Punishment by itself can not produce a system of control Expectation must exist in the subject along with fear of not reaching this expectation Punishment and deception are tools used to create this fear Everyone involved with this case realizes that deception exists they understand that Carbonite and David Gerard are mischaracterizing my actions in order to build a case but they don t know why Why would they be trying so hard to pretend that I m persistently behaving in a disruptive way when all evidence is to the contrary Why would they push to bring this thing to trial when they know that they can t point to a single instance of disruption that is enforced equilaterally The Wikimedia Foundation Privacy Policy can shed some light on the issue It is the policy of Wikimedia that personally identifiable data collected in the server logs will not be released by the developers who have access to it except as follows In response to a valid subpoena or other compulsory request from law enforcement With permission of the affected user To Jimbo Wales his legal counsel or his designee when necessary for investigation of abuse complaints Where the information pertains to page views generated by a spider or bot and its dissemination is necessary to illustrate or resolve technical issues Where the user has been vandalising articles or persistently behaving in a disruptive way data may be released to assist in the targeting of IP blocks or to assist in the formulation of a complaint to relevant Internet Service Providers Where it is reasonably necessary to protect the rights property or safety of the Wikimedia Foundation its users or the public Here we see that the Wikimedia privacy policy allows administrators to snoop on an editor when they have first established that the editor is persistently behaving in a disruptive way It therefore becomes important to create a case against the editor before researching the developer database for his private information This isn t just a matter of ethics Laws such as the California Online Privacy Protection Act of 2003 make it illegal for a website to violate their own privacy statement The Cabal is hoping that vague innuendo will be enough to create an official case After they gain the legal right to snoop my personal information they will be free to reveal what they already know Don t be surprised to hear something along the lines of We had no idea about this before the case opened but look what we have discovered now that we have a legal right to investigate the personal information about this editor Of course none of the information they reveal will be direct or a threat to Wikipedia in any way but it will be enough to hang me in the court of public opinion We all have skeletons in our closet The danger in giving our representatives a full set of keys to our personal lives is that they can t help sneaking a peek in the closet even when they have no ethical or legal right to do so