Wikipedia's "Category:" & "List of" French Jews

[sashi]

I recently pointed out over at Wikipediocracy that if a French kid goes to a French library, reserves a computer, and types "List of French Jews" into Google, Duckduckgo or Dogpile, an adhoc en.wikipedia list of over 850 people (approximately half of them living) appears in the #2 position (Category: French Jews). In the first position is the Wikipedia page "List of French Jews" containing the following text, originally added in 2010 (§), showing that the en.wikipedia community is aware that they are breaking French law:

The French nationality law itself, strongly secular, forbids any statistics or lists based on ethnic or religious membership.

In 2006, for example, the Conseil représentatif des institutions juives de France (CRIF) sought to constitute a sample of individuals for the purposes of a survey on Jewish opinions by sorting through last names. This was deemed a violation of the letter and spirit of French & European law concerning the automatic treatment of private information (decision).

Tagging biographies of living people in en.wp with the category "French Jews" would seem to be likewise a violation of privacy. French law is quite clear on this: it carries with it a penalty of €300,000 and/or 5 years imprisonment:

Le fait, hors les cas prévus par la loi, de mettre ou de conserver en mémoire informatisée, sans le consentement exprès de l’intéressé, des données à caractère personnel qui, directement ou indirectement, font apparaître les origines raciales ou ethniques, les opinions politiques, philosophiques ou religieuses, ou les appartenances syndicales des personnes, ou qui sont relatives à la santé ou à l’orientation ou à l'identité sexuelle de celles-ci, est puni de cinq ans d’emprisonnement et de 300 000 € d’amende.

Moreover, it would seem that Wikimedia France could well be implicated in this matter:

Le fait pour un fournisseur de services de communications électroniques de ne pas procéder à la notification d'une violation de données à caractère personnel à la Commission nationale de l'informatique et des libertés ou à l'intéressé, en méconnaissance des dispositions du II de l'article 34 bis de la loi n° 78-17 du 6 janvier 1978, est puni de cinq ans d'emprisonnement et de 300 000 € d'amende.

Now, of course, the question of the physical location of the WMF servers has historically been a determining concern. Since the servers are in Virginia, Amsterdam, Singapore, etc. it is not clear that individuals whose privacy has been violated in this way would have legal recourse.

I added this comment to a discussion "Arbitration Case on World War II topics" where it was deemed to be "off topic". The thread was locked and buried (presumably due to unrelated criticism of one of the administrators of the site).

Does anybody think this question would be better raised on the Wikimedia-L listserve? Personally, I suspect that this would only lead to further retaliatory action against me for pointing out governance problems at en.wp.

Does anyone here have any knowledge of previous discussions on this question? So far, I've only found a failed 2005 AfD of "List of French Jews" and no comment whatsoever on the ad-hoc category talk page.

[CrowsNest]

This specific issue merely falls into the rather large bucket named 'incidents of Wikipedia violating local laws and not giving a fuck'. You can find plenty, even a notable French example involving the location of a spy installation.

Before you convince me though, I'd need some clarification - does the French law apply to any publication at all (often these sort of statutes only limit government itself), and does it apply to anyone, regardless of public knowledge of their Jewiness (given that in theory, if we stupidly assumed Wikipedia worked as advertised, their list of French Jews should only list people who are reasonably famous for being French and Jewish, and listing them serves some demonstrable encyclopedic purpose beyond ghettoising Jews).

Regardless, there will be no legal recourse for any victims, for the reasons that always defeat this kind of territorial legal objection. Find a US law that was broken, or go fish. The new EU-GDPR doesn't seem to apply, even though it doesn't care where the servers are. Even if it did, it seems like even that will be ignored by the WMF if the only way they could comply was to completely censor information that they deem to be legal for US citizens to view in the US. Maybe a partial blackout in the EU is a possible outcome I guess, if it applies, but that would take a decade of legal action, given the implications.

Any attempt to hold Wikipedia France liable would face the usual obstacles aswell, such as proving they have any control over the content that is on Wikipedia. It would be an odd law that punishes an organisation for things they are not in control of, simply because they happen to be a French based part of that organisation. Individuals in WMF-F of course could be targetted, since they tend to be open about who they are, but only if they've made infringing edits, which if they're smart, they won't have.

Raising this on any official Wikipedia channel would be pointless. Why? Just look at all previous attempts to raise such things about similar issues. They do not care. A better approach would be to raise awareness of this issue in the French media or even government, but that is only worthwhile if you know enough to head off what the WMF might say in response, before they say it.

Wikipediocracy would not be interested in this issue, because they're not Wikipedia critics and they think you're a nutter. They only tolerate your presence because it makes the site look less dead and you don't tend to kick up much of a fuss when you're being taken for a fool. It also motivates the people they really want to post to return, to abuse you and justify why Wikipedia is in the right.

[sashi]

Does the French law apply to any publication at all (often these sort of statutes only limit government itself), and does it apply to anyone, regardless of public knowledge of their Jewishness (given that in theory, if we stupidly assumed Wikipedia worked as advertised, their list of French Jews should only list people who are reasonably famous for being French and Jewish, and listing them serves some demonstrable encyclopedic purpose beyond ghettoising Jews).

Yes and no. The law applies to any automatic publication whatsoever (such as a page generated from tags). In other words, no... if Mme. X is interviewed by Le Monde concerning her faith, anyone can refer to this publication to talk about Mme. X's views on religion. However, one cannot include her in a list of people of the same faith, unless she has specifically given her permission to be included on such a list, and the organization compiling the list has requested authorization from the CNIL. That's why I mentioned the CRIF being refused the right to compile such a list for the purposes of creating a survey. Granted, IANAL, though I can read the law (in particular article 8, and the exceptions in articles 25, 26 & 22).

This applies to any ethnic or religious group, of course, despite being motivated by the Vichy lists.

Regardless, there will be no legal recourse for any victims, for the reasons that always defeat this kind of territorial legal objection. Find a US law that was broken, or go fish.

As I understand it, there is significant precedent for hiding pages that are legal in the US but illegal in Europe from European and more recently even US screens (NYT article). However, nothing will be done unless there is a complaint made.

A quick web search shows en.wp & Égalité et Reconciliation to be the main offenders. The latter has been condemned pretty frequently in the last years, though generally there have been aggravating circumstances...

fr.wp doesn't aggressively flaunt their defiance of the law as en.wp does (and in fact does not even appear to violate the law: automatically generated pages do not exist on fr.wp). Wikidata also appears to be more respectful of local laws.

... you're a nutter.

Pfff and here I thought I was being a good eggplant. But I can't in good conscience swipe this lovely icon... so I guess I'm stuck as a roly-poly aubergine.

What is to be done?

How could we hand a reasonably thick (and not overly pointillist) dossier to an interested journalist on privacy issues, "narrowly construed" for GDPR? Do other stories come immediately to mind?

[CrowsNest]

None that come to mind right now. Note that the precedent applies to Google only, they would still be reachable by EU based users from within Wikipedia, which to my mind should see them treated as a direct flouter of the intent of the law (since they have the technology to tell where a reader is based). One point though - the List article is not autogenerated. Does that mean it would be exempt from this law?

[sashi]

I'm not an expert.. here's the often-quoted basic formulation of the 1978 law:

Il est interdit de collecter ou de traiter des données à caractère personnel qui font apparaître, directement ou indirectement, les origines raciales ou ethniques, les opinions politiques, philosophiques ou religieuses ou l'appartenance syndicale des personnes, ou qui sont relatives à la santé ou à la vie sexuelle de celles-ci.

Well, it does say the collecte et traitement ".... de données à caractère personnel" is forbidden. (personal data)

la collecte (n. f.) -- Action de recueillir des dons − en nature ou en espèces
(the action of picking up donations -- in kind or in cash)
also a Catholic prayer of communal intention, apparently...
source

Who knew that Eng. treat < Fr. traiter < Lat. tractare, which was the frequentative of Lat. trahere > Fr. traire (to milk)

I'm not sure it matters if the private offering is hand-milked or bot-milked. I guess I was just impressed that the Category manages to break both parts of the rule. (I don't think the person who created the category had any evil intentions, incidentally; it's just a strange category to see from the land of cheese and honey.)

[CrowsNest]

I was reminded yesterday that the Turkey ban is basically a result of Wikipedia being seen to be in violation of local law (yes, I know...), and it is an example of how, since they now use https, it is not possible to simply block the offending pages, you have to block access to the whole domain.

Which basically shows that if this law has been broken and someone is prepared to prove it in a French court, a ban on Wikipedia in France is the only likely outcome, since it will be a cold day in hell before the Wikipediots take the view that categorizing people by religion is unencyclopedic.

It would probably be far easier and quicker to simply show that even though they claim it has some valid encyclopedic purpose, the baked in flaws of Wikipedia mean that it is always going to be unfit for even that stated purpose. People are forever being categorised as Jewish when they're simply not (and identifying who is even a Jew is a minefield in of itself), or they are Jewish but it isn't really a relevant aspect of their public life (hence they should not be catetorized under Wikipedia 's own who rules).

[Graaf Statler]

.............(and identifying who is even a Jew is a minefield in of itself), or they are Jewish but it isn't really a relevant aspect of their public life (hence they should not be catetorized under Wikipedia 's own who rules).

How true. I, myself consider myself absolute as not Jewish and the only synagogue I have ever seen inside is the synagogue of Praag as a tourist. Even for the Neurenberg laws I am far from Jewish. I don't know anything of the Jewish religion, and feel not any connection with Israel. But, I have a very black Jewish family history and a Jewish last name. And in that way I am emotional connected to the Jewish. What makes it for instance much saver to walk in a minefield or between a group of lions than to say something wrong about my poor jewish family who died mainly in Sobibor. And when I hear about such al list, and again we are talking about the legal site, I am only thinking doesn't have this French Wiki guys any brains? Because except from the legal site, it's such a sign of not knowing what the holocaust was.

My mother told me over and over the story of a girl in here class. One day during the war all the children got a form where they had to fill in there religion. She was Jewish, but filled in Catholic because here best friend was Catholic, something little girls do. And here family was one of the few Jewish family's what was saved in the war, they didn't' see anyone at there home during the razzia's, because the Germans used these list to find the Jews. They just lived like any Dutch family in the war.