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Anonymous Posting Not Protected 15

Posted by michael from the brown-paper-bag dept.
jconley writes: "Excite News is carrying this story that indicates that anonymous posting on the Internet is not protected, and subpeonas can be issued to ISPs to expose the poster. Just one of a lot of cases, but still scary." Courts aren't very good at seeing any value in anonymity.
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Anonymous Posting Not Protected

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  • Re:Hmm.... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Do the existing laws allow the government to determine the identity of an anonymous writer? If a person wrote a book about building a bomb, and signed it "anonymous," could the people who know he wrote it be forced to identify him? Do we have the "right to remain silent"

    I am not a lawyer, but only those who are arrested have a "right to remain silent". Anybody can be called into court as a witness to testify and remaining silent would fall under the catch-all of contempt of court.
  • The President, Bill Clinton, is a bumbling idiot and should die. No, I'm not going to do it, but someone should.
  • I don't think this is such a huge problem.

    *thinks malicious threats*

    I just don't see where the scandal lies.

    --------------------------------------------
    Computers are like air conditioners.

  • I don't know if /. in particular remembers who posted an AC story if they're logged in, or if they preserve usage logs which would tell the story. I suspect the latter is entirely possible, but the former is unlikely. The whole idea of being able to post as an AC is to preserve anonymity, right?

    Unless your ISP is packet sniffing, they don't know who you've connected to Irc as. Naturally, they do know what account was connected to what "modem" at what time. If you have DSL or Cable, it's even more obvious. AOL of course will know who you were in a chat room, but if you're using AOL, you probably deserve what you get anyway. Want privacy? Don't use AOL. To be fair I should probably point out that they're hardly the only people who you should have to watch out for your privacy around, and I doubt very much that they will sniff your packets, so then you mostly have to worry about anonymizing your connection.

    All in all, the main point is to be smart. If you want to be anonymous, make sure that you really are. If someone's logging you somewhere along the way, you might not be. If there's a proxy server which logs in between, you certainly aren't.

    If you leave fingerprints, you run the risk of being identified. This is just as true on the 'net as it is in real life.

  • I am not a lawyer, but only those who are arrested have a "right to remain silent". Anybody can be called into court as a witness to testify and remaining silent would fall under the catch-all of contempt of court.

    Unless it may incriminate you, in which case you have the right to remain silent. The text is here [midnightbeach.com]. The way it all ends up working is basically as follows:

    • No one can force you to say anything outside a court.
    • If something MAY incriminate you, you may remain silent, except when you're in the military, and even then it has to be in a time of war or "public danger". You do not have to bear witness against yourself.
    • This all falls apart in front of a Grand Jury, when your constitutional rights don't mean squat anyway. There's an exception to any rule.

    In other words, if they call you to the stand, and say "Did you write this book" or "Did you bomb this building" or "Did you fuck this sheep", you can plead the Fifth. In the absence of any evidence against you (Is an original manuscript in your house? Do you have residue in your bathtub from making the bomb? Is the sheep really really happy to see you?) then if justice is carried, you should be found innocent.

  • >the U.S. government has been known to harass and even kill U.S. citizens as a favor to some U.S. friendly dictator

    I am as much of a conspiracy buff as the next guy, but I can't let this one slide. Examples? Evidence? Even shaky evidence will be a good start.
  • Although I almost never do things anonymously (I like to take credit ;) I can see where the ability would be important. You may want to protect yourself, or you might want to disassociate your work from yourself in an attempt to avoid any preconceived notions, good or bad. Both of these purposes also apply to writing a book, etc, anonymously.

    Do the existing laws allow the government to determine the identity of an anonymous writer? If a person wrote a book about building a bomb, and signed it "anonymous," could the people who know he wrote it be forced to identify him? Do we have the "right to remain silent"

    Interesting things to think about...
  • And you thought your post would be anonymous under AC, but little do you know... i have already ordered a supeona in order to reveal your true identity!
  • The government's willingness to put up with anonymity stops even faster when it means lost tax-revenue -- tax systems are the single greatest form of census in the world, surpassing even the constitutionally mandated Census in accuracy. If we had a per-comment surcharge, then anonymity would die even faster.
  • Yes, it is a crime to make threats and it would e nice to be able to enforce that law on the internet too, but there are many many legitimate uses for anonymity (like people in repressive countries who want to run a website in the U.S. --- the U.S. government has been known to harass and even kill U.S. citizens as a favor to some U.S. friendly dictator).

    Personally, I think that anonymous threats are a small enough problem that we should sacrafice being able to enforce them to enshure that we have real anonyimity when we need it, but I'm not exactly running an abortion clinic, so I don't advocate this that strongly.

    The truth of the matter is that we will always need to work to be truely anonymous (this just influences how hard we must work), so we should try to make shure that the "good people" know how to be anonymous.

    Example: If an ISP is contacted by a group who want anonymous hosting and deserves it then they ISP should do the following: Do not let the people who want to run the site tell ANYONE atthe ISP who they are. The ISP should go find some U.S. citizen who is willing to pay for the site, so this can not be traced to the site. The ISP should set up a way for the site to be maintained without making any logs. Finally, the ISP needs to set up some sort of dead man switch where the people who run the site will know if an investigation begins. Now, the ISP can get in trouble for letting the site maintainers know that their site is being watched, but it may be worth it to protect the maintainers. This is not perfect, but it goes a LONG way towards truely anonymous hosting.
  • I have not heard about specific examples of the U.S. killing a U.S. citizen within ?U.S. borders, but there are some pretty clear cut cases of the U.S. doing things to U.S. citizens who opposed Pinochet's coup in Chile. I don't think that U.S. troops really killed U.S. citizens, but the state department ordered the U.S. ambasador to leave U.S. citizens in Pinochet's custody to be killed. the French ambasador (for example) simply asked for the return of the French citizens and Pinochet's people complied. The following sources do not really talk about this, but they should give you the names of the people involved:

    http://www.tni.org/campaigns/pinochet/watch/watc h1905.htm
    http://www.lonelyplanet.com/dest/sam/chile.htm
    http://www.state.gov/www/global/human_rights/199 7_hrp_report/chile.html

    Anyway, there are going to be lots of situations where the U.S. aidded a foreign power (maybe just promissing to not investigate) in murdering a U.S. citizen who was active in another country (there have been a few in the middle east too), but I do not know about any off the top of my head where U.S. troops actually murdered U.S. citizens because of something they were doing in another country.
  • I believe that an ISP should not be required to disclose the information without noticing a person to disclose about. They need an oportunity to dismiss or quash.

    But, you cannot determine if the person actually defamed without being able to determine the knowledge of that person. To defame, you must publish false statements with malice, recklessness, or negligence (in the case of a private figure). Now, how can you determine that level without knowing who that person is?

    What about other laws that are violated? Sexual harassment, retaliation under the anti-discrimination laws, disclosure of confidential information? You can't determine all of that w/o knowing the identity of the person.

    But, in the case where something is clearly opinion, the person should have that information blocked.

    Maybe have some determination of being false and having damage.

  • How many times do people have to be told? You are not anonymous unless they can't tell who is connected. Then it makes no difference that the ISP hands over the records. You're not in them.

    You wouldn't walk into FEDEX to send an anonymous letter, would you? Better maybe if you mailed it from a post box in the suburbs?

    You want to be anonymous? Do what you have to do. Fill out that AOL CD mailer with you best friend in high-school's dog's name. Sign up for that free dialup account from [insert name of phone company here] Internet Service. Use a terminal at a branch library and be sure they know your name is Eustace P. Farnsworthy. Find a dial-in stack that doesn't have no-caller-id reject working (harder and harder).

    And don't include identifying material in your posts. Like you name...

  • One thing I know: (Score:3)

    by underwhelm ( 53409 ) <underwhelm AT gmail DOT com> on Monday October 16, 2000 @08:28PM (#701026) Homepage Journal
    Defamation has two absolute defenses. Both of them can be determined without knowing the identity of the anonymous posters.

    The judge absolutely should have respected the anonymity of the individuals until the two absolute defenses were exhausted.

    If the statements were TRUE or if the statements were not statements of fact, but of opinion, no defamation took place. The speakers should remain anonymous until they are absultely needed to stand behind their actions. The judge does not need the defendents' identities to judge the authenticity of these defenses as long as they are proffering them (through the ACLU). They are questions of fact that judges determine every hour of every day, and the identities of the accused have no bearing on the outcome.

    This talk about getting people on the internet to "think about what they say" is code for silencing whistleblowers and people that speak about corporations and their leaders in unflattering, but nondefamatory and fully legal ways.

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