Re: Git Privacy

From: nick <nick@nicholasjohnson.ch>
Date: Jul 17, 2023, 22:49 UTC
Message-ID: <CU4TBVU6DREW.ZZDV1JX2BNGV@anonymous>
In-Reply-To: <20230717205750.GA3901704@mit.edu>

Theodore Ts'o wrote:

> It might also be worth pointing out that someone still might be able
> to figure out information from when a branch gets pushed to a git
> repo.

Github and other forges are actually known to track this information.

Show 7 quoted lines

> [...]
>
> Which is why, quite frankly, I'm a bit dubious about the whole "I must
> obfuscate the time zone from which I am operating", as something
> that's really worth the effort, since it has a lot of downsides, and
> if the user is not careful, they may end up leaking information about
> when they are active anyway....

I'm fine with the argument against that it causes breakage, but I disagree with the idea that it shouldn't be implemented because "they may end up leaking information about when they are active anyway".

That is a defeatist argument that applies to many privacy technologies that exist. Taken to its logical conclusion, it says "Let's not try to improve privacy ever because the same information may be obtainable in other ways." One has to start somewhere.