Anonymity on the Internet 182
Enoch Root was the first to submit a new briefing paper on internet anonymity, published by the libertarian Cato Institute and written by Jonathan Wallace. Wallace cites Supreme Court cases and important historical precedents in favor of anonymity - "Given the importance of anonymity as a component of free speech, the cost of banning anonymous Internet speech would be enormous."
Acrobat (Score:1)
I'm curious who this document is aimed at. If it's to try to convince politicians of the importance of how free speech and anonymity are linked, then I applaud it. Maybe it's just my background, but I found myself saying "Well, duh" quite a few times when I was reading it. What are your thoughts, folks?
Can't happen... (Score:2)
I can't seem to find an email service (a la hotmail, netscape mail, etc...) that will let you get a mail box without supplying a valid email address. I also can't be using Anonymizer while filling out the forms required... So I guess for me to do it would be to pay anonymizer for an email box and then sign up with that email as my address... Of course, they'ed know what IP i used to log in, and i suspect that most ISP's track IP usage if only for long enough to be sure that no complaints are being generated by that user...
Sorry for the ramble... it's that time of the day where i begin to shut down.... probably took to long in writing this to qualify for first post status too....
Great article! My new sig! (Score:2)
Looks like I found my new sig.
ewww Cato.... (Score:1)
I'm all for privacy and it looks like the libertarians and I are in agreement here, but I hate giving the Cato Institute any kind of props. I used to be a libertarian, I found out I just didn't hate poor people enough or have the necessary self-centered righteous greed.
Finally (Score:1)
Free Speech (Score:1)
Mirror (Score:1)
Here's a mirror [mindspring.com].
Re:Acrobat (Score:1)
I see it as a sort of HOWTO to anonymity advocacy. We all know the various merits of privacy, but often, we're unable to word it for a political or business crowd. Luckily, there's people like Wallace out there who can help.
Color Copier ID? (Score:4)
Seriously, though, this seems to be completely the opposite view of the police and FBI. They use every means at their disposal to track down someone whom they consider to be a suspect. They will even do things that they know are illegal and would not stand up in court (i.e. wiretapping without a warrant) to gather information on the suspect so they can find out how to get legal evidence so that they can get a warrant/make an arrest.
These two viewpoints, while each has obvious merit and obvious failings when taken to extremes, need to be met with some kind of compromise. As it stands now, the only compromise is that the technically savvy can have anonymity and the technically ignorant masses get to have their privacy violated.
Libertarian? Cato Institute? (Score:1)
Yeah, it's easy to be a libertarian when you're living in O.J. Simpson's pool house.
Re:Can't happen... (Score:2)
MyPad [mypad.com] doesn't require one. It's also 100% spam free. Supports pop3 but not smtp, and they've had some reliability trouble lately, but for the price (free) it's great!
"God does not play dice with the universe." -Albert Einstein
Right to free speech or irresponsibility? (Score:2)
-sw
What is anonymity? (Score:1)
--
... (Score:3)
Anonymity *can* work. Check out Freedom [freedom.net] for one example. Proxying is the way to go - non-logging proxies, that is. Does this impede law enforcement? Yes, but only if they're very stupid and don't know what a packet sniffer is.
Another thing about anonymity - I can run off 100 copies of a position I hold against our Governor, which in this case is Ventura (I live in MN) and post it up across the twin cities - anonymously. To do this on the internet, I can use a service like Freedom. There are plenty of alternatives with equal functionality (so don't think I'm plugging /just/ this product), however.
Anonymity isn't dead... the problem is that modern media has the collective intelligence of a lobotomized flatworm... *sigh* it's very easy to cover your tracks... if it wasn't so-called "hacking" (it's cracking, ppl!) would be impossible.
Re:Acrobat (Score:1)
Todd
The Anonymous Coward issue (Score:1)
Throughout the history of this website Anonymous Cowards have made a rich contribution to political discource
Anonymous Posting on Slashdot forms a part of the rich tradition of such speech in prior media, including print, and is entitled to the same First Amendment protections
How deep!
Freedom from Zero Knowledge (Score:1)
No, there is not a Linux version yet, but it is a hell of a lot easier to write the linux version so I expect it along quite quickly. Check out the white papers available on the site for a good description of how this system works.
Anonymity is essential to free speech. (Score:2)
If I wanted to say bad things about the FBI or other powers that be, they could pressure Slashdot to give up my info, but what if I'm using an anonymyzer like the one here [cyberarmy.com], and you can chain these together, folks.. to make their chase quite lengthy. Not truly anonymous, in the end, but for all practical purposes, yes.
I think it is necessary to retain this for first amendment freedom.
Great Article (Score:1)
I think there is a difference between anoynmous material online and in print. There is a barrier to creating a printed pamphlet, and that lends it a certain amount (however small) of credibility. A post to a newsgroup, or even a web site, is cheap enough to produce that anyone with the time can put something up. For that reason, most people devalue anonymous submissions (how many of us set our threshold to 1?) I'm not sure if the difference merits any separate legislation, but I think it is significant.
Anonymous? (Score:1)
Anonymous Coward (Score:1)
Re: Freedom (Score:2)
What Freedom basically does is provide you with different IDs to navigate the Internet. It also keeps your cookies in different profiles, and basically allows you to forge a complete "identity", or multiple ones, to surf. It's anonymity without the need for a proxy or any such crap.
It's too bad it's a proprietary project, though... I would figure that these guys would dig Open Source. I'd sure love to take a peek at their code and algorithms.
Cause right now, the price tag is a bit stiff.
(Hey Sig. :) )
Re:What is anonymity? (Score:2)
We can choose whatever name we like and it's valid on any form etc. so long as it is "the name by which you a known" and you can "prove" that you are known by it. Legally I could now use my email address (or any one of them) as my name if I was arrested.
meepty MEEPT!!! (Score:1)
MEEPT!!!
The modest and self-effacing MEEPT has a few questions:
does freedom include freedom from Gnulix warts?
do sniffers smell the slapdash editorial stink?
MEEPT!!!
[ A poem ]
slapdash students
still
think
cracking is different from hacking
Meept thinks you shouldn't talk about lobotomized flatworms like you do.
MEEPT!!!
Re:Can't happen... (Score:2)
The question is, who's doing the accounting?
Anonymity can certainly be abused, but it is a necessary evil. Accountability may be an appealing concept, but let's remember that not all people in this world live in open, democratic societies. There always have been, and likely always will be people/governments who attempt to restrain free speech, and anonymity is an important final safeguard.
Litigate for your Anonymous Coward rights. (Score:2)
It's a good thing that Slashdot still has Anonymous posting. But what of other sites, like Mozillazine [mozillazine.org] - an advocate of an "Open Community" forcing logins and registration in order to communicate on their forums. This kind of backwardness makes me wonder what sort of legal rights anonymous users should have.
Joseph Elwell.
Re:if it weren't for Anonymous Coward ... (Score:2)
<META>
Troll? Some moderators are feeling cranky today. Go to bed earlier! Get more sleep!
</META>
[If it weren't for Anonymous Coward] I wouldn't post at all...
Same here. Maybe I'm just neurotic, but when someone disagrees angrily with a post I made, I feel like I've been attacked personally. I also feel a little uncomfortable with that feature in "User Info" which displays that last 20 to 50 posts you've made. There's nothing wrong with it, but I don't want people who disagree with my views starting some kind of vendetta against me, especially if they get moderator access. Look at Signal11. A lot of people are jealous because of the amount of karma he has accumulated. I'll bet they're thinking, "When I get moderator access, I'll moderate him down! And, if possible, I'll mark his posts as off-topic, redundant, or troll!" For evidence, look here [slashdot.org].
The Slashdot admins can probably tell which Anonymous Coward posts are mine and which aren't-- you can't convince me Slashdot doesn't log IP addresses-- but the average user just knows I'm "anonymous." I feel a little more secure that way.
Re:Can't happen... (Score:2)
Re:Anonymous? (Score:1)
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Re:Can't happen... (Score:1)
Of course, they reserve the right to kill that account if they find that I've given them bogus information, but so what? It's just a throwaway account.
Re:meepty MEEPT!!! (Score:1)
Did the real Meept have an account? Anyone remember? Meept's origianl account ID would be before 11,000, if Meept used an account. This was way back in the day though. Before we had Karma Whore's like me.
Just to stay on topic, I will provide you with a neat Benjamin Franklin qoute about freedom:
"They that can give up liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor saftey"
We seem to be on a freedom thread today, with the sotry on camera's that predict thieves, don't we?
Re:Right to free speech or irresponsibility? (Score:3)
There are a few degrees/varieties of anonymity, though, and, in my mind, corresponding degrees of credibility:
- "Anonymous Coward" clearly says that you aren't willing to identify yourself. I don't know who you are, and I don't even know what other postings might be yours. AC postings have low credibility, in my view.
- A pseudonym that isn't obviously a pseudonym (e.g. posting as "Phil Jones" when that isn't your name) implies a real identity that isn't there. It may be a fictitious identity, or it may be someone else's stolen identity. Either way, the implicit deception leads me to question the credibility of such a person.
- An obviously pseudonymous account establishes an identity (the Mendax Veritas who posted this is presumably the same person or group who posted previous Mendax Veritas messages), but does not provide you with a link back to the real person. (One can be obtained by court order or corporate espionage, but the average citizen can't get it, which is good enough for most purposes.) Credibility can be determined by the poster's history; if I've made sense before, maybe I'm making sense now. This strikes me as more honest than a seemingly-real identity.
With this in mind, my answer is, yes, people should be able to say things without being too easily held accountable for them. Sometimes it just isn't safe to let your identity be known; the death squads, the political police, or your employer may not approve. Or you may find yourself getting sued not because your claims are false, but as an attempt to silence you.As the Cato article observes, auctorial anonymity has a long and distinguished history. It would be a shame to effectively lose it simply because public discourse moves from the print domain to the internet.
Re:Anonymous Coward (Score:1)
Setting limits on anonymity (Score:1)
I almost feel as if my reply should be attributed to Anonymous Coward....
These two viewpoints, while each has obvious merit and obvious failings when taken to extremes, need to be met with some kind of compromise. As it stands now, the only compromise is that the technically savvy can have anonymity and the technically ignorant masses get to have their privacy violated.
However, this position paper seems to rule out the idea of compromise where anonymity is concerned, claiming that most any limit you could place would abridge free speech.
I think this claim is on somewhat shaky grounds. Social dampers have been placed on free speech before; you cannot yell "Fire!" in a crowded theatre, to borrow a cliche.
The fact is that speed of transmission and ease of duplication do have bearing on how speech is regulated. The greater the potential impact of my words, and the more they can affect things for good or ill, the more responsibility I must bear -- why else have laws for libel and slander? And the impact I can have increases the faster I can spread the word and the larger my audience. At some point, anonymity cannot hold.
The question is, where do we strike the balance? The paper makes a strong case for anonymity as an important part of free speech. There's a tug-of-war between the two extremes of total anonymity and total accountability.
It's an issue we need to pay attention to. As the net becomes more commercialized, companies will continue to push to have us tracked. The less we can be anonymous, the more data about us can be amassed and correlated. The old adage to follow the money holds here, and if we turn a blind eye to what's going on, we run the risk of having no such protections later on.
Sargent
No HTML, but I have .gifs (Score:1)
Fair warning: they're pretty bug downloads.
Re:Litigate for your Anonymous Coward rights. (Score:1)
History... (Score:1)
Now we have companies such as yahoo and altavista that allow free anonymous email address. And these are sponsored by companies, which could defend the attacks of critics of anonymous mail. What I find funny is that no cares if you have 10 anonymous email accounts on yahoo.
And if you've ever had any sort of semi-legal situation with a yahoo mail account, you'd understand that it's very difficult to get information on the person!
Anyway, it's funny how large corporations can get away with ideas, and even make them the norm, while individuals are hounded and have their sites shutdown for the exact same ideals... *sigh*
cuts both ways (Score:4)
I stopped working on it when it occurred to me that there were people in the world who would probably put up $50k or more to help me build such a system: terrorist organizations, people plotting to kill someone, street gangs, Hells Angels, etc.
I decided I would stop work on it until I figured out whether or not it was a good idea. I still haven't figured it out.
Kudos to Cato! (Score:1)
www.cato.org [cato.org]
www.fee.org [fee.org]
www.perc.org [perc.org]
www.cei.org [cei.org]
www.lp.org [lp.org]
www.free-market.net [free-market.net]
www.reason.org [reason.org]
Re:Right to free speech or irresponsibility? (Score:2)
"False comments damaging someone's livelihood" involves a response to those comments by law enforcement, vigilantes, crusaders, paranoiacs, or the like. Such responses can only be carried so far if speech, due process, and liberty are well-protected. Cite me an example of any speech causing harm, and I can probably explain it away as indicative of loss of liberty or breakdown in the rule of law.
Limiting free speech, and the ability to get the truth out, makes lies by those who have the power to speak more dangerous.
Protection (Score:1)
Anonymity is a refuge, but it will always be necessary so long as there are people (organizations, governments) who will respond to ideas with coercion.
(Personal observation: I was quite amused to note the many examples of anonymous writings by the "Fathers of the American Revolution". I suppose that's why the US Gummint knows how effective anonymous communication is at toppling governments... )
Who's it aimed at? (Score:3)
There's an awful lot in the world of regulation that has nothing to do with tech. Cato is at the forefront of exploring free-market alternatives to social security, term limits, welfare reform, and lots and lots of other important topics. As a person closely involved with technology, I'm not always up on these other issues. Cato briefings provide some intellectual ammunition when these non-tech things come up. Lots of people with a libertarian bent come at it from other perspectives - like, say, a pro-laissez-faire-business or a free trade focus. They might not have thought privacy and anonymity issues through. I'm not influential, but maybe some of the people I talk to are. At worst, Cato papers tend to be well thought out and researched; suitable for distribution to and consumption by people who need an alternate viewpoint. Like my congressman [house.gov].Who really needs one.
I assume Cato sends these to relevant policymakers too; I don't know. Cato staffmembers show up all the time on the political talk show circuit, op-ed columns, etc.
Re: Freedom (Score:1)
Re:Color Copier ID? (Score:2)
Extremes are always too extreme, justice lies within balance, so a compromise is necessary. On the other hand, we could argue if privacy should be compromised for security, which might be a false feeling of safety. After all, we'll never be really secure as long as there are things out of our control, everything that isn't under our control makes us feel unsafe if we think it could be damaging to us. That's exactly why governments try to get the net in their control, to keep us under control, for nation (i.e. authorities') security.
So what compromise could we get? Anonymous in front of each other, tracable for the authorities, is that a proper balance? Or is the current situation more balanced?
Savvy people are anonymous since they know how to prevent being traced, ignorant people can be traced and caught. Actually that's the way it is all the time. The skilled will get their way, the majority of unskilled will be caught and punished. That's what our justice system is based on, we can't catch everyone, so we try to catch most. Never mind that the few we won't catch do worse things than all the others together. Law enforcement isn't there to protect all citizens, it's there to protect a general order of society, to keep it running well. That's why it makes no sense to say abolishing anonymity and establishing permanent surveillance would help anyone. All it does is make it easier to keep this system running, it's all about the whole, individuals don't matter in that scheme. Hopefully that attitude will change within the next millennium...
OPEN SOURCE SHINING (Score:2)
Cato raises another strawman (Score:4)
(BTW, here is the quote in it's entirety. I found it in the endnotes:
"I think we are perilously close to a lose-lose situation in which citizens have lost their privacy to commercial interests and criminals have easy access to absolute anonymity." -- Justice Dept prosecutor Phillip Reitinger
This is hardly the statist plea to end anonymity that the author makes it out to be - the concern is legitimate. Reitinger is lamenting the loss of anonymity as much as deploring its drawbacks.)
I have difficulty seeing what kind of law could ban anonymity. As the author points out, "Laws requiring the disclosure of identity in cyberspace would require far-reaching changes in Internet technology." The current political climate makes that unlikely, nor are the courts in the US likely to put up with it.
Conceivably, a law could ban IP spoofing (probably not a bad idea) and anonymous remailers (probably a bad idea, but not the end of the world.) The people who would most suffer would not be those with controvertial ideas to disseminate.
Yes, police tend to be paranoid about anything they can't control and some cops have stupid ideas about how the 'Net ought to work, but that doesn't mean the government is about to come swoop down and take away your
This is like the constant rumours that the FCC wants to regulate the Internet - juicy right-wing government conspiracy theories.
ISP's don't let you sign up anonymously for accounts - not if they want to get paid - and if police trace you back to your ISP they will bend over backwards to tell the cops who you are. ISP's have an interest in rooting out spam, and often try to trace anonymous messages back to their source. If you have lost your anonymity on the 'Net these days, it's not the government that did it to you.
I would think the Cato Institute would fight to the death for companies' freedom to deprive you of anonymity. Perhaps the Cato Institute is taking the distinctly anti-libertarian stance that ISP's should be required to provide you with anonymity, or perhaps they are trying to defend the right of spammers to use communication lines without permission of the owners.
Don';t let this strawman argument get you riled up against a problem that doesn't really exist.
Re: Freedom (Score:2)
Re:Color Copier ID? (Score:1)
A long standing US legal principle has been the 'Fruit of the Poison Tree' doctrine, which dictates that any evidence secured as a result of information obtained in a illegal search is inadmissable in court.
Say FBI Agent Smith taps your phone without a warrant. He hears you're about to go pick up a couple of joints for recreational use. He drives out to your home, catches you pulling into the driveway and sees the pot in your hand. What does he do next? Nothing. The information regarding your possesion of a controlled substance was obtained illegally, and even if his superiors let him get away with it no court will. Even in cases where the 'poisoned' evidence was allowed, the Appeals courts have not been kind to those who violate the 'Fruit of the Poison Tree' rule, even going so far as to suggest civil suit for violation of civil rights.
[OT] The scoop on Meept!!: (Score:2)
The original Meept!! was:
http://slashdot.org/users.pl?nick=MEEPT!!
Notice the id of 4102.
Since then there have been several other Meepts!!
meept (73445)
MEEPT!!!! (62711)
MEEPT!!!!! MEEPT!!!!! @ MEEPT!!!!! . com (61607)
MEEPT!!! (19213)
The Glorious Meept!! (17395)
The GloriousMeept!! (14479)
Glorious Meept!!! (124300)
MEEPT!!!!!! TheGloriousMeept@netscape.net (124467)
The last of which [who is the Meept!! in question] seems to hold more true to the original Meept!!, at least in terms of user info and posting style. The other Meepts!! were usually easy to spot, as they were not nearly as crazy or funny.
Over the past month, there have been increasing amounts of Anonymous Meepts!!.
[FYI, I am preparing a paper on the Meept!! phenomonon--the start of the mass spamming of slashdot. It will be here: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=meept!!!]
out of the woodwork. (Score:1)
I can almost imagine this scenerio:
So-and-so said outlawing guns would be a first step towards safer schools.
- Guns protect our liberties!
- I collect guns as a hobby!
- I'm going to kill my classmates today
- *blam* *blam* *blam* *blam*
- Quake in real life is fun!
Yeah, I just don't get people sometimes.Re:Right to free speech or irresponsibility? (Score:1)
And the nice new security cameras will record your face as you walk up to the phone and make the call. The recognition software will be matching your face in realtime as you talk, while another process traces the phone call via the system the phone companies were forced by law to include in their systems. Oh, two years ago the local police had a warrant to tap that pay phone because a drug dealer used it once... and they "forgot" to tell the phone company to turn the tap off once that case was over.
Before your conversation is done, they know who you are, who you called, and the conversation who had is digitally stored for later review.
Anonymity on the net may soon be the only anonymity that exists.
Re: Freedom (Score:1)
haey, hu (Score:1)
Re:Kudos to Cato! (Score:1)
I've heard the arguments, I used to write the arguments, but they deny some important facts. Through the last 30 years the US has deregulated and "opened" markets. In the time since 1980 to present the average amount of hours worked has grown an incredible amount where in every other developed country the amount has dropped. At the same time standard of living hasn't raised to meet these long hours, it's actually dropped.
Markets that would be considered "free" in a Adam Smith sence grow at a rate of 2.2% vs 2.1% for "protectionist" markets. I'll point out that the
Are those enough points to dislike the Cato Institute?
Anonymousness (Score:1)
Re:Litigate for your Anonymous Coward rights. (Score:1)
It would seem to me like lawsuits could be brought upon web forums that allow anyone view but require login to post. By allowing anyone to view the statements they are making their forum public, which - apparently - the Supreme Court has stated that anonymous input should be allowed.
Now there's a non sequitir if I've ever seen one. If anyone can read it, it's a public forum? WTF? Maybe I should sue every webzine in existence for not posting my articles. After all, if anyone can read it, it's a public forum.
Regardless, these things are private organizations, not organs of the government. It amazes me how many people think they have some Constitutional right to have their writings hosted on other people's servers for free.
And to think I've blown all my hard work recently (Score:1)
Re:cuts both ways (Score:2)
It's a difficult problem; I guarantee that for every example of a way that such a system could be misused that you could come up with, someone could come up with another, perfectly justifiable or desirable use.
It's just a matter of weighing up the potential for good against the potential for evil, and deciding which outweighs the other.
As far as anonymity on the net in general goes, however, I'd hate to have to reveal my identity to every website that I passed through, or requested data/text/images from. You think spam is bad now, wait until every banner ad provider gets to know who you are because you requested their image. And, of course, there's all the false positive search engine matches, that turn out to lead to porn sites
Tim
Anonymity is like a cup of tea... (Score:3)
Take any public web service, for example. How anonymous are you? Really?
Answer: Depends on what you call anonymous. If you mean "will another casual reader be able to see where I am", the answer is probably no, so in that sense, I suppose you are anonymous.
On the other hand, the web logs are available to the web master, along with any person who knows what vulnerabilities exist and how to exploit them.
Then, of course, there are packet sniffers, that can monitor everything that passes through a given segment of the Internet.
Many language labs have software for analysing text, to look for similarities in style. In the hands of a wannabe-PI, these could be used to track all the boards you write on, your views and the times you typically write. This can give someone a VERY good profile of you, and a likely line of longitude.
Anonymous remailers get busted weekly, so those don't protect anyone. Even the "better" ones have either been shut down, raided or both.
Proxies only shed the IP, and are only effective if they block traceroutes and pings (including TCP pings). Even then, time-frame analysis, content analysis and correlation between boards can give a good idea as to where you are.
Of course, proxies are useless if they don't protect the packet. Even if encrypted, when going into the proxy, the stream going in and the stream going out only need to be correlated ONCE for your identity to be revealed.
You also have to secure the network between you and the proxy, decently. Someone only has to do a man-in-the-middle attack, by DNS spoofing & telling the Internet that their computer is the proxy, rather than the real one, and all the IP-laden packets will float straight to them.
Of course, none of this is really necessary, if you haven't secured your computer. A portscan of every computer in the US isn't going to take long, on a decent machine. If it was a serious corporate or Government move, you can assume they'd have high-power machines in each State, making it possible to waltz into any computer, ANYWHERE in the US, in a very short span of time.
Isn't that just inviting ACs to spam now? (Score:1)
"Given the importance of anonymity..." (Score:2)
Lovely little quote to describe a concept isn't it. I am just thrilled to see someone base an argument on an assumption. Little things like logic need not apply here. As long as we can say "Given" preceeding any assumtion, then the assumption must be true, right?
Apparently it is safe to assume that anything printed in a fancy briefing paper is true. Let me ask you first amendment thumpers out there, "Did Thomas Jefferson and the rest of our constitutional fathers add an amendment to the bill of rights guaranteeing anonymity?" In fact, I believe the constitution does say something about the accused having the right to confront their accuser. Also, the printed word does not guarantee anonymity either. I'm sure the New York Times or the Washington Post are fascinated by this new idea of publishing stories without bylines, and then claiming innocence when hit with a libel suit.
Re:Anonymous Coward (offtopic) (Score:2)
Interesting theory. (Score:1)
I did it... (Score:2)
It traveled through word, so some of the symbols might be gone... err... just read my disclaimer...
Re:Mirror (Score:1)
For that matter, Slashdot itself is a
If not for AC, I wouldn't *READ* Slashdot at all. (Score:4)
-------------------------------------------------- --------------- --------------
I mean, if ACs are being censored, God knows what else they're censoring.
-------------------------------------------------
Long live ACs on Slashdot!
FBI purjury is ROUTINE PRACTICE in these cases. (Score:2)
In a very recent case, Florida Highway Patrol Trooper Douglas Strickland testified that it is routine practice for the highway patrol's drug interdiction teams to lie under oath in exactly these cases.
From an editorial on the case [mapinc.org]:
THE CONTROVERSY STEMS from a May 19, 1998, car search. At the time, Strickland and Trooper Bruce Hutheson told a Polk County judge that they had pulled up alongside a broken-down Lincoln Continental stopped on Interstate 4. They said they became suspicious of the driver, Michael Flynn, because he would not give them access to the trunk so they could check if a fuel shut-off switch had malfunctioned. When they called over the police dog they just happened to have with them, it homed in on the back of the car. Inside they ``discovered'' 220 pounds of cocaine. The state judge, on the basis of this evidence, set bail at $1 million.
Trouble was, the troopers neglected to tell the judge they knew all along that the car contained drugs. They had been with the FBI when the car was loaded. The FBI, we now know, was conducting a reverse sting and had used a remote control device planted in the car to make it inoperable.
So, in theory, he "won't do anything" because the information was obtained illegally, but in the absolutely corrupt-to-the-core "real world" of the FBI in the 1990s, he will simply lie to the judge about where the evidence came from.
Re:cuts both ways (Score:2)
Not with IPv6 (Score:2)
Anonymity currently exists on the Internet largely due to dynamic IP addressing by dial-up ISPs. The more rigorous alternatives (www.anonymizer.com) are problematic and troublesome for casual use. The anonymity comes from the difficulty of dredging through ISP logs to link an IP with a userid, and the limited number of requests ISPs will fulfill, mostly from law enforcement. Often, the logs will have expired [been deleted by rotation].
However, all this will vanish with 128-bit [sic] addressing in IPv6. Many bits will be used for routing, but you can bet some bits will be dedicated to identifying _you_, even if you did dialup. Essentially, you will have a static dial-up IP address. Since any site you commpunicate with has to be able to return packets to you, they will have to know your IP.
-- Robert
Re:FBI purjury is ROUTINE PRACTICE in these cases. (Score:2)
Re:Setting limits on anonymity (Score:1)
It's already a self-regulating system. The damages awarded in libel and slander cases is proportionate to the damge caused. If someone's words cause more damage because they were able to spread faster, then the reward to the victim would be greater as well.
There is no reason to loose anonymous speech just because the audience is larger.
Public Forums, a definition. (Score:2)
Anyways, for anyone interested there is a really good research paper on Public Forums, calledWhose Forum is this Anyway? [ukans.edu]
I guess it's an American thing to use litigation as sarcasm. When I was in Switzerland I went Canyoning - two weeks before 21+ kids died at the same place I went. Anyways, when my group was being driven up the mountain in our van - some guy backed up into the van. Wham. Someone in the back seat yelled out, "I'm suing". To which, the drive - a swiss local - replied, "This is Switzerland, go back to America."
Go read the research paper.
Joseph Elwell.
Anonymity is just a quick fix... (Score:1)
I disagree with the whole concept of anonymity, on the Internet or anywhere. In this day and age of people not taking responsibility for their actions, proclaiming anonymity just makes this worse.
I would prefer to live in a world where all information was free, and that I could speak openly with my name front and foremost associated with my comments. There is so much effort being spent on making things anonymous, but wouldn't that energy be better spent trying to make it less difficult for people to be intimidated when they speak openly.
Or perhaps by increasing the amount of tolerance.
Finding technology that makes people anonymous doesn't fix the underlying problems of irresponsibility and intolerance.
Joshua Lamorie
An obligated engineer.
Re:if it weren't for Anonymous Coward ... (Score:1)
I've seen that sig (I presume we are referring to the same one), but I interpreted it differently. As I see it, the poster wasn't discouraging people from posting anonymously, but rather encouraging useful and quality posting (as opposed to the bung we seem to have on this page).
Re:Right to free speech or irresponsibility? (Score:1)
Re:Cato raises another strawman (Score:1)
...If you have lost your anonymity on the 'Net these days, it's not the government that did it to you
Most users of the internet enjoy the mostly unknown priviledge of having an ever chaning IP address. Each time you log in, you get a different IP. Because of this fact, websites don't know who you are unless you explicitly tell them who you are, or they use permanent cookies to keep track. Cookies can be turned off though, for those of use who are truly paranoid and don't want to leak a single bit of information to anyone.
Then there are those who have a static IP address. If the website took the time to analyze their logs, they could determine your viewing habits on their website, and link those habits to your IP address. Then if you ever happen to supply them with information, even one time, about who you are, then now have personal information to apply to those habits. Since your IP has been the same, they can apply all of your past habits with your info too.
Personally this doesn't bother me, but I know there are plenty of people out there that this would bother.
Re:if it weren't for Anonymous Coward ... (Score:1)
Similarly, if someone claims I do some unspeakably vile act as an AC, it's kind of hard to do anything about it. Of course, in
(What vile acts, do you ask? Can't tell you - they're UNSPEAKABLY vile!)
Anonymity Is a Two Edged Sword (Score:2)
Journalists have to face the issue of anonymous sources every day. Anonymity will sometimes allow people to reveal information they otherwise would not, BUT anonymity also prevents people from verifying information. Thus journalists (at least good ones) try to avoid using anonymous sources whenever possible.
Anonymity may be a cloak for illegal action, like making claims intended to influence the price of a stock (very common on the internet) or slander a political candidate (like the recent campaign claiming that John McCain was suffering psychological damage from his tour as a prisoner of war).
It is important for journalists to be able to use anonymous sources, but it is ALSO important for journalists to take information received from such sources with a large dose of salt.
The boon and the flaw in the internet is that you get the news unfiltered. The danger is that the audience may take too much of it as fact, especially if the sources are not verifiable.
What is really needed when reading places like slashdot is a healthy dose of schepticism and a willingness to do a little thinking. The first is easy, but the second?
Re:Right to free speech or irresponsibility? (Score:1)
use registration to create anonymity (Score:1)
Re:Right to free speech or irresponsibility? (Score:1)
There are many examples of anonymous speech harming one's livelihood that have nothing to do with the rule of law or loss of liberty. How about watching your company's stock totally deflate based upon anonymous comments in discussion groups. Or being investigated by an EEOC officer and watching your carreer go down the tubes. Harm to reputation can has as damaging an effect on your life as receiving grevious bodily injury.
-sw
Anonymity and Speech (Score:1)
A couple of points:
Sure, the government cannot require that the protected speech identify you. That is not the same as saying you are guaranteed untraceable means to use. If you are handing out unsigned leaflets on a street corner, a policeman can still look at you to see who you are. Remember, earlier this year the KKK was required to march unmasked in New York. (Personally, I think that decision was wrong, but that decision was upheld by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.)
I just don't see where the Internet is any better or worse off than the real world in a lot of ways. First, you can ignore what you want to. Second, people CAN do things anonymously in real life, such as distributing defamatory leaflets, or sending crank snail-mail.
Re:Right to free speech or irresponsibility? (Score:1)
-sw
Re: www.anonymizer.com (was: Re: Freedom) (Score:1)
> Anonymizer is crap. They ask you to pay a good sum of money to use their service, AND they ask for your email address and other coordinates. They're riding the anonymity bandwagon and understand it's hot, but have no clue what the hell it is.
I remember when Cottrell set up the Anonymizer years ago. It started off free, with no registration. Then it was disabled for half an hour each hour for non-registered users. I haven't seen what it's become in the past few years, but I presume all of the new restrictions and whatnot are due to the reality that bandwidth costs a lot of money.
(Recall that Cottrell is the one who wrote the Mixmaster "Type II" [post-cypherpunk] anonymous email remailer software, and as far as I know is still running at least one anonymous remailer. He is well known to cypherpunks and others concerned with privacy and freedom. He is definitely not clueless.)
Re:Cato raises another strawman (Score:1)
They do here! (UK) See www.pobox.co.uk [pobox.co.uk] How about that, an ISP which actively solicits anonymous users.
Re:What is anonymity? (Score:1)
ends record IP addresses. From that a determined
investigator can find you. Police and crackers
do this all the time. Never write anything
you ever want attached to your name.
Re:Color Copier ID? (Score:1)
This was the case in NY recently, where units were tipped off to suspected drug dealers by other officers participating in illegal wire taps. With this scenerio, it is hard to prove the "Poison Tree" because no one is aware of the wire tapping except the officer who dropped the hint.
When, and if the defendant learns of the wire tap, they have to prove that all the evidence that has been gathered legally by the tipped-off officer was a result of a wire tap the other officer made.
As you can imagine, this is a difficult thing to prove in court, especially since the officer who is participating in the illegal wire tapping is smart enough not to write down is suggestion on paper.
Re:Right to free speech or irresponsibility? (Score:1)
The difference in credibility between your examples [#1-#3] is only in the perception. Assuming that you have no background information on the person, how does the presence of "real" name--whatever that means-- increase your confidence?
You argue that a pseudonym only establishes a persistent notion of identity; eg that all postings made by "Foobar" are correlated to the same author. In what way is this different from the use of an actual name? If you have never heard of a person named "Aaron Kostrawitzki" what is the rational basis for attributing more credibility to a posting under that name?
The fact that pseudonyms could be co-opted unintentionally or fraudulently? Sure but in the absence of authentication protocols you could not verify whether a given was indeed made by the person whose name is purportedly associated with that comment.
BluesPower
Re:"Given the importance of anonymity..." (Score:2)
"Given the importance of anonymity as a component of free speech..."
I am just thrilled to see someone base an argument on an assumption.
It's really hard not to respond to this as if you were a troll... particularly since you go on to provide examples that buttress what you apparently consider a faulty assumption. Yes, it is an assumption - a fairly good one, I think; but in any case, logically you can either accept the assumption, and argue it's consequences, or reject the assumption, and attempt to show why it is invalid. You do neither, instead prefering an ad homeneim attack on the issuer of the statement, which makes you appear unwilling (or unable) to debate the substance of the argument.
Secondly, you make the mistake of equating "freedom" with "lack of responsibility". The NYT is free to print whatever they damn well please - as long as they take responsibility for their actions. If that includes being sued for libel, fine - they may be willing to take that risk, in some instances and for some reasons.
Finally - the right of the accused to confront their accuser applies in a court of law. If I claim (in print) that my old fourth-grade teacher was an ex-Nazi war criminal child molester, he's got every right to accuse me of libel in a court of law, and I have every right to face him there, as he is my accuser .
For *much* more detail... (Score:3)
Actually, there's very little new in this paper, although the presentation is very snappy, and the PR blitz is impressive, verging on excessive (I've seen this announcement about 15 times on various lists today).
For a much more detailed, and perhaps more tedious, look at law and anonymity issues, see my paper Flood Control on the Information Ocean: Living With Anonymity, Digital Cash, and Distributed Databases (1996) [miami.edu], which discusses the cryptographic foundations of anonymity, and the legal issues it raises. You may also be interested in my 1996 paper on the Clipper Chip [miami.edu], which discusses whether a legal restrictions on crypto use would be consitutional.
Hmmm. Maybe next time I write a paper I should issue a press release? (No, I know, I should write shorter papers....)
A. Michael Froomkin [mailto],
U. Miami School of Law,POB 248087
Coral Gables, FL 33124,USA
Re: Freedom (Score:2)
That site requires signup for decent service but if you are patient enough the site allows anyone to load pages anonymously, except that a frustrating delay is imposed deliberately to "encourage" users to pay the $50/year.
Unfortunately there are several problems with the Anonymizer approach. To hide the origin of the HTTP request, active content including Javascript and applets must be disabled. (Otherwise bad things happen: for example using the object-model script could force another HTTP request to server revealing the original IP)
This means that pages which have dependency on script will not work. It is entirely another story whether designing one's site to require Javascript for proper functioning was such brilliant idea and surely Jakob Nielsen will have plenty to comment on this. But the reality is that especially among the recent breed of ecommerce sites have all the latest DHTML incorporated and script is crucial there.
More importantly cookies are not exchanged meaning that shopping carts will not work. Technically you could browse but you could not buy-- moot point since there are other privacy problems in electronic transactions. (Shipping address, credit cards, etc.) Neat feature would have been to create a temporary cookie jar used per session and discarded.
Paradoxically this service creates a problem of different type. Because the number of registered users is small, web servers getting requests from Anonymizer.com will assume that it is coming from one of the handful of registered users
In other words previously you could be one of the millions on the web-- but thanks to your proxy you are now identified within a few thousand people. One could only hope that the company can manage to keep its user database private.
BluesPower
No it is NOT illegal (Score:2)
I wish I had a reference for you. but I am absolutely positive about this. I remember well the day I saw the article, and rejoiced that there was still some sanity left in this world.
--
Not a strawman (Score:2)
--
but does it exist? (Score:1)
Re:cuts both ways (Score:2)
Keiter and Rubin did some interesting work in this direction. Their idea is that instead of using specific remailer, users join a network called "crowd" and each client in effect becomes a mailer. When a message is received the user tosses a coin to decide between forwarding to another link or mailing out to the ultimate destination.
Based on the number of hosts colluding, the system offers varying degrees of anonymity. (Its all worked out mathematically, eg the probability that so-and-so is the originator of the message given the observed traffic.) You can find the paper here:
Crowds: anonymity for Web transactions [acm.org]
BluesPower
Quicken Monitoring your Email reading (Score:2)
For example, if you just got the "Quicken TurboTax December Tax Alert" email and you read it with a web browser, then they've made a connection between your name on file, your IP address, the email address configured in your browser, and other HTTP data. Look in that message and you'll see
And every time you reread that message and tickle that web server they get another look.
Re:Color Copier ID? (Score:2)
If you don't think this type of thing happens every single bloody day in the U.S., then you're the type of person the public schools were designed to create.
Well said. The combination of public "schooling", immersion in the fantasy world view of television, and the unending barrage of marketing and disinformation from the media has produced a large number of technically ignorant people who are little more than 'consumerbots', who seem to believe that thier sole purpose in life is to earn, desire, and spend.
======
"Rex unto my cleeb, and thou shalt have everlasting blort." - Zorp 3:16
Re:Color... sig (Score:2)
The real significance of this is the fact that there is definite Supreme Court support for on-line anonymity.
I'd be suprised if the author was not a lawyer; if he is not, it is the best written legal analysis by a non-lawyer that I have ever read.
The first amendment is the last refuge of freedom in the Constitution; that, and attorney-client privlege.
Don't Get Complacent! (Score:2)
Notwithstanding what we may think of the Klu Klux Klan, the Second Circuit ratification of Giuliani's enforcement of New York's gag law is a harbinger of dangers to come. There, claims of anonymity during a pilitical demonstration took the back seat to claims that folks are less likely to do harm if they are "unmasked."
The difference is that Georgia didn't recite its "compelling governmental interest." Regrettably, Miller may in time stand more as a roadmap how to make an enforceable cyber-mask law than as proof that the right to anonymity exists.
The long and short of it is that we must remain politically vigilant. You never need to test the constitutionality of a law that doesn't pass. Rather than using "rights" language ("you can't do this because its unconstitutional"), we must use the "policy" language that legislators understand ("you can't do this because its bad for America and bad for you, and because you'll never get reelected if you vote for it").
We must make our case for privacy on the net in terms Americans understand, before the debate is seized and controlled by the censors. It is we who must seize the initiative, and create a status quo of public sympathy that the censors must overcome.
Cybermask laws are the next CDA -- count on it! The Courts now have told the censors how to do it, and they are just waiting for the next big opportunity to make it happen. Let's seize the initiative before they have their chance.
Re:Color Copier ID? (Score:2)