Slashdot Mirror
Clinton Frowns on Anonymity
Andy Social writes,
"Just saw a
Wired article
that tells more of the current administration's approach to online privacy. A DOJ commission that President Clinton requested a few months ago seems ready to publish their report and recommends that the U.S. find ways to trace all Internet access..."
Another interesting article from Declan McCullagh. Personally, I became a believer in online anonymity while talking to a friend who used to maintain the
alt.sexual.abuse.recovery FAQ. Some things are important. Update: 03/06 12:55 by J : Here's
the report itself.
They forgot, or didn't mention, about what would happen if the Government mandated it for real-time tracking. Oops. Thanks guys.
Given that some from Cisco have publically stated that they will implement backdoors in their routers to help out the Feds, and that some key security people at Sun have called Phil Zimmerman and other key crypto people "jerks", anonymity will disappear unless those who want privacy fight for it.
And with IPv6 coming down the pike, now we will have to continually fight for it; or more likely, beg for it.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
I wonder how law enforcement would like it (especially the various drug taskforces) if their valued anonymous tips were made illegal. Prosecution of organized crime would be a lot tougher as well.
Of course, once those sources of information dry up, they'll just point to that as a reason that they need to have cameras every 6 feet to see what's going on. And of copurse, manditory name tags for anyone out in public.
The very founding fathers of this country were prolific anonymous writers or wrote their political comments under pen names so as to protect their very lives. And there are still countries where speaking out in any form that upsets the local government can get you killed.
The bears repeating: Anonymity is the ONLY shield against the tyranny of the majority. Without it, you kill freedom of speech. Some things are simply TOO dangerous to put your name on.
--
Python
Python
We've all heard before that anonymity is essential to free speech, because anything less exposes writers and speakers to fear of retribution -- from government, from criminals (Witness Protection Plan, anyone?), from monied interests, and the like.
The totalitarians' response to this claim almost always has to do with "responsibility" -- generally "making people take responsibility for their speech". This is a really funny use of the word "responsibility", since it seems to actually mean "vulnerability": ensuring that people are vulnerable to assault whenever they speak.
It's true that people sometimes act like assholes when they're anonymous -- see the behavior of a notable subset (but by no means all) of the Anonymous Cowards here. Anonymous forums need a way to protect themselves from abuse without compromising the identities of their participants.
I think that the answer lies in the unhindered creation of pseudonymous identities, coupled with powerful reputation systems for all identities. The Slashdot karma system is a primitive form of a reputation system for pseudonymous identities. There are a few improvements I would make to the current karma system to bring it more in line with how a pseudonymous reputation system should work:
Rather than having the bonus for high karma and the moderation system be separate, make them one system, as such: Any act of moderation costs karma, and gives karma to the one moderated. The exception is when moderating your own posts; boosting them costs you karma, but does not give you any back; reducing them does not cost you karma. This simplifies the system; permits people to more accurately rate the value of their own posts; and makes one's accumulated karma figure more worthwhile.
(Presently, what good is having a lot of karma? It means that you have the freedom to troll a lot before getting harmed by being moderated down. That's not something we want to encourage. Instead, having a lot of karma should give you a positive power, like being able to moderate.)
When you spend karma to change a post's score, you have to spend more points than the amount by which you want to change it. (In other words, karma expenditure is not 100% efficient.) The more you want to raise (or lower) the score, the more it costs (increasing geometrically); also, the further the post is from neutral, the more it costs to push it further away from neutral. These rules help avoid the current surfeit of +5 posts, as well as discouraging bulk transfers of karma among identities.
What these rules would do is create an "economy" of karma/moderation points, similar in many ways to a money economy. In a money economy, if I like your products, I buy them -- which costs me money and enriches you, letting you make more products and advertise them more widely, as well as letting you go buy someone else's products. The end result of the free market is that people produce better and better (or at least more and more marketable) products, driving the increase in technology and productivity; with luck, the end result of this karma economy would be to encourage better and better posts, driving an increase in valuable discussion.
In this way, we can derive a significant benefit from a system of pseudonymous identity, thus demonstrating to the world that responsibility has nothing to do with the vulnerabilities associated with being identifiable.
Remember when the IETF said, "What do we think about building some wiretapping abilities into Internet protocols and hardware?" Remember the unified YRO response to that?
Now when the law is passed forcing ad-hoc Internet wiretapping techniques upon us, everyone's going to start bitching and moaning about how the government won't be able to do this securely and while maintaining the privacy of innocent 3rd parties who happen to be utilizing the same links.
NOW do you folks understand the reason the IETF wanted to consider *designing* such a system in the first place? The government is going to monitor our Internet connections whether we want to or not. They can do so under existing wiretapping laws. But instead of having *us* design the system for them to do so, we just shouted a big "fuck you!", crossed our arms, and pretended like the problem was going to go away, all the while patting ourselves on the backs for our unified anti-Big Brother stance.
And now when we're on the brink of legislation that will most certainly pass, aren't you oh so glad you hopped on the privacy bandwagon and talked the IETF out of constructing a secure, safe and privacy-honoring method for doing what everyone knew the government was going to impose on us anyway?
Hooray for the YRO crowd!
There seems to be a fundamental difference between what posters are talking about here and what this commission seems to be advocating.
No matter how we tweak or upgrade the Internet infrastructure, there will always be ways of posting messages online anonymously. There will NEVER be laws in the US requiring all online content to be attributed to its author. Freedom of speech is not an issue here.
What the commission thinks the Internet needs is a way to track online crime back to the perpetrator. This has little to do with posting messages online (unless it's something like a ransom note, in which case there's not much you can do). The ability to do things like spoof IP addresses and bounce from compromised network to compromised network undetected needs to be addressed. Presently, the only way to track a packet kiddie like this down to his originating dialup is through ad-hoc, unstandardized cooperation between every network link in the chain, and that's assuming somebody is on call 24/7 at every step of the way. Presently this is very tedious, and assuming you can find your way to the user's dialup link, there's no guarantee that the ISP will have accurate information about the user at all.
That's no joke, either. There are a LOT of very, very sick "professionals" out there. Just because they have a certificate hanging off the wall does not mean they are safe, or to be trusted.
Then, there are those who want to talk about their own recovery, and want to encourage others to reach beyond their shame, self-loathing, and self-destruction. You can't do that by talking about anecdotal stories. You encourage others by talking about yourself.
"So what?" you might say. So, there are a lot of very, very sick people out there, who would be more than happy to feed off victims. Emotional "vampires" are prevalent across the Internet, and form the bulk of trolls.
Then, there are vengence-freaks. People locked up for sex crimes (or any other crimes) who would dearly love a bit of sadistic revenge. A quick visit to Deja.com'll get all the past postings. A few phone calls later, and (without privacy) they could have the phone number and street address of whoever they hold responsible.
As things stand, it is frighteningly easy to locate anyone, at any time. As technology for surveillence and anti-privacy increases, it will become easier and easier for abusers to reconnect with prior victims.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Just look at the board Clinton put together. Every last one of them has a lot to gain from Big Brother, from the FBI Director ("weeding out" of "undesirables") to the Secretary of Commerce ("consumer tracking.")
The rights of the law-abiding to live without undue interference from governmental organizations outweigh the rights of law enforcement to snoop around. And yes, there will be a few crimes that could have been prevented by a police state. To that, I can only say tough luck. I know it sounds heartless, and I know it's unfair, but it's the way the universe has worked for untold billions of years, and one organization in one country on one planet isn't going to change that.
It's a sad fact that you cannot eliminate all suffering. You can certainly try, and you can certainly get it to a minimum. Those are admirable goals. But the only things which could absolutely end the suffering of the few will cause billions more to suffer even worse. The best a person can do is to live life, try to help others in need, and try not to cause any more unnecessary suffering.
Yes, it means there will always be crime. Yes, some innocents will suffer and even die, when that could have been stopped by a police state. And no, that isn't fair in the least. But if there's one thing I've learned about the universe, it's this: it's not fair. I give you the choice: a random group of people (possibly -but not definitely- including yourself; you don't get to pick) will suffer and die every year at the hands of criminals, or those people will all live but the whole world will live in virtual slavery to a comparatively tiny group of people who can and do abuse their power for personal gain. It pains me that it has to be this way, but the plain truth is, it does. Give the government an inch, it'll take two miles.
Why do I say all this? Because as much as I disagree with Clinton, Freeh, and the rest of them, I do think they have good intentions. But they're trying to do what can't be done (and, for that matter, they're trying to do things that it's not their job to do). They aren't evil people, just deluded. The real problem is that they're too far gone to see the reality of the situation. They think that they actually will eliminate suffering by eliminating privacy. It's like the idea of the "transparent society"; it makes its points while conveniently forgetting that by its own admission (particularly the but about "using light as a weapon"), the Transparent Society is nothing more than a society ruled by blackmail.
You'd be surprised. I know several people who have had real problems with professional counsellors, but have found what help they need from online support groups (including a.s.a.r.). Sure, it's not for everyone, but don't deprive those who need it just because it doesn't fit your preconceived ideas.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Anonymity is crucial for the Net. Many times have I seen people admit things on IRC which they could simply not bring themselves to saying in any other environment. I recall a story of sexual abuse at childhood, which a girl once told me soon after she discovered the chat environment, which she never admitted to anyone before. Because of the feeling of anonymity.
We should not be afraid to speak out. The argument in favour of big brother watching you, and if you don't want that to happen, you must be hiding something, simply misses two crucial points:
"Internet service providers should be encouraged, though not required, to maintain detailed records of what their users are doing online."
This already happens without any government encouragement.
When my machines are cracked, I check the logs and contact the relevant ISPs. I expect that the ISP will cooperate by checking their own logs and identifying the account, and terminating it. I haven't been involved in a case yet that's gone to law enforcement (I hate it when people overreact), but I have been put in contact with script kiddy's parents to suggest some additional parental supervision.
The Internet Death Penalty already encourages ISPs to use their knowledge of their customers to enforce community norms against cracking and SPAM. Every responsible ISP has the ability to track down an account. This is nothing new.
As far as the feds getting more technically clue-ful -- I can see how this could be problematic, but in itself it is not a problem. We should require law enforcement to become tech savvy, to protect our Internet ventures, yet to use its powers reasonably and proportionately. And law enforcement needs to know that technically sophisticated people are watching and judging. It is in ignorance, fear and apathy that overreaction happens. Nobody in their right mind wants another Mitnik case, which can only happen because there isn't enough technical common sense around to effectively stand up against grandstanding prosecutors and bloodthirsty corporate lawyers.
We already have a solution to the problem of the law enforcement's power to intrude on our lives. Law enforcement should have to get a search warrant. The process of getting search warrants should be open to scrutiny and oversight, and evidence obtained through improper warrants should be inadmissable. This solution works as well as we are able as a people to remain vigilant and use the tools that we have to constrain our government.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Agreed. As long as governments hold many exclusive powers over the people, there will be new ways invented to erode rights through that power. Without available anonymity freedom of speech will remain uncertain.
With the vast number of vague laws in place, almost anyone could be charged with something. The only refuge from that massive arbitrary power is anonymity -- and the only right that Internet anonymity ensures is speech.
That is what Clinton and friends would restrict.
Geeky modern art T-shirts
Hasn't the US Supreme Court defended anonymity as an important element of free speech? Without anonymity, there is always fear of retribution.
Not that Presidents or administrations have ever had much interest in supporting freedom. Even if they are sworn to defend the US Constitution, their main interest is in governing the populace. Freedoms make that job harder.
I work for a major Tier 1 ISP and I can tell you that this is not at all technically feasible to be implemented by ISPs at this time. We do not currently have the resources to monitor whether or not our customer's lines are up or not, let alone monitor their activity. The only way to do this sort of thing would be a sort of WAN packet sniffer, and the data that that sort of device would produce would be unreasonably huge. There would be no way for a large organization to handle that sort of monitoring. The basic topology of the internet would have to change, both physically and logically, for this goal to become a reality, and that sort of change must come slowly. So this is a concern, but it isn't going to happen any time soon.
//Phizzy
"Most European technology just isn't worth our stealing," -- Former CIA chief James Woolsey, referring to Echelon
I thought after his problems with Monica that he would be a staunch advocate of anonymity.
Hates people who have stupid little sigs
The number of whistle-blowers who have had their good deeds punished is legion. We need a way for them to be able to blow those whistles safely, so that those in power, whether governmental or corperate, have to fear that their actions may come to light. Certainly there will be abuses of this anonymity, but it is worth these abuses to get the benefits.
The cake is a pie
What we need on the internet scale is something more explicit. We need to move to a protocol where address spoofing is not possible. We then should layer on top of that some sort of explicit "anonymous" packet support. We should then build on top of that explicit anonymity support in applications like e-mail packages and browsers. In other words, as a user, I should be able to simply check "mail anonymously" or "browse anonymously". On the other hand, as a mail recipient or site author, I should be able to check "refuse anonymous mail" or "refuse anonymous browsers". Make sure this support goes all the way down to the protocol level.
This would both allow anonymity and remove the biggest problems with anonymity.
The cake is a pie
It's something the government deems worthy of protecting us from "a threat to national security," at which point all all individual and civil rights become null and void.
/. users have gone through the script-kiddie phase (hey, if we were never there we understand it quite as well), have gotten past the warezing and the filezing and whatnot, and have gotten to a point where we just don't think it's right for government eyes to follow us and read our communications -- that''s what's at stake here.
Really, this does take us one giant leap closer to Big Brother -- the majority of our traffic is either from a) the office or b) our homes, which means that traceability is extremely effective. Our activities already are being watched from our job and our home, and this will allow them to watch us even closer.
It's time to enable ourselves to encrypt every bit of data that leaves our machines, and get everyone you know to do the same. I don't even get involved in any "unseemly" activities on the net, I think that a large number of us
If you don't want all of your communications to be a) traceable or b) even intercepted and processed *legally* by your government agencies (can you imagine if they could read all of our mail? It'd be a public outrage, an invastion of privacy, against our personal ri... oh, wait, "matter of national security," we have no rights...) the time to act is NOW. Fight to keep crazy legislation like this gets enacted, and learn your encryption. Get thyself to www.pgp.org, or if you know of something better, let us all know.
Anyone else think that the ACLU needs a political party? They'd be on our side on this one...
Those that are in power always seem to take those steps which will keep them in power. The anonymity of the internet is useful to the little guy because it alows him to speak his mind without fear of being squashed. But this usefulness to the little guy comes at the cost of power to the big guy. After all, what good is power if you can't excercise it over someone. Of course Clinton wants to implement some sort of method of identifying users of the internet, he has nothing to lose by it, and something to gain.
People should always keep in mind that while you may think your being clever by taking jabs at the system, you may actually be playing into the hands of those who would like to say, "See, look what has happened, we need new laws regulating this thing".
Check out AbiWord.
Techies will want to keep in mind what it will mean if the government intends to establish mechanisms for tracing internet traffic.
First off, it will probably mean that they'll shift support toward proprietary solutions - those which they can have changed to suit their needs, and which can be deployed in a way which prevents tampering. In other words, compatibility barrier, binary distribution, security (of the protocol) through obscurity.
Second, they're gonna need cooperation. This means either a substantial chunk of the internet within the US becomes government sanctioned and controlled (with those servers being good and proper and volunteering whatever information the NSA, CIA, or whatever else wants this week) or (US) internet backbone sites will have to run the US-sanctioned software.
As governments get more involved in controlling localities of the internet, I think it'll become more fragmented and less free (speech/beer). Personally, I think that if terrorism and such can't be prevented without sweeping searches, indiscriminate monitoring of communications, and export restrictions on crypto, maybe it's not worth it.
Bow-ties are cool.
we don't allow phone users or dirver's license holders to remain anonymous, although their records are kepot private...not sure why online identities must be different.
We have public phones, don't we? And tone blocking against caller id. Regarding driver's licenses, this is because a driver poses a physical hazard to other citizens. We don't have a license to talk.
I looked at your user info and note that, like me, you include no contact or identifying information. This isn't a bad thing! It encourages free exchange, and there are some legitimate things that are better said anonymously. Of course, it could be said that the government is a 'trusted third party' that would never ever look, without proper search warrants. Of course, 400 FBI files of the administration's political opponents were supposed to be confidential, too. There is no difference, in the end between 'trusted party access' and 'uncontrolled access' when it comes to personal information. Trusted by who? When you hold the information already, the agency need only trust itself-- this smacks of key escrow.
Government shouldn't be dictating to individuals how our technology should work. If the technology that works best for people happens to also identify them, well, what can you do? Private privacy services (such as anonymous remailers) will emerge, and privacy will have a cost.
To argue for a government-mandated internet identity tracking system because people shouldn't have anything to hide is wrong. The burden is on the government to establish a need to know, not on us to foot the bill (in lower performance, higher taxes or ISP fees, etc) to satisfy the government's idle curiosity.
Did anyone catch the paragraph on the second page about taking away protections of journalists & publishers? The last line of the paragraph states that the report will recommend "reduced privacy rights for cable modem users."
Just what might these be? This sounds draconian.
Temkin
Uh oh. This is a call to weaken the Privacy Protection Act of 1980. That's the law that made it possible for Steve Jackson Games to win against the Secret Service.
The Privacy Protection Act of 1980 provides extra protections agains searches and seizures for "publishers". A "publisher" is defined as "a person reasonably believed to have a purpose to disseminate to the public a newspaper, book, broadcast, or other similar form of public communication". When Congress wrote this (under pressure, incidentally, from the commercial press), they didn't forsee that the number of publishers was about to increase substantially. Anyone with a web site is a publisher under this law, and gets extra protections against arbitrary search and seizure. Some law enforcement units hate this.
No! No!No! No!No! No!No! No!
This is the last thing we need. If your interested in helping curb this late term legacy building crap aimed at removing more of our already damaged privacy, write your representatives!
Grass roots efforts that come from constituents have enormous impact on capitol hill. This isn't cast in stone yet, it is merely a proposal that will go before the house and be turned in to a bill. If you write your senators, congressmen, local and regional delegates you could have some impact on stopping this.
Bitchin' and moanin' on Slashdot doesn't really change the fact that a bill will be introduced to the house as a result of this. Try to get in front of your representatives, face to face. It's not really tough to do, just give 'em a call or write a letter. E-Mails ok, but not very effective.
Couple of things to remember,
Be NICE. Elected officials really don't respond well to flames, spam, mail floods or harsh language. For a loose reference, re-read the Linux Advocacy Guide, it will give you the right sort of flavor for your communications. The bottom line is don't JUST bitch about big brother taking more of your privacy away, do something about it.
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
Maybe he's of the mindset that, since he doesn't have any privacy, none of us should either. Afterall, if the press has the right to butt its collective nose into, er, "affairs of state", then why shouldn't everyone else be subject to the same level of scrutiny?
It's not like holding one of the most influential offices in the world obligates a body to submit to a higher level of public scrutiny than the average Joe....no, of course not!
-- WhiskeyJack, not being sarcastic at all. Really.
We've just posted an archive of related articles (and we welcome any contributions you have) on our Law Enforcement Online page.
A. Keiper
The Center for the Study of Technology and Society
I would sacrifice my right to anonymity and even my right to privacy as long as every single person in the country was forced to do the same. That means every CEO, every lawyer, every politician, and every police officer. I would gladly allow anyone to look at every transaction in my bank account if I could do the same for every US Congressman.
However, I will not put up with a half-assed job of it where maybe you can pay a "fee" and keep your anonymity so that only the rich can afford it.
Throughout history, anonymity has been a tool of corruption and theft, not one of bravery.
Do you know who John Hancock is? There's a reason for that, and it isn't anonymity.
Jesus may love you, but I think you're garbage wrapped in skin.
A choice of masters is not freedom
This is a little off-topic, but it has to do with privacy and the recent DoS attacks.
If a group of folks decided to boycott a company, and got a handful of computers with high bandwidth on which they had legitimate accounts and permission from the owners and launched DoS attacks, could this be seen as valid protest?
In the sense that such an attack damages the company by blocking business (and doesn't cause any other, direct damage), it seems that this would be as resonable a form of protest as marching on public streets surrounding the buildings, blocking access, etc... the cyber equivalent of the recent WTO protests.
If such an event took place, what laws would be broken? Is it ethical? And should the individual blockaders be able to remain anoymous (assuming that the group as a whole identifies its aims).
Like hands in a sour glass, so are the lays of our dives.
Anyone remember the early days of the Web when everyone had to be recognizable and traceable to exactly who they were? Remember when the first anonymizer services came online, where one could enter as your given identity and leave and post as someone else? Remember how there was virtually zero sex on the Web until those first anonymizer servies freed up users? Does anyone want to go back to those bad old days, especially considering that it was sex stuff that helped drive early Net usage through different roofs? It's one thing for webfolk to have the OPTION of using digital authenticating certificates or Fortezza cards or whatever, it's another thing to try to turn the clock back and remove all privacy shields from normal usage...just ask the stupid Intel marketing and eng. dept.s about the "harmless" tracking features built in to the '3 chip if they now accept the fact that most people want to keep what little privacy is actually left in RL let alone on the Web...