Re: Git Privacy

From: nick <nick@nicholasjohnson.ch>
Date: Jul 16, 2023, 23:07 UTC
Message-ID: <CU3Z2NYP6BGG.1PQ6S5AF60XX6@anonymous>
In-Reply-To: <CU2GQHQV5GD3.CL67078EF4OO@anonymous>

nick wrote:

> The time zones reveal private information about developers and they
> don't even serve a use case, as far as I'm aware. A backwards-compatible
> way to solve this leak would be to convert timestamps to UTC by default
> and have a Git config option to revert back to the current behavior.

Come to think of it, even if timezones were converted to UTC by default, time of day would still leak information about a user's likely timezone.

So based on that and keeping in mind Git's desire for strong backwards-compatibility, I'm amending my proposal to just a standalone Git option which would allow for forging timestamp and timezone information, with timestamp information being forgeable to varying degrees of granularity.

A new Git option is appropriate because Git doesn't already have features which make this possible. So it would be necessary to implement a new option anyways.