au moins contient deux
objets.
- Lejeune-Dirichlet, Peter Gustav
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