On Fri, 30 Nov 2007 14:04:52 -0600 William Pitcock <nenolod@sacredspiral.co.uk> wrote:
Hi,
As someone who operates systems where privacy is desired by their users, I have found this patch very useful. Infact, I found it so useful, that I did the initial port of this patch to syslog-ng 2.
I was told things when I submitted it like "well, all of those apps you use should strip the data instead". It is very inconvenient (and if you use commercial software, impossible) to patch a bunch of daemons (the average server can have 30 or more daemons running!) when instead you can strip the information out in the log instead.
Hi, I would also highly welcome the inclusion of this patch, since it provides functionality that is required for legal reasons. Existing privacy laws in Germany (and, I think, in other EU states as well) do not allow servive providers to log data that are not required for providing their service. There has been a recent lawsuit in Germany where the court has found that customary logging of IP adresses is illegal (i.e. logging may only be enabled on a case-by-case basis, e.g. during a DDoS attack). It is very difficult right now to run a Linux (or Unix) system while complying with the law. Basically you would need to jump through loops and run scripts to anonymize data that should never have hit the disk in non-anonymized form. Thus I would be glad if it were possible to strip IP adresses in syslog. rainer