Show lists of requests where material has been removed, creating a partial takedown log.

[RichardTaylor]

In the interests of operating Alaveteli sites in a transparent and accountable manner make it possible to obtain a list of public threads where material has been removed.

This could be done by adding features to the search engine.

The outcome would be a takedown log which covers cases where the whole thread has not been hidden. Ideally the whole thread ought only be hidden now we have more specific tools in cases of inappropriate use of the site.

Material can be removed by hiding individual messages, a request specific, or user wide censor rule, or by an administrator editing the outgoing message text, subject or user name.

Username changes could be dealt with separately ( #444 is related); and user wide censor rules are not widely used at least on WhatDoTheyKnow so might not be critical.

If reasons for hiding messages or creating censor rules were to be grouped into categories in the future it would be good to be able to see lists of threads where material has been removed for specific reasons.

If this was implemented as part of the current search engine it would enable eg. per-authority takedown logs to be created. These could be exposed to users via a link or left for interested users to access via advanced search search terms.

Added difficulty for consideration: It may be desirable to have a delay between removing material from a site and the fact it has been removed being publicised too prominently. Sometimes sensitive personal information is published accidentally and will still be available in a search engine cache or archive site after it has been removed from an Alaveteli site. In such cases delayed reporting of removal would be justified and desirable to give a chance for the material to be removed from other services

[garethrees]

GitHub use a git repo for similar – e.g. https://github.com/github/dmca

[RichardTaylor]

Just as GitHub use their own technology for publication Alaveteli sites could forward/redirect takedown requests to the correspondence thread on special request page for that purpose.

[RichardTaylor]

We can mark requests already using tags; we could make a manually curated takedown log, or log of requests where we've considered removing material using:

Searching using such tags is already possible; eg.

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/search/tag:takedown

or

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/search/tag:takedown%20tag:personal%20tag:personal_information%20tag:substantive%20tag:rejected%20tag:takedown_rejected/all?commit=Search&utf8=%E2%9C%93

Relying on administrators to tag requests isn't ideal an automated system would be more preferable, but tagging might be useful to flag substantive matters vs routine takedowns due to correspondence not being a request for information for example.

[RichardTaylor]

This could be initially implemented privately for admins as a filter on /admin/timeline it would be useful for oversight / monitoring, and potentially for the generation of statistics for a transparency report (subject to the presence of accurate counts and the ability to restrict to a certain time period).