Our individual rights vs video recording (anticheats new policies)

I agree with everything, I hope someone at last takes this seriously, because 100% it’s been brushed off every time I try.
I’m afraid that “chess does it like that so :man_shrugging:” will be the popular rebuttal.

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A few years ago, KGS got a sad story with one of his admin who abused his privilege (information at his disposition ) in some external things. Not going to tell more but the fact is you better take all the security and norms required.

I opened a thread weeks ago as there is almost no communication from the various organization who use videos as a policy against cheating on this security of data side which for me is not an incentive to participate and i hope if thus side has been seriously considered we will have some answers somewhere.

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I think the “do nothing and wait for the thing to be over” should be dubbed “pulling a Covid”.
It describes so many reactions.

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I could start a new and long topic about go organization which have sometimes deep dysfunction.
I saw accountant in court, president putting cash in share holding… In fact organization don’t get always the most competent people to organize because starting at some level it’s politic and in the world of volonteers the quest of power become a bit doubtful.
I saw clubs making (too) good benefits from tournaments and i saw a bunch of subscribers who never care about dysfunction and just pay because they want their rating and play in tournaments.

Still in this mess in which everyone has a bit of responsability from the bottom to the top, organization reach some goals like determining every year who will go to the world amateur championship (which is historically the main objective) or promote go to children. …

In fine i learned to not expect too much, to keep my mouth a bit open and to hope each year that everything will turn better.

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image
reason for denial: they got up while playing a game.
GLORY TO ONLINE GO SERVTOTZKA!
GLORY TO UNITED GO FEDERATION!

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So, this argument fails to hold water with me for a few reasons. (COPPA excluded - this requirement, in the US at least, does cause issues for <13 year olds.) I should note that I’m not particularly well-versed in GDPR, so I’ll have to defer on that one. However, the idea of requiring “proxy proctoring” is nothing new. Many, many online certification exams have required this for years now. In fact, some of these are way more draconian. For instance, with the OSCP exam, if another living creature is visible at any point, you immediately fail and forfeit your attempt. Bear in mind, this is a 24-hour exam period as well, of which 16-20 hours is a typical time to completion. I’m not advocating such measures for go tournaments, but wanted to throw out there that this is not even getting close to being as bad as it can be.

Generally speaking though, video of you that you were aware of and consented to the recording of isn’t “personal information” in the typical sense. Interestingly enough, though, name and email often is considered personal information. So, if you’re ok with tournaments having this, then you’re already ok with them having something often considered to be personal information anyway. If you’re registering for an in-person tournament, there are the same data handling concerns, except with things that are legally considered personal information in many jurisdictions - especially if addresses are collected! I see soooo many people being like “AAAAA BUT GDPR! THEY CAN’T HAVE MAH DATUH!!” when, no, the GDPR isn’t some blanket “no collecting personal info” law. Not even a little bit.

I hate that it has come to this, I really do. However, as I noted in the other thread, there really isn’t that much of a difference between this and an in-person tournament. A recording of a person is a recording of a person, be it in their home or in “the wild”. There have been, to my knowledge, no instances of any privacy acts being invoked because someone was recorded and posted at a coffee shop, at a convention, etc.

I do dislike the disparity it creates wherein someone must have some degree of means to enter an online tournament, when one would have hoped the digital revolution would have removed such barriers to access, but I respect the fact that tournament organizers have a vested interest in maintaining at least a reasonable degree of confidence that a tournament is not rife with cheating.

In the end, it’s not my favorite, and I’d love for someone to come up with better ideas, but I haven’t had any yet myself.

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So, you say you don’t really know what is in GDPR, but you go on to mock people raising concerns about complying with those laws…

Come on, you don’t need to devolve the conversation to ad hominem attack likes this.

I’m not even saying that GDPR is a blanket “no collecting personal info” law. Organizations still can collect and use personal information, except the GDPR law regulates that collection and use, enforcing requirements for various things like obtaining consent, but also various factors in securely handling data, providing transparency, and respecting individual rights (like requests for data deletion).

GDPR does apply to video recordings

From What is considered personal data under the EU GDPR? - GDPR.eu

Any information

This element is very inclusive. It includes “objective” information, such as an individual’s height, and “subjective” information, like employment evaluations. It is also not limited to any particular format. Video, audio, numerical, graphical, and photographic data can all contain personal data.

From Video surveillance and the GDPR. What will change? - Secure Insights

A video recording of an identifiable person naturally forms part of an individual’s personal data.


There are plenty of examples of this being unacceptable. Keep in mind that some countries have even stricter laws regarding privacy in even public spaces.

Another point that I want to make is that one should not conflate these concerns about privacy issues and legal compliance with some sort of argument against doing anything to address the problem of cheating.

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People who don’t know think GDPR protects personal data in general.
In fact, it protects primarily sensitive personal data. Things that can identify you.

It’s a 2016 law, precedent is just building as we speak.

And keep in mind, everyone is so concerned about making Go “more popular”, especially with children. Imagine dozens of minors’ videos circulating (and there are some crazy cases about minors on video that you’d think were OK, but guess what, judges can be peculiar), just because their parents signed them up for a Go tournament. A concerned parent (and rightfully) is all it will take, and honestly, if Go federations won’t take action and responsibility, they’ll have it coming.

Nonchalantly saying “well, get recorded and shut up, what’s the big deal you cheater, and probably there’s not a law against it* anyway” is going to do damage.
Instead of shielding federations with such zeal, maybe we should request the bare minimum of them getting some proper legal advice.

*there is, plenty, and it’s up for interpretation by the people who actually know how to. No, in person witnessed doing something and recorded doing something is not the same thing, just because we think it is.

Even just for appearances, not one of all the organizers has come up, almost two years now, with an answer that says “I actually looked into it”. They all just whistle in the air, waiting for IRL tournaments to come back and be done with it.

Honestly, all those organizers lamenting about cheating when weaseling out of any question about personal data protection, it’s laughable.

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I’ll just enhance my previous advocation for the “supermarket solution” with a bit of a funny “algorithm” that did in fact take a whole page in Andrew Tannenbaum’s “Modern Operating Systems” book. Feel free to skip the jargon and read the red boxes, as they articulately praise the merits of sitting back and doing nothing, when any other alternative is more costly than the projected gains of any possible solution.

Especially the underlined part seems like it was written specifically for this problem in mind, which I find rather interesting. Ah, sweet inertia, how useful and versatile you are. :innocent:

This conversation has gotten a little complicated and I know I’m a little late to join, but I have a slightly janky solution to this problem that I’ve been juggling in my head for awhile now, and I’d be glad to have y’all’r’s input.

What I’ve been considering is kind of a “hybrid” style of play - what if we set up computer stations at Go centers for the sole purpose of proctoring online tournaments? It doesn’t completely get rid of travel costs, but if people are able to choose the nearest Go center to play at, it would substantially minimize them.

Depending on number of participants, it might be necessary for people to play on their own laptops, but given the presence of a non-zero number of volunteers and other players, cheating aji would likely be minimized, even if allowing people to play on their own equipment.

You’d have to have a TD at each location, so it would require an insane amount of coordination, but it should be doable. I’m talking to some other AGA folks and apparently I’m not the only person who’s been thinking about this.

Of course it’s not as accessible as a truly online tournament, but it would at least allow for online tournaments in some regard. Like I said, janky solution.

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I want to think this is ykyaga autocorect. :stuck_out_tongue::wink:

I find the solution pretty agreeable for places with established Go presence and relatively accessible, but sadly it excludes many people. I’m not against it, but imho the problem is bigger.

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I think it’s on purpose, aji being used in Go as something that isn’t decided yet; removing cheating aji being the removal of the temptation to cheat.

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I know.
Thanks for ruining the joke tho. :+1:t2:

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You’re welcome :smiley:

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It does exclude people, which is why it’s not ideal. However, it actually is far more accessible than normal in-person tournaments, since people would have choice of location. So it might be more effective to think of it as an extension of IRL play than as a limitation of online play… Still not ideal, but I think it’s something worth trying.

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Right GDPR…

I don’t think it’s that hard to be gdpr compliant. In general handling participant’s data by a sports/hobby club for the purposes for facilitating participation in that activity will be a “legitimate interest”.

The act of recording is not relevant here since it is done by the person in question to themselves. The gdpr relevant issue is the transmission of the recording to the go club person. Therefore if there is no accusation then there is no gdpr issue since (i suppose and expect) that videos are not routinely asked for but only requested in case of a claim of cheating.

Then if the only people who see the video are those “necessary” to make the determination of cheating or otherwise and then the video is then fairly promptly deleted, this would seem to be easily compliant with gdpr.

The issue as yebellz says is in the care taken around the distribution and deletion of the video which might be lacking. But it should be done properly and GDPR hopefully ensures that it is. GDPR does not stop go clubs from insisting that such videos are made and sent to them.

The only reason that there might not be a legitimate interest is if “there is a less intrusive way of meeting the legitimate interest” (I’m paraphrasing). The legitimate interest here is in running a watertight tournament and preventing or identifying cheating is clearly important to that aim. However, gdpr would mean that if there were another way to identify cheating that didn’t involve as much personal data processing then organisations should use that instead and would not be allowed to use the more intrusive system.

So the question is, what is the least intrusive way of preventing cheating?

[As an aside, a video of someone’s face is clearly personal data. If it’s just hands then maybe not but is that sufficient for the relevant purpose (preventing cheating)? I don’t know.]

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I envisaged a hybrid system where you could record or attend a “go centre”. The problem will be the lack of go centres i think.

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This is why I’d encourage looking at it as an extension of IRL play rather than as a means to make online play work. It’s dependent on physical location, resources, and accessibility. As much as I’d like to allow for recording as well to increase accessibility, I can’t imagine a go association allowing that much flexibility. That would be pretty similar to having an IRL tournament but arbitrarily allowing some players to play from their homes.

That would be great, in theory, for accessibility’s sake, but then you run into the problem of… well, the debate of the rest of this thread :joy:

Well but then it’s not arbitrary if it’s the player’s choice. The difference for me is that you could choose to go to the irl venue and not record or play from home and record. If you don’t want to record you can still play. At the moment the issue is that if you don’t want to record you can’t play.

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Oh, I see what you mean. I was referring to an aforementioned concern that it’s still possible to cheat (and quite easy, in my personal opinion) when self-recording. I’m perfectly willing to trust people, but if some people are being proctored IRL and others aren’t, I can imagine that others won’t be so glad about this.

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