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Privacy vs. Anonymity
Snibor Eoj writes "There's an article at CNet about the desire of some to reduce or eliminate anonymity on the Internet. There is a fine line, so it seems, between respecting privacy, and providing anonymity behind which crimes may be committed without fear of reprisal.
"
Either everybody has the ability to be anonymous or nobody does. The current (and forseeable) situation is that corporations and governments are almost completely opaque to investigation, yet individuals are completely transparent. Until we can know the same level of detail and information about corporations and governments (i.e. until they can be held to the same level of accountability as individuals) we must protect anonymity and privacy
Gasoline is a highly flammable and even explosive substance. It was the main method of destruction during the 1992 LA riots. Why should people be allowed to pay cash for gasoline and obtain this dangerous substance with many illegal uses anonymously? Why shouldn't we require individual accountability? After all, the damage in actual property destruction and lives caused by mis-sue of gasoline is FAR worse than anything done on the Internet. The same holds true for many ubiquitous objects with both mandane and destructive uses. Many items purchased at a hardware store can be used to make lethal bombs. Shouldn't we prevent people from buying plumbing accessories anonymously? Common substances obtained at any drugstore or even some nursery plants are lethally toxic, and in some cases have been used to commit murder (e.g., ricin from castor beans). Etc. etc. I am more afraid of having my every action tracked by Big Brother than I am of the ocasional Anonymous Coward on the Internet.
This is a fake cmdrtaco post, can't you obviouslly see that?
Now, of course, slashdot isn't configured to support this kind of thing and will probably mangle the formatting, making signature checking impossible, but you get the general idea, right?
I'm in favour of free speech, and of authenticated anonymity policed by a community. I.e. if somebody is doing something which is not acceptable by a community (say, plutonium smuggling or child porn) it should be possible for a community to revoke their anonymity, but only by community sanction and NOT by legal recourse.
The internet is not american, nor is it french or english. It is global, and should not be subject to petty national laws and interests.
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Slashdot is now a commercial entity, and has much more capital to work with
Slashdot is the sum of its users. If it alienates those users, it will cease to be a commercial entity.
Oh happy day.
Muhahahahahahaha.
--
Yes, Virginia, there really is a CowboyNeal.
How do you get that "arms" refers to "guns", whether they are the unreliable muzzle-loading flintlocks of the era, or an M-16? "Arms" means weapons. That can encompass everything from Chuck Norris' fist, to disintegrator zap guns, to, really, nuclear weapons. Obviously, we have to draw a line somewhere. The government can't regulate a well-trained Karate expert's fist. Nor can we leave unregulated, the ownership of weapons of mass-destruction, even if it does violate the letter of the 2nd amendment. The point is, this battle is already lost, because if you draw that line somewhere, then the government will have what freedom fighters, rebels if you will, do not, and therefore, armed resistance to the US government will ultimately fail.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
um. 2500 nuclear warheads is disarmed?
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Lebannon and Chechnya (although Lebannon was more of a prolonged annoyance than a successful campaign to overthrow perceived tyrrany)
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
It is not impossible to be a monster, secretly, and to outwardly look, or act normal.
It's called being a sociopath. Look at Clinton.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
To be fair, they DO bust a higher percentage of rapists, murderers and other serious criminals.
.001% of them. Judging from my drive from Phoenix to LA last weekend, I'd say it's far less. It's said that 25% of murderers get caught.
It's just not physically possible to bust EVERY speeder, some estimates say that they get about
Plus, murderers cost money to prosecute. Speeders (even the miniscule percentage they choose to go after, the red sports cars, the blacks, the hispanics, the "dangerous looking") generate cash-flow, which helps fund the extra manpower used to police them.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
But snail mail is a point to point protocol. posting on the internet can affect more than one person. (or in the case of /., tens of people!)
/. and spew my insane rantings and twist the minds of 14 year olds to become seditious terrorists like myself, and be afraid of reprisal. But if I do it via snail mail, I can only twist one mind at a time.
So I may be able to get up on
It's just like Lars said man, it's a matter of scale and volume.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
That's very interesting. That's the most knowledgable sounding information that I've heard on the subject.
Seeing as it seems like 99.9% of Americans drive, this would be why many places use the driving licence as if it were a national identity card. I seem to remember needing a drivers license for my Colorado state tax return (or a state ID card, of which I didn't have either). Why, I don't know: they already had my SS# on the return, which is the other national identity # that could really be tatooed as bar code on new born babies (uh-hum).
"according to some interpretations, exiting your car and not locking it indicates a willingness to allow the police to search your car, without a warrant. "
Some interpretations? Does that vary from state to state? Is that something you'd be willing to discuss with a police man at the side of the road? I dunno if I would: I found the police in the US quite scary. I certainly wouldn't have tried behaving the way I was accustomed to where I grew... but that's a whole other story that only gets dredged up after many beers.
The concepts of anonymity and privacy are, in my opin[ion, very much intertwined. Right now, there exists the capacity to record details of one's "life on the net". If I surf anonymously, or act through pseudonyms, that information, however invasive, is ultimately of no worth, because that information cannot be cross-tabulated or used to gain any insight into personal habits. If, on the other hand, such information can be connected to an individual, that information ultimately has a great deal of potential worth, precisely because it is a window into "private life." Anonymity is a method of retaining privacy. It is important tools because it offers the user a brief respite from the panopticon of modern life.
Well I'm thinking baseball here, and the single best thing that can possibly happen to baseball is to take away their monopoly. (who the hell came up with that bright idea?)
;)
No monopoly means that the major leagues would be open to everyone, professional and amature alike, provided that the team could demonstrate some consistant level of skill. (hopefully this would not exclude the Red Sox
So I'd expect to see the number of teams explode. Here in Seattle, rather than having the Mariners we might have the Seattle Mariners, the Redmond Monopolies, Renton Airplanes, Mercer Island Snobs, Freemon Communists, etc. I'd find that rooting for an actual home team a lot more fun. Especially if seats didn't cost much.
This is why the minor leagues are fun, and the major leagues suck ass. I don't care how good the team is so much as I want to have a good time.
Currently teams justify getting public money by threatening to move out. With low barriers to entry, any team that left would probably get replaced fast. It wouldn't work anymore. Teams could build their own stadiums and charge what they liked, or use public facilities and charge no fee for seats instead using merchandise as a revenue source.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I'm sure that would cause a fuss. But that doesn't mean that you make ski masks illegal. Neither does it mean that I have to wear an identification tag when I walk into a bank. Those who fear anonymity online seem to think that you must always identify yourself everywhere you go. I'm just not comfortable with the idea of an electronic "police state" that is only looking out for my "best interests." I will identify myself when necessary, just as I do in the real world.
Behavior in society typically dictates whether or not identification is required. If I'm walking down the street in the good ol' USA I am not required to carry any identification. If I am driving a vehicle down the street in the good ol' USA I am required to carry identification. So why should anonymity be forbidden online? Some sort of identification is required under various circumstances. Other circumstances do not require identification.
I noticed one comment in an interview comparing anonymous users online with bank robbers wearing ski masks. Yet ski masks remain perfectly legal. It seems that large organizations (gov't, riaa, etc.) are trying to make up for their ineptitude by slapping restrictions on the masses. Sure, anonymity can be abused. But the alternative seems much worse.
The previous post was posted by the 'evil casshan' pre-coffee.
Take this post as its retraction. I was in a bad mood.
Slashdot has come a long way since the early days before moderation.
Slashdot is now a commercial entity, and has much more capital to work with.
I suggest Slashdot starts taking some responsibility, and excercizing editorial control over posts. That's right. Hire a couple people to watch the threads for copyright violations, etc. No matter how evil they are, Microsoft is legally entitled to what they did. And you should remove the posts that violate their rights.
This would also allow you to remove shit like the first-postalizer and other things that are way off base. It is not censorship. It is preventing the abuse of your property. I do not feel I have the right to go spraypaint first post on the side of my neighbors house, and neither do the AC's here.
People will get pissed off about this, fine. Let them go to kuro5hin.org or wherever. Nobody is forcing them to use slashdot.
I can only imagine how much faster slashdot would be if there weren't people (or now scripts) reloading every 500ms to get a first post. This is not their right.
Of course this is just my opinion. I've been using slashdot for a very long time. I just wish it would take the next step.
Slashdot is the sum of its users. If it alienates those users, it will cease to be a commercial entity.
:)
Slashdot is greater than the sum of its parts.
This post, besides the content and the fact cmdrtaco rarely posts, seems legit from the username and info link...
Unless I am missing something obvious where is your proof this is not cmdrtaco?
Looked at the source and saw the &code chars in the url.
bah. I hope they fix this.
You said : "Most of the more stable governments(ie US, western europe, canada) that i can think of have made it a point to keep there citizens educated and involved in the political process."
:(
:(
I say : Hogwash.
Try living here in the UK, where the Government, at this very moment as I type, is now into the second reading of the Regulation of Ivestigatory Powers Bill (RIP - a very appropriate acronym), and I can gaurantee you that the vast majority of the citizens here basically have NO Clue as to what it means to _every_ user of the internet, done - of course - in the name of protecting the people against kiddy-pr0ner's, master criminals blah blah bling.
Basically what will happen if this becomes Law, is that MI5 / the Police will have a Black Box installed at every ISP in the UK, and will be able to monitor what every person is reading/downloading, or sending.
I was watching the BBC news this morning, and there was a debate about this bill, one person - claiming to be a "professional IT consultant", was extolling the virtues of the Bill, and was citing all the usual excuses for taking away people's rights to anonymity on the Internet - yep, you've guessed it - the usual "High-tech criminals, kiddy-pr0nsters blah bling".
The other thing this Bill will do, is give the Police powers to force you to give up your encryption passwords/keys under an _instant_ penalty of up to TWO years in jail if you don't
Come and live in the UK - the most draconian country in the world
Internet JUNKBUSTER
TCP connection to 'news.cnet.com' failed: Bad file descriptor.
--
So maybe the tax methodologies need to be re-examined. It may be difficult to tax the actual exchanges, but most people will be using credit/debit cards and will need accounts with financial institutions. I am sure that it would not be beyond the capabilities of governments to tax the trade via the financial institutions rather than directly from the point of sale.
If you're not willing to stand for what you say "in public", you should IMO shut up. When you're saying something "in public" I wouldn't consider it private anymore. If someone wants to monitor your activity "in public", they have every right to do so.
If, say, I feel like monitoring your postings on slashdot, that's my right. Since we live in a world with free speech, I even have the right to speek my opinions in contradiction to yours. What I don't have the right to do, is tell you to shut up if I don't like what you're saying.
I don't see any good reason why anonymity should be considered a basic right. It's a privilege you sometimes get, but not a right.
- the Crazy Fraggle
Yea, but imagine an AC then posts something about Big Company, or even imagine if that person is employed by Big Company and is speaking out about some horrible thing they do there. Upon sight of the offending comment. Big Company comes along with a fleet of lawyers and demands that /. reveal who it was that posted said comment. Imagine the scenario of the Microsoft Kerberos posts a while back if all AC's were disclosed by /. .. I doubt we'd be using /. if that were he case...
.. rare, but it has happened .. then only allowing higher karma posters to post anonymously would hinder that greatly.
:)
If a person who was new to the site needed to speak out or just offer an opinion
I don't have a good solution to the problem unfortunately.. I've thought of the same things you have and also thought of the down sides too.
It's not an easy problem to solve else it would have been solved years ago
--
Delphis
Very good points. I only question one:
You need a driver's license if you are a passenger? Are you sure about that?
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Just makes first posts a bit more compicated. "First AC Post!"
Ultimately, to do a thorough and complete track down of an individual requires a great deal of resources. Sure, finding out the IP address that somebody came from when doing something naughty is one thing. Tracking down where that IP address is and who was logged on at the time is an entirely different matter. It requires contact with the administrators of that Internet provider and possi bly a court order.
It is important for our freedom to continue to insure that this process is difficult. If it was easy to connect identity with ip address, it would be much easier to go after individuals who were doing "naughty" things. Is it possible now to track them down, yes. But it is a giant pain to do it so it only happens when the degree of that naughtiness is high.
---
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Your point w.r.t. Deep Throat, etc., is well taken. There are certainly times when anonymity is not only beneficial, but necessary. However, there are also times when anonymity serves no useful purpose, and causes significant harm.
I believe in the merits of anonymous speech, but not anonymous action. In a society that recognizes the value of "free speech" above all, the source is not as important as the message. Furthermore, because there is no crime associated with speaking, there is no need to know who has said something. If you want to speak out anonymously against the government, or Microsoft, or Scientology, or Cher, or whatever, I respect your right to do so.
On the other hand, actions do not carry the same liberties as speech. While speech can be a powerful tool, it does not have the same sort of direct effect as action. It is clearly illegal to provide stolen code, for example, or to distribute bootleg copies of music or movies. Now, you may want to challenge that law, but you can't do so anonymously. The only thing that the anonymity provides is the ability to circumvent the law.
Sharing ideas is always a good thing, and anonymity for such activity should be respected. Sharing stolen property, or other illegal material, is not a good thing, and anonymity should not be able to be abused for this purpose.
Anonymity is generally undesirable, since our relationships with others require that our family, friends, and acquaintances recognize us for ourselves.
Privacy means I don't have to show you my medical records. Secrecy, to me, means trying to keep information from someone affected by that information, such as hiding a crime you committed. A right to privacy doesn't mean a right to keep secrects, or you would have a right to halt police investigations of your actions. Likewise, I don't see a basis for a right to anonymity.
If anything, most beneficial relationships understandably forbid anonymity. Trust requires repeated experiences over time with an identifiable individual.
DOS attacks, spam, terroristic threats, and other forms of network abuse require anonymity to avoid accountability. Lack of anonymity makes it difficult to abuse a network more than once. I have difficulty imagining a situation where someone would need to contact me anonymously. I would be willing to do without such communication. I don't ever want to be anonymous myself, either. I want the benefit of being known by my past actions.
(I think ACs on Slashdot are a reasonble kind of exception, although abuse may still need to be controlled.)
www.cgstock.com
Sure, they can tell you're using FreeNet, but they have no clue what you're putting in or getting out. Of, course, the protocol isn't encrypted yet. BTW: Node to Node encryption should be available with version 0.3, due out before July, I think.
Most US citizens don't think governments do, or should do, much of anything. Also, anyone who works for government is, by definition, a crook, if elected, or a boob, if a public servant. Their highest ideal, the American Dream, is the business man.
So, paying tax is a waste of time, because the politicians embezzle it and the bureaucrats fritter it away. Taxes should be cut so that business can thrive. The free market is the best arbiter of social policy.
Most Americans are baffled by the idea that others in the world distrust corporations more than their own government.
Kind Regards,
Kind Regards,
Bruce
RE: may not have your best interests at heart.
Watch for the continued creation of a double standard with regard to privacy like that of users' rights in UCITA, that favors corporate interests over individuals every time.
Anyone know of an indexed search site listing connections between corporations and our elected officials?
How about the database driven version of our national budget, web searchable, with a list of who sponsored each expense?
Can corporations keep information about their labor practices, PAC contributions, investors, partnerships, environmental records, lawsuits, etc. out of the public record? Should they be able to?
Who is going to want anonymity in the face of questions like these?
How do you commit hundreds of billions of dollars of credit card fraud? I know that it's theoretically possible, but how does even a savy internet guy like you commit this kind of fraud? Do you know how? I don't.
One thing is for sure: a criminal with this kind of knowledge already has anonymity. It doesn't matter whether somebody granted him anonymity or not. This type of criminal has anonymity because he takes anonymity.
Do you take away the anonymity of all people on the net just so that someone, who will have anonymity anyway, has a little more trouble committing credit card fraud?
To put it another way, do we take away all people's freedom to freely walk the streets, just because that freedom might allow a criminal to walk into somebody's house and take somebody's stuff?
No. That's the price of freedom.
I do appreciate it. As a gay kid who somehow survived high school, then later a counselor to gay kids, I'm all too familiar with long term harassment and its effects.
I have been harrassed for 8+ months by daily connection attempts to my system....
Continous prank phone calls are indeed a crime in my state...
Yes, it is a crime, but what kind of crime? There is a huge difference between a misdemeanor and a felony. A misdemeanor may carry a fine, some forced public service, or a few days in jail. A criminal offence is a felony and carries long term prison time with hardened criminals, a completely different thing. Is this a criminal offence?
I recognize that this kind of harassment can and does occur and that the effects are bad. Does that make this kind of act a criminal offfence? And even if it does, does it justify giving up our liberties to prevent it. I say that it does not.
I think that it would be a good idea that to post, you must be logged in. That would discourage a lot lamers who post just because it's easy.
Still I think that the Post Anonymously option should be kept for those who are logged in.
If you're the president of Segrams then these "crimes" are piracy, that is the copying of his intellectual property, an action which he considers to be stealing in the same way that taking a CD from a store is stealing.
If you are on a discussion forum like this one, another crime could be libel. Of course, if I'm anonymous then why should anybody believe me all that much.
If you're paranoid about kids, then you could be scared of people luring children over the internet. Of course no kid is stupid enough to give out their real names, addresses, and phone numbers so that some stranger can harass them. Kids know that anonymity is safety. They use anonymity as their protection on the net. For kids, anonymity is a good thing. It allows them to explore the world from the privacy and safety fo their homes.
So what crimes? What kinds of crimes can be committed over the internet are so serious that it should justify our loss of privacy?
"...cause every tool's a weapon - if you hold it right."
The Federal Income Tax was enacted to finance the Great War. I don't recall the exact date, but I believe it was around 1916.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Those solutions will only attack the symptoms and not have any effect on voter apathy. If people took the time to be informed (and in the Information Age, that's becoming easier and easier). Neither term limits nor campaign finance reform would be necessary nor desired. But since 90% of the people vote for the name they saw emblazoned on bumper stickers the most or on content-free yet deceptive TV commercials, we have a problem.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
More thoughts related to my previous post:
Democratic government is supposed to represent the people. Copyright laws exist because people want or, at some time in the past, used to want copyright laws. Widespread infringement of copyright laws is an indication that people no longer want copyright protections (or at least, the specific protections being infringed upon). A government that ignores or attempts to suppress this is not democratic.
I don't even want to argue about privacy and anonymity on the net. I am going to assume the worst case, one day they will no longer be. In such a case, what is there to do? Quit the net? Hell no! So what I think we should be working on is technologies that provide privacy and anonymity, the presense of these technologies might stop those who are pushing for no anonymity and privacy. There is no privacy or anonymity on the net. We need something that even ISPs can't trace, no one can trace.
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
I believe that anonymity should be encourage. People should be allowed to show as much of themselves as they desire.
My interest in the internet is that is grows out of anarchy. I do not want to it to be too regulated. I think, we should let it take it's own course, even if that includes crimes being commited by a bunch of anonymous warez punks. It's an interesting setting for a culture/society to develope.
Basically, I agree Rob. If you care enough about the forums this site creates, than you would create a login and create meaningful post. And that would also make it possible since everyone who posted had a login you could remove thos that did spam.
You should just run a slashdot poll on what to do with the AC and let the users decide.
According to historical accounts, there was some fuss (okay, wholesale riots & vandalism) around the time of the creation of the U.S.A. over "taxation without representation."
I'm willing to bet that thread is alive and well today, espcially with the government throwing away federal money into billion dollar highway projects that benefit only downtown drivers in a particular city, corporate welfare, etc.
I would - just for kicks, but I don't have any mod points...
What intrigues me is that his user page doesn't list the comments he's posted......
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
Ok, it's not really Taco...
but a clever imposter.....
CmdrTaco
Funny, when I reloaded the page, it showed up this way (CmdrTaco) instead of just 'CmdrTaco'...
Hmmm...
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
That's the bonus of running your site and having your code easily modifiable...
/code... (proudly running on .9.2 because I'm too lazy)...
Guess that'll get merged in to the next version of
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
This one's actually really weird. AFAIK gas actually should cost $4 to $5 a gallon, but government subsidies bring that down to around $1 a gallon, then it is taxed, bringing it back up to $1.50 to $2 a gallon.
All I can say is "That's pretty fucked up right there!".
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Yea, and I have figures here showing that there are fewer deaths from heat stroke in Alaska than in Texas!
It might be worthwhile to check out the following:
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Your thought process shows it's flaws in this statement:
By getting a gun for personal protection, you do not increase the threat to everyone else, you decrease it. The knowledge that you may have a gun is a deterrant to would be violent criminals. Your statement assumes that *everyone* is a would be violent criminal. I personally take that as an insult.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Yeah, let's all stuff flowers in our hair and pierce our tongues and pretend that the U.S. and the Russians still don't have about 6K+ nukes each still aimed at one another (or easily reaimed for firing at the major metropolitan areas).
We haven't disarmed. Again, I ask you what world are YOU living in? We've still got enough nukes to test how tough the Internet really is (remember, it was built to withstand nuclear attacks). Even if you go with current political discussions in the presidential race, they are talking a number between 1000 and 1500 nukes per side. That's still enough to snowball the planet (if you're a nuclear winter fan).
And haven't you been following the news lately? The missile defense we're proposing is scaring the SHIT out of our allies. Why? Because if we ever REALLY perfected such a system, it would invalidate MAD and stoke the paranoia of the Russians and Chinese. Some have even predicted a first strike by one of the two if we ever tried to field such a system.
Face it. MAD worked. We didn't fire and neither did they during the Cold War. And it's still working with thousands of nukes loose in the world.
And the policy is valid when deconstructed to the level of an armed populace versus the State. Your pistol comment was ludicrous in one of your other posts. Many Americans are packing a hell of a lot more thans pistols. And the Feds know it.
Take the advice of one of the other posters. Stick a "GUN FREE HOUSE" sticker on your front door and post to us a year later how you've faired.
"We're sorry, but the website you're trying to reach has been disconnected."
Your "guns are evil" statement is a smokescreen of ignorance. As is your understanding of the second amendment. The second amendment addressed the fundamental question of the ownership and use of force in the context of citizens and the nation state. That is, does a nation's citizenry have a counterbalancing PHYSICAL force to resist tyrannical statist impulses?
.012% per year. That's deaths, not homicides. Part of those numbers also include idiot gunowners being selected out in a Darwin-like fashion when they clean their loaded guns. Part of those numbers are suicides (which are going to occur with or without the use of guns). Also included are the deaths due to people defending themselves killing those who would rob or assault them. And a large part are indeed homicides. But even a large portion of those homicides would likely have been committed with or without the use of a projectile weapon. Homicides can and will occur even without the use of guns. For a good breakdown, see GUN STATS and you'll see that the majority of gun-related deaths are nearly split between homicides vs. suicides (ironically, with suicides being the greatest at 18K+ per year).
Witness Tiananmen Square, the forced resettlement of Ukrainians by Stalin, Indonesia and East Timor, the Kurds in Iraq, the Kosovars, Pol Pot, El Salvadoran death squads, etc. History is unfortunately populated with the skeletons of populations who did not possess such a counterbalancing force.
Can't happen in the U.S., England, Japan, etc? At this point in time, I'd have to agree with you. I don't foresee tyranny of this nature in our, Western Europe's, or Japan's near future. I also don't really foresee that my house is going to catch fire this year, but I did pay my homeowner's premiums last month. I'd also like to keep my gun, just in case.
As for guns as a public health issue, well, examine the numbers and you'll find estimates range from around 24,000 to 35,000 deaths per year in a population of nearly 300 million -- about
Here are some other numbers I'll toss at you: auto deaths - about 50K year (yes your vehicle is more likely to toast someone than my 9mm -- and there are as many guns as autos in this country, probably more, believe it or not). Tobacco-related deaths -- about 400K per year. Alcohol-related deaths -- 100K (including drunks in automobile accidents, drunks with guns shooting themselves or others, and drunks with guns shooting themselves in an auto). I'm sure if you search the net, you can find the stats for bikes, knives, fat-filled fast food and suffocating via Beanie Babies. Tell me, where would you, budding-despot that you are, draw the line when banning dangerous items?
Yes, I agree with background checks (assuming it's a simply a check on my criminal background and not an entry into a national database of gunowners). And yes, I don't mind waiting periods. But no, I don't want my weapon registered or licensed.
The reason the gun issue rose again was, face it, the Colorado incident and the media hype surrounding it. Sure, it was a tragedy. Sure, it shouldn't have happened. But did anyone mention that there are TENS OF MILLIONS of high school students in the United States (millions who do have access to guns in their parents' homes -- I did) who didn't decide to take out the wrestling champ or the homecoming queen? Do the math and give me a percentage of the homicidal, gun-toting high-school population vs. that of the rest of the kids.
No, it hasn't been mentioned for good reason: it would expose the hysteria for what it is, irrational blathering like your rant. And for that I, a law-abiding citizen, am supposed to give up my gun, have it registered in a national database, or be subject to whatever law-du-jour your anti-gun crowd decides to propose? No thank you. I'll pass.
"We're sorry, but the website you're trying to reach has been disconnected."
"Firearms would NOT have prevented those situations." and "If we were talking about nuclear weapons would your opinion be the same?"
What world are you living in Hard Code? Have you ever had a gun pointed at you and known the hard, cold fear that there's not a damned thing you can do EXCEPT accept whatever the fScker who's pointing the gun at you wants you to do? That or die? I have and it's not fun.
Armed populations can resist and prevent genocides. It's called the theory of MAD - Mutually Assured Destruction. If you fSck with me, I can fSck back, HARD! That is what kept the nuclear peace (and still does) for these 50 or so years that nuclear weapons have existed. And that's what can keep a nation-state's genocidal impulses against its own citizenry in check.
If disarmament Pollyanas like you had had your "Better Red than Dead" policies enacted in the 60's and 70's, we'd probably be Red by now. But guess what? We didn't disarm, we kept the peace and we're still free.
"We're sorry, but the website you're trying to reach has been disconnected."
I'm sorry you cannot see it. I will try to expain better. Anonymous speech is very important to protect because it most likely contains unpopular ideas which would attract retribution. But those ideas aren't always wrong!
The problem is not someone telling you to shut-up. The problem is when people wish you ill because of your ideas. Sometimes, they are in a position to fulfill those wishes.
In an ideal world, people would not need anonymous speech. No-one would be afraid to post their names. People would be proud instead. And I judge people somewhat harshly if they misuse or abuse anonymity.
But this is not perfect world. Try driving around town with a bumpersticker "Fsck the Cops". Lets say you have neighbor/boss/coworker who you need to get along with. But you have diametrically opposing views on some high-charged issue like abortion. Anonymity (or lack of information) helps you both get along.
Why on earth do you even want to do this, why don't you get a big piece of circular paper and some crayons and amuse yourself with that? Perhaps you can scan them in when you've finished and put them on your 'permanant first post' web site.
When smoking pot is illegal only criminals will smoke it.
When owning a gun is illegal only criminals will own guns.
When being anonymous is illegal only criminals will go to any means to be anonymous.
Legallity is what we as a people agree on, not some shitty fucking laws.
laptop clipped to random phone line, 500 hours of free aol. the hard part is making sure the phone line you pick is random if you do this more than once.
I stand corrected. Term limits etc. would only serve as a check and not really do anything about it. I guess the people get the government they deserve.
that was who I was thinking about.
Those rules exist because many people feel they are reasonable. you should read some history; governments have changed numerous times because the people demand it. When enough people decide the government is too repressive a new one is formed. It only took approx. 1/3 of the american colonial population to get rid of ol' king george. If enough people decided the us government was bullshit it would be replaced. Its sad that people do not realize the power that they actually have and that they believe our constitution is some holy of holies given to us by all seeing all powerful fore fathers. It is a malliable document as every other contract is. Not so long ago only crooks drank alcohol, why do you think that bullshit ended; because the people decided it was fucking dumb. I notice that you say the executive branch must enforce the 'law'. well many people have decided to use 'illicit' drugs and the executive branch is pretty bad at enforcing that one hence not a law. Id love to see copyright enforced on every single violator, not going to happen, hence not a law. You truely live in slavery if you think that laws come down onto you from on high. Im glad minorities had the sense to see they were not slaves (though i know some assholes think they still are), Im glad our fore fathers had the sense to see they were not slaves (and many of the english, it just took a little longer to make the monarchy a figurehead), Im glad moonshiners had the sense to see they were not slaves (I love a good beer every once in a while). hopefully someday everyone will realize that they control their destiny, not some windbag in washington.
Heh, I am the moron before. The way you stated it, it seems that 15% of the people appoint one person who can enforce what 565 reps voted for by 15% of the people say is law. The fact is that no government can enforce rules which restrict the freedom to do whatever the fuck I want to as long as it doesnt impose on someone else's freedoms (ie drugs to my own body, etc.). Being anonymous does not impose on someone else's freedom. Owning a gun does not impose on someone else's freedom. Pointing a gun at someone and threatening them does impose on their freedom. We, as a people, have agreed on that. Well anyway, I think that you place to much credence in an arbitrary system of government and not on your own innate right to freely do whatever, etc.
Didnt an employee of a nuclear power plant have his life threatened when he did some whistle blowing on safety issues. I think that was back in the mid 80s, but I was just a kid then (still am :) so I dont remember too well.
clip into a random phone line at the neighborhood switch box and use 500 free AOL hours if you really have something that needs to be private done.
Term limits and drastic campaign finance reform would at least start to change some things. Of course nothing will change if regular citizens without 'political power' dont do anything like they do now. :(
The stupdity of the human race continues to astound me on a daily basis.
even completly outlawing file transfer would not stop copyright infringement of music/movies/whatever. as long as i can walk next door and ask my neighbor if he wants to trade music with me this kind of copyright infringement will not be stopped, napster just makes more people my neighbor.
Also, many of the current laws regarding copyright of intellectual property do not work. Many other laws (DMCA) are just ridiculous. Laws and business models should change to fit the society, not the other way around. an intelligent man once said that if you believe a law is wrong/unjust, it is your duty as a citizen to break that law. he said some other good things to:
"A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both, and deserve neither. " Thomas Jefferson
anonymity/privacy/freedom of speech are one and the same, you give them up and your basically giving in to being controlled by someone else. and as far as their being no anonymity on the internet now (tracking someone down via the ip address), how do you know I posted this? you know that someone at a certain ip address using a certain account posted it, but whether or not that was me is another question entirely. maybe i was at lunch and left the computer on.
ok, that's all.....i feel much better now, how about you?
you're all figments of my deranged imagination
Without the ability to go anonymous successfully you will be held accountable for everything you say that the government or some bureaucratic group or another does not like. As the concept, not to mention the practice, of individual rights has been seriously eroded of late (even where it used to exist), there is nothing protecting you from the state and other powerful buyers/creators of legal instruments of coercion.
What is a crime in the eyes of the State may be a duty to all reasonable people.
If I'm not mistaken, the US federal income tax came in 1933 also, or maybe 1934.
What a bad year.
*snort*
Funny man, ye mangler-of-ids. Wonder how many folks you fooled...
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Hmmm. The one way that comes to mind is --
* Require ISPs to get 'verified' information -- namely, they must be willing to store such things as CC#'s and addresses, and be willing to provide such information given a court order. Caller ID could also fit into this.
* Require service providers in general to either do the same, or keep sufficiently detailed information to trace backwards to somebody who does. I'm not sure the latter is possible for a multi-user service unless full connection data (including port numbers on both ends) is tracked for EVERY incoming and outgoing connection.
Then, with a sequence of orders, you work backwards until verified info is found. Of course, this would only hold in countries that adopted the same policy and recognized requests from the requester's judiciary... in addition, even the crazier folks might realize that the sheer volume of logs would require that some statute of limitations would be needed to avoid an undue burden...
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
I'm not sure about that.
What if a large country required that all outgoing links go through government-approved filters, or even cease to exist, but subsidized national businesses and online service providers who didn't buck the system?
If they provide similar, if far less varied, services, then there might not be as much of an outcry. You'd lose access to, say, vast quantities of research databases 'round the world, and to anybody else that didn't have a domestic node, but in more traditionally totalitarian states it may pass without that much grumbling.
So how much of the Internet do most folks use? Some news sites, perhaps some online banking and shopping, perhaps some chat sites or online gaming. There's likely not that much brand loyalty, with the exception of banking (most folks not opening up accounts like crazy) and perhaps news ("famous" sources like the NY Times and CNN), so perhaps some substitution would be possible without massive resentment.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
My problem is that i pay 1/3 of my salery in taxes, while buisnesses (which have ALOT more income) pay virtually nothing.
Ya, 'in theory' they are supposed to match part of your income tax (the fed tax, not SS or anything). BUT, they get ALOT of deductions that greatly reduces that amount. So yes, they do pay virtualy nothing.
How, pray tell, do you intend to allow me to anonymously post a manifesto on the horrors of, say, working conditions at the Acme Toy factory, and yet simultaneously prevent me from posting the last chapter of Stephen King's newest novel?
-
Just because it works, doesn't mean it isn't broken.
While I agree that there is too little privacy... errr... anonymity as it were, there does have to be some way to track down people who *are* breaking the law. Just think about it, would you like it if someone was going around in a public forum calling you a pedophile or worse? It's not all that hard to doctor pictures to 'prove' that you are one.
Having seen people fall to attacks *similar* to this, I can bet that you would want a way to stop this. With *total* anonymity you would be screwed. Basically what I am suggesting is that there has to be some middle ground as it were. Perhaps the ISP's do basically what they are doing now by logging who is on what IP at what time, and then requiring a court order to release that info. Of course a court order is a mere formality these days, so I'd suggest that the burden or proof rests on the 'plaintiff' to order the release of the info. Then of course you run into the problem of proving a positive...
My point? Increase the difficulty to gather info on a person using the I-net, make it so only a court order can access it, further, make it a pain in the arse to get that court order. Total anonymity can be a good thing or a bad thing, now do you really believe that *everyone* will use it as a *good* thing?
--
Dan B.
While the Supreme Court has ruled on protecting my right to speech, it does not protect my right to remain anonymous. If I commit (or it is even alleged I did commit) a crime my name will appear in the paper, and if sufficiently horrific, I may even be identified on the national news. Further, I need to pay to have my name "unlisted" in the phone book, or have myself removed from mailing lists. I must request my bank not share my financial records and for a while some states were selling my driver's license with picture, even if I did not want them to.
Anonymity is not a protected right, it is not even a privilege. When there was less at stake, you could provide some cover of perceived anonymity, but the web has been spun too large. When you decide to step onto the soap box, it is time to grow up and take responsibility. The internet provides a means for people to slander, lie, steal, and manipulate markets under a false guise of free speech. Assuming true anonymity were possible, the person harmed has no recourse. It is almost impossible to "un-prove" something. .
If you feel "in fear", the means are available to set up a secret discussion, (PGP and Email lists, private discussion groups, etc.), or something as simple as withholding your email address to keep the discussion public.
Forcing some type of disclosure ensures you speak from some justifiable position, if none other than "I believe...". And your ability to tell people what you believe is the right we must protect.
"Perhaps the founding fathers should have made provisions for artillary, bombers, missiles, etc."
Not needed.
The populace could defend against a war waged by government. Even one with high-tech munitions at their disposal.
Where's my proof, you ask?
Vietnam.
Here's my copy of DeCSS. Where's yours?
censorship is a form of noise, which actively seeks to drown out content with silence - Crash Culligan
Actually, you vote for non-anonymous candidates.
Without these, democracy doesn't work.
JP http://www.wearerite.com
I agree with everything you say. But you must agree that at some point, leaders must step forward. And on issues like napster and such, these leaders must come out of non-establishement centers right ?
JP http://www.wearerite.com
>So, who was Deep Throat? Why is it every time someone speaks out against the government or the big corps from inside they speak on the condition of anonymity? I don't see the mainstream press being forced not to take anonymous sources.
... are nothing but big boogiemen.
That arguement is mostly about freedom of the press. And if I published a story based SOLELY on an anonymous source, it would be irresponsible, right ? Other people had to talk to make Watergate a credible story.
> Kiddie porn and warez, even "terrorism,"
I agree.
> The killing of anonymity is something that big governments and corporations want so that they can more easily persecute people for their viewpoints.
Actually, corporations would be more interested in the marketing than persecution. Governement are another issue.
>Most importantly, you can speak your mind on the net and then go to work the next day and have a job. Something that might not happen if you say the wrong thing and it is attributed to you as a real-life person.
If people do this irresponsibly, you can get in trouble. I could forge statements anonymously about the place you work for and attribute them to you. You could get into trouble, and defending
against them could be hard.
> SOME FORM OF ANONYMITY is the only way you can express something and have it be private.
You seem to be qualifying your statement. Are you, or did you mean TOTAL anonimity.
JP http://www.wearerite.com
Corporations owe me nothing at all.
Govenement needs me to get elected. In today's
world, granted it ain't much, but it's something.
But the question in itself (who do you trust less) sort of reflects the sad state of affairs.
JP http://www.wearerite.com
Although it might be a separate issue (security), your point is taken. Especially in a world where people think that 4 digit bank card codes actually give you security.
JP http://www.wearerite.com
> Without anonymity, there is no privacy.
As a general statement, this is false. I will agree that corporations (and govs) will do everything in their power to find out about everybody. So remaining anonymous around them, is probably a good idea.
> The need for anonymity is different, but equally important, as the need for privacy. Anonymity has as a large component the ability to speak freely without reprisal
Yes to both halves of your sentence. There are good (many many many) good side effects to anonymity.
> Privacy is essentially the right to be left alone, to not have every tom, dick and harry know the most intimate details of your life and personality. Privacy makes it harder for people to steal your identity or manipulate you monetarily. Anonymity can enable privacy.
But anonymity also has you loose your identity: anybody can become you, just by saying that they are.
> BTW, I'm posting AC because I support anonymity
Which is too bad, this is a fun conversation and continuing it off line would have been cool.
> Yes, some stupid and/or criminal acts are done anonymously
You're actually the first person to mention this.
> but the protection afforded critics and whistleblowers by anonymity far outweighs any detriment from fools and crooks.
But the notion of tradeoff implies a line. Whether is is narrow or wide is a matter of opinion.
I happen to think that the benefits of anonymity are greater, but all of us must be aware of the trade-offs.
jpbelang@eloas.qc.ca
JP http://www.wearerite.com
I am not conservative at all, but still think that there is a distinction between privacy and anonymity.
Privacy is good, everybody agrees about this.
Anonymity detaches you from responsibility and prevents any real progress on many issues. It's not just about catching kiddie-pornsters.
People who actually want to change things rarely do it anonymously. They do it out in the open, and face the consequences while trying to heighten
public conciousness.
Anonymous actions rarely have the same effect.
The real problem is with corporations not behaving responsibly with private information. And I'll laugh in the face of anybody who thinks we could trust them.
JP http://www.wearerite.com
In case you want to know how get this.
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I half to make one point on the voting part of what you said. I personnally dislike all teh candidates I coudl vote for... so who the hell does that mean I should vote for when every other dumbass has limited my options & opinions on canidates? If I ever felt some non-corrupt as sin person coudl eb voted into office with my help I'd be all for it. Til then I choose not to support any official & keep my right to say I didn't vote for the loser...
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
It seems that there is general consensus at least that privacy is a Good Thing. Some seem to think anonymity is automatically a Bad Thing because it has the potential to be mis-used. Well, so does fire. It can heat, cook, or burn your house down. Shall we ban it?
I just saw a story on 'net stalking' which would seem to be an arguement for doing away with anonymity. It is also, though unsaid, a powerful arguemnt for preserving anonymity - or making discovery of identity very non-trivial. Suppose you are a 'stalkee'? Two examples leap to mind. One is a whistle-blower -- who can do great good if allowed to speak, and the whistle will blow upon those that who really want it not to blow at all. The other would be a victim of abuse. Finding a 'safe' community on the net to aid in recovery, and being able to keep safe by anonymity isn't a luxury, but a necessity. (The anonymity, that is. There may be other groups, but some aren't near any large groups and some places word spreads fast, so...)
Sure there are trade-offs. What to do? Just like real life, take precautions (like locking doors) but don't presume guilt (like arresting someone for just walking by the house, as they might be considering a break-in).
Problems exist with and without anonymity. No matter how bad they may be, the others are worse so I'll take the problems associated with freedom, thank you.
I don't subscribe to RMS's GNUtopian vision.
Yeah, he fixed it so that & characters in usernames were converted to & as they should be :) Strange how it only takes half an hour for him to change something when it's him that's being impersonated but ages otherwise...
Yes, it varies by state and even locality. No, it is not something one would willingly discuss with a policeman in certain jurisdictions and particularly if one is of the wrong ethnicity. Yes, the police in Amerikkka are generally scary. The majority are good eggs, but more than a few are in blue because it allows them to carry weapons and exercise authority (brutality) legally. Cops are where the rubber hits the road, the interface between our legal guarantees and their enforcement. The really scary part is that in most jurisdictions, law enforcement is not directly subject to review and oversight by civilian or even legislative councils, they are answerable only to internal/administrative proceedings. The only civilian recourse is a charge under criminal statutes and the burden of proof is tremendous. A trial attorney would scoff at such a recourse. In consequence, police corruption and brutality is endemic.
illegitimii non ingravare
Real freedom doesn't come from anonymity. Real freedom comes from being able to say who you are and what you believe without any fear of retribution. The day I'm so scared to state my opinion that I have to cower and hide behind a mask of anonymity will be the day there is no freedom left in America.
I agree, if you take away the AC, you'll just have people registering bogus accounts just to keep the anonymity
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
As actions occur to limit the degree to which an individual can be anonymous on the internet, there will still be people, albeit fewer, who retain a nameless state. The size and complexity of the internet precludes total control, therefore assuring people will be able to act with anonymity. For myself, the larger question is one of usage. How will attempts to gain a greater degree of control (if we can agree total control is not viable) affect general usage? Will people react to personal intrusions (perceived or real) by making the quest of anonymity a singular goal? I feel history has shown attempts to control any media of expression will be met with opposition, leading to an escalation of action. I would use the metaphor of a wire tap. Is my scrambler better than your tracker? I do not know where a line could be drawn, but I usually lean toward less regulation.
The poor cook he caught the fits
And threw away all of my grits
What *is* this problem that so many US citizens seem to have with paying taxes? Especially income taxes?
Maybe because we have so little input on how those taxes are spent and that the present system unfairly distributes the tax burden.
>"Amendment II
.the 2nd amendment does not grant the right to bear arms that do not have some reasonable relationship to the preservation and efficiency of a well regulated militia." (By the way I don't want to hear about the 1916 ruling stating that the militia is the National Guard, as the quoted ruling came later and therefore overrides the previous)
>
> A well regulated militia, being
>necessary to the security of a free state, the
>right of the people to keep and bear arms,
>shall not be infringed."
>Note: A _WELL_ _REGULATED_ _MILITIA_,
>[in its function of] being
>necessary to the security of a free state,
>[confers] the right of the people
>to keep and bear arms...
I hate to touch this because it is rather off topic, but one sided views like the two previous bother me. Don't get me wrong here, I'm not really one on of the 2 major sides on the gun control issue, but I'm going to lay down what both sides seem to miss.
Ok, taking the previous clarification, let us focus on the "[confers]", which could also be read as "[which is]". The most recent court decision regarding what the definition of "militia" is was US vs. Miller(1939). Quoting from that I have 2 excerpts. Firstly, what gun advocates use: "These show plainly enough that the Militia comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense..." Secondly, what gun control advocates use: ".
Ok, how about we look at the larger picture now.
"A well regulated Militia [regulated being the key word], being necessary to the security of a free State [because guns were controled by Britain from whence the founding fathers came from and they did not want the oppression there duplicated], the right of the people to keep and bear Arms[the people being key here], shall not be infringed[this ones pretty straght forward]." People *HAVE* the right to keep arms, however, the government *HAS* the right to "regulate" them. If you disagree with this don't bitch about it here, change the Bill of Rights. How on earth do you people advocate freedoms of this that and the other and advocate restricting the bottom line if and when oppression happens? On another note how do people argue unrestriced gun use when the nature of the beast is so destructive? It continues to baffle me how this is so misinterpreted by both sides when the truth is right there. Either side may not agree with me, but the courts do, as do quotes by the founding fathers (which are beyond the scope of this post to list).
Maybe its more useful to look at it in terms of monitoring than anonymity. You may rarely be completely anonymous in RL, but there's not the possibility for the kind of centralized monitoring that there is online. Someone mentioned in an earlier post that people have been making home copies -- analog and digital -- of CD's for years and giving them to friends which is illegal, but has not been considered worth anyone's while to prosecute. Not only that, without the capability to centrally monitor this activity, it's basically impossible to prosecute home copying as a crime, unless someone is then distributing and selling the copies. IANAL but it seems to me that there are questions of custom in the case of home recording that are not addressed when we look at this in terms strictly of anonymity and intellectual property. (Not to mention that just because you download an MP3 does not automatically mean that you don't also have a legal copy of the music and want a digital copy for home use, but that's another issue)
As the CNET article implied, it all boils down (again) to the questions of rights of intellectual property, which is so far defined as belonging to corporate entities or patent holders, not individuals, against traditional rights of individuals.
For instance: shopping. In RL I get catalogs in the mail, I browse, I decide what I'm going to buy, I buy things from different suppliers, or don't. Online, I currently can still enjoy some anonymity, at least when I'm browsing. Same thing with magazines: I can read content in RL without betraying any information about myself to the publisher. But the less anonymous I am, the more monitored my habits are, the more *my* habits, thoughts, buying patterns, my patterns of positive/negative response to ads, layout etc are mined, analysed and used to shape the information I see. So far, the legal system has failed to recognize my rights to the information I generate. But as far as I know, it's not illegal yet for me to refuse to give it up to retailers. So there's a really good reason for making myself anonymous right there.
There is a crucial need for be able to keep to yourself, with all the ads that do tracking now. I don't want to live in the world where every time you visit a sight you get a call at home from a salesman, or every time you download a file you get someone sending you and email that offer the full featured version of that software for the low-low price of 29.95 + shipping. Sounds like a little too much of a marketing wet dream for me.
First:What is a crime? It used (and in some countries still is) to be a crime to be homosexual. It used (and in some countries still is) to be a crime to smoke marihuana. So in a place with no boundries who can say: This is a crime, this not. In one day it could be, that /. is illegal, and reading it is a crime. Not today, not tomorrow, but who knows? Then everyone connectet with /. could be a criminal. In the net, it is anyway hard to be anonymous. Don't give in more.
Propose that congress pass laws that everyone under 16 must use the internet anonymously, so that the Bad People of the world dont know who to stalk/molest. Then if anyone talks of banning anonymity, call them "pro child abuse".
-f
www.blackant.net
Allow any logged in user to hit an AC post with a fractional moderate down or up. If enough logged in users don't like the post it will be pushed down to the floor, if an AC gets directly moderated down the general logged in readership would be able to moderate it back up - addressing those cases claiming biased moderators are surpressing certain views.
If you aren't willing to take responsibility for what you do or say, you shouldn't do or say it.
If we aren't willing to take responsibility for our actions/statements do we deserve the responsibility that the Internet requires?
Ummm, are you aware that the Second Amendment that you are quoting is infact wrong and has been rewrite 3 times. I am not sure on the exact dates but starting back in the 60's the goverment published it with a added comma. Then two more times. This in effect has changed the meaning of it. I am not a english teacher or even a good speller but I know what a few commas can do to a statement or in this case the Second Amendmen. Maybe you would think about one thing. You say "...guns ARE evil." Well mister its not guns that are the problem or evil its the thugs on the streets that are using stolen guns that are evil. So by your logic cars are evil because they kill people. And Rock-N-Roll is evil because kids kill themselves while listening too it. Hell, everyone knows it's evil. Computers are evil because we all know they are satan boxes. And because places /. creat the /. effect and that hurts all of us poor souls who cant aford too host on anything more than a T1. Hmm, lets see. I seem to have gotten off topic. Ahhh too hell with it. I think you your mommy just didnt hug you enough while you were growing up. I am out. My job at the gun store comes early in the AM.
I am absolutly for the RIGHT to be anonymous on the internet for the same reason I am against the death penalty. I am against the death penalty, not because it protects the guilty from being justly put to death, but to protect the innocent from being put to death unjustly and if even one innocent person is put to death unjustly, that is way too many, it is a little hard to apoligize or make resitution after the fact. I beleive in the RIGHT to be an anonymous coward, not because it protects criminals, but because it protects the innocent. Think about this, if we are not allowed to be anonymous on the internet, that means a potential employer can do a search in all the news groups or Slashdot for your name and find out your politics or religion, do you really want a potential employer or your boss for that matter, to know you are for legalizing marijuana. Then comes the question, should a 40 year man be denied a job because of statments he made in a news group when he was 18. Anybody who beleives either the innocent don't need protecting or that the Government/Business will protect us or even do the right thing is sadly deluded.
---------------------------------------------
Jesus died for somebodies sins, but not mine
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
It's a sad day when Slashdot starts to sound like a conservative thinktank.
OoO
OoO
Please do not publish outside of
I wouldnt even get into this shit anymore with you anti-gun people. Just do me a favor.
PUT A "GUNFREE HOUSE" SIGN ON YOUR DOOR.
Please?
Prettyplease?
2. Pay the $50 and get a quiver of Freedom nyms (or abuse the free 30 day trial over and over again if you're a cheap skate or don't want to register your payment information).
3. Even with your Freedom nym in place, use the URL-based, CGI-type proxies at Anonymizer, Clandestination or the-Cloak (I found a great listing of proxies at WebVeil.Com.)
4. Finally, be very aware of any information you provide voluntarily. Even references to geography, personality, employment, etc. may, in the aggregate, offer more clues than you want to reveal. Turn off Java, ActiveX, and scripting languages just to be sure. Make sure your cache and history files are clean at the end of your session.
These are pretty restrictive measures and not the suit of armor I care to don, but if you are a alt.privacy type, there certainly is real anonymity online. With these measures in place, I'd be impressed if the FBI could locate and identify you.
Mambo dogface in the banana patch
This is going to be a *long* thread.
I feel the main reason why the AC option should be kept is because sometimes people have very interesting information but are afraid that their employers would not like to see it made public. This has enrichened many discussions.
OTOH the noise is obviously damn too high, even at 1 threshold. Maybe you could keep at least the possibility of posting as AC for those who have accounts for more than a given time or above a certain karma.
And before you say that this can be done with an account as well, that's true, but I can always bitchslap anyone who pisses me off.
if you don't like it, well, it *is* my site after all, and banner ad revenues probably won't be affected that much by your loss.
Anyone with the guts to moderate this as Flamebait"?;^)
What *is* this problem that so many US citizens seem to have with paying taxes? Especially income taxes? You'd have to pay for things like roads and waste disposal and education anyway--and it would be more expensive and less equitable if you paid for it privately. Case in point: the UK's NHS supplies >99% of the population with healthcare at a cost of 6% of GDP. The US's health system costs 15% of GDP and there are 40m people without insurance cover. Take away the 1m rich ones who don't need the cover and that's a whole lot of people without access to healthcare.
I guess there is a fine line between what deserves privacy and what deserves attention. I am all for privacy; however, after seeing a rather disturbing mpeg at Stile of a young woman strapped to her chair and murdered at gun point, it is difficult for me to observe the right to anonymity. Maybe this mpeg was a captured police video or maybe it was something an individual digitized and sent in. Should the submitter of the video remain anonymous? I know he/she should but then again.....hmmm
I would simply walk into one of the larger public libraries, and use one of the machines "just sitting there". In larger libraries, in these days of thin budgets, many just make the terminals self policing, they have better uses for their people than authenticating who uses the machine.
On my last trip out of town, I kept up with mail, etc by simply walking into the main branch of the Toronto Library, and waiting in line for an available pc. Sure they would have been able to track it to that machine, but the library keeps no record of users, nor did they require ID before I could use it (and they wouldn't be bothered by US statue that might require public terminals to keep records). And since there was a line to use the thing, I doubt that they could get usable fingerprints from the keyboard. Sure if I wanted to throw a lot of bricks, I would have to find different branches, different cities, but for a single broadside...
Other possibilites -- I have encountered public internet kiosks that took cash. (one was in the waiting area at the Hearst Castle). If you wanted to make a particular point, you could use the Library Of Congress (my usual way to connect when visiting DC) Yea, you have to show a card to get into the building, and do the metal detector thing (no log kept, getting a card is trivial - its while you wait), but once inside, there are machines in almost every public space. (about the only room that didn't have at least one, had a flush lever on the seat)
Organizer:New England Rubbish Deconstruction Society;The NERDS,first US team in the UK Scrapheap Challenge/Junkyard Wars
or everyone leaving the country and going to one that allows them access.
at which point you conveniently prevent them from leaving without explicit military violence *cough*Berlin wall*cough*.
When you've got a name/IP association, you are no longer anonymous.
True: if someone wants to track you, they can and will -- the resources are endless.
However: this doesn't justify tracking everyone on the internet all the time. IPs are (usually) assigned dynamically and ISPs are not required by law to keep their logs for any given period of time. (How much HD space to you want to give to logs?)
Right now, you are anonymous to Joe Idiot AOL User and 99% of the other muck on the internet. Let's keep it that way.
#!/don/carnage
--
Wooden armaments to battle your imaginary foes!
>I personnally dislike all teh candidates I coudl
>vote for... so who the hell does that mean I
> hould vote for when every other dumbass has
>limited my options & opinions on
>canidates?
Perhaps you could run for office yourself.
Nuff said
Especially now that billions and soon trillions of dollars will be spent on developing high-tech weapons of destruction that will be in the hands of robots and remotely controlled.
Imagine what would happen if even the military were eliminated except for R&D and the politicians got to put their finger on the trigger... "I need a higher approval rating... If I press this button a small country will get wiped off the map and I can say I did it to 'protect American interests!' God, I love technology!"
Actually this was clarified in the writings of our founding fathers, and was even more extreme than what the NRA tends to advocate. Thomas Jefferson specifically mentioned revolution as a reason.
Instead of speculating from a modern perspective, why not take the authors at their word? Quit spreading FUD.
Actually, corporations would be more interested in the marketing than persecution. Governement are another issue.
Usually, but that is why they want to sue people who say disparaging thngs about their corporation, even if they are proven facts. Corporations are able to wave a big stick with lawyers on it at big media houses and scare them off, but they can't do that on the net, and that makes them scared.
SOME FORM OF ANONYMITY is the only way you can express something and have it be private.
You seem to be qualifying your statement. Are you, or did you mean TOTAL anonimity.
I meant some means of making oneself anonymous when making such statements.
I agree that in general anonymity can be both a pixelized face and manipulated voice of a protected witness, and the ski mask of a burglar. However w/r/t the net I am willing to take a chance because net crimes are, in general, much less harmful. Even in extreme cases, like crackers stealing passwords and IP, the govt has been hard-pressed to prove any damage at all. Certainly the common person has little to fear from these miscreants.
They problem with the internet, is that it is almost pure thought. The line between speech and action are blurred. In the early days of MOOs and MUDs, there was a famous cyber-rape. That provoked a big discussion on this subject, mostly stemming from teh debate over whetehr you can rape someone by typing words on a computer.
More in the context, ones actions and speech become melded when your action is to start an email chain, or a website. What if CommanderTaco never revealed his name? Could he be sued? What if you wanted to start a website that displayed accounts of torture at the hands of US-trained troops in south american countries, or the excesses of corporations, as its main content?
What if you were afraid that what has happened to so many others (being shut down, harrassed, arrested, blackballed) will happen to you? I would further posit that the lack of anonymity on the internet today is a major reason these sorts of things are not covered more on websites.
Doesn't Freenet work over IP? Isn't it easy to determine what ISP (network) someone is using once you know their IP address? Isn't there a little thing call IPv6 that is already designed to make your IP address include your MAC address, which isolates exactly who you are (machine-wise) within that network?
And if the government is involved, they can get anonymizers records, or call your ISP and request that they get exactly what user/person is logged on right now?
As for broadband, well, when I got my cable modem they wrote down the MAC address of my machine (IIRC). True I am using a different one, now, but...
Besides, once you have an IP address if you crack the box there is plenty of indication via files of who the person is. Even before cracking the box there are indicators, especially if you are using Windows or a MAC (computer name broadcast on local network).
Basically, if I walk into a library and write something on a board like /. it is as easy as figuring out who wrote "Freeh can bite me" on the bathroom wall. But if you are surfing and doing stuff for any decent amount of time, and someone is watching you, they can find you.
Your right to privacy is the right to the ignorance of those around you, and I despise ignorance. Why do we insist on limiting selective individual's ability to observe the world around them? We do not blind people who cannot see just because some people cannot, so why should we effectively blind people who have the ability or insight to see beyond what is normal? All we are doing is punishing people for their intelligence and scientific inquisitiveness.
And if the argument for "privacy" is based on the potential for misuse of sensitive information, how can we justify punishing people for acts of indescretion before they are committed? By condemning the acts that could possibly lead to malady, we are not only doing something that is morally problematic, but also promoting the general delinquency of those interested in the pursuit of knowledge.
Classifying people who try to observe every aspect of their environment as criminals pressures them into becoming what they are seen as. And for the few that find room to explore and maintain their integrity, this world is a harsh and unaccepting place.
Well, the communication networks are actually maintained by the private companies that own them. I'm more worried about things like highways and national defense.
If the US Government "fell" then the Military would either go away, leaving the US vulnerable to nutballs and freaks who would like nothing more than to bomb our sacreligious asses back to paramecia (yes, this is probably an unnecessarily paranoid thing to say) and so on. The government would have to do things like seize control of FMC, McDonnell-Douglas, Lockheed, and so on, as well as steel mills and mining operations, so that they could continue to create war machines.
Don't forget too that all those soldiers have to eat and get paid, and that money has to come from somewhere. Also, if you have no government, there's no Federal Currency. Private Currencies will fluctuate in the same way as stocks (For all intents and purposes they will BE stocks.)
We of the dice and paper gaming community know this as the "Dark Future", even though lots of people want it to happen and think it would be fun and games. But when you have to pay a toll to get on a freeway, and when you have to pay the "police department" personally and the rates go up when you're being harassed because you're a pain in the ass, I think it'll be a little more of a bummer and less romantic.
Wow, what a rant THAT turned into. My apologies.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
My only problem with the guy is that when I asked him if he minded if I wrote some fanfiction in his universe (As seen in A Terror Upon the Deep, a damn fine novel) he gave me back legalese. I wasn't asking him to officialize it, I just wanted to know if I'd offend him.
I believe in protecting IP, but come on.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"We must restrict the anonymity behind which people hide to commit crimes," Edgar Bronfman Jr., chief executive of Universal Music Group parent Seagram, said last week. "As citizens, we have a right to privacy. We have no such right to anonymity."
What privacy do we have without anonymity? This guy is lying. He has no belief in privacy because he believes that he does not commit crimes. But when this all snowballs out of control and saying that the president should admit to porking "that lewinsky woman" becomes sedition, he's not going to feel quite the same about this.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Well, I am not legal counsel, and am not qualified to give you legal advice, but I do seem to rememeber something like that. As soon as I find the statute I'll try to post it someplace meaningful.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Such irrational thought is why:
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Don't let the AC dirt distract you from the AC gems. I recall Quake god John Carmack posting anonymously at least once for technical/logistic reasons, and there have been many other valuable AC posts (some AC for laziness, some for fear of repercussions).
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
To prevent this sort of spin from happening, and from the Gov't from screwing up something, some sort of self-policing must be established. For example, though persons are anonymous, what they do is not. Rather than offering anonymity as a service that caters to the surreptitious, ban the brigands (ie source and/or destination of the offensive matter). Oh, wait, can't do that-- what, afterall, is offensive. Or offensive versus objectionable. Or objectionable versus bad-taste. This is a slippery slope.
Either we do it or the Congress will-- using such spin as put forth above. Our quasi-utopia will crumble because of a handful (comparatively) of miscreants who choose to wreck everything for their lust (of illicit materials). We have to suck it up and put a stop to it or someone else, with less sense, will.
Banning annonyminity on the internet was something that I never thought I would see in my day. It's right out of an Orwellian novel. Free speech depends on it. It provides the base for the internet to stand on. Granted as it sits right now it is still possible (as has been expressed above) to rather simply trace a person back to their home or office, but to the common public this is a witchcraft worthy feat. It's not pure anonyminity, but it seems like it. It's the illusion of being ambiguous that draws so many people and so many new ideas out of the woodwork and on to the net. Over of the people today fear public speaking more than anything else. Adding an ID tag to every internet user would mean that everyone once again knows who you are and once again all the prejudices and social stigmatas come flying back into play again until jumping onto the net is nothing more than walking into your crowded school cafeteria again and facing of the issues that are abound.
Aside from this problem, what happens when people start spoofing thier ID's or any other number of ways that will inevitable arrise to avoid being labelled or numbered. The people that truly want to commit crimes in Cyberspace will have the methods they need to avoid getting caught, just as hackers today do. So you will have changed nothing at all, except of course destroying one of the main pillars that the entire net revolves around, but hey the man's always looking out for your best interests right?
-ParadoX-
Sieze the day... otherwise someone else will do it for you.
Then all the rest of us can start reading the comments again. That'll be the day!
Hello to you too!
Can't say as I blame you. There a lot of people who abuse the difference between privacy and anonymity. That does make serious discussions difficult. Moderation does help though...
Nick http://www.nickspace.com
Australia, or perhaps England, or any number of countries that have outlawed guns -- guess who has the guns now? Not private citizens, but criminals.
But is the crime rate any higher in those countries? I know for a fact that there are fewer deaths because of guns. I'll bet there are also fewer crime related deaths because of guns (but I don't have the facts).
What's missing from statments like "only criminals have guns" is the number of criminals who have guns. Usually these statements imply that all criminals have guns. But the strong gun control laws in these countries insure that while very few citizens have guns, neither do very many criminals (at least compared to the US).
To further the point, maybe we should all remind ourselves that we vote anonymously to avoid recrimination. There is a good lesson in that for both governments and corporations.
-L
This assumes that most people reading this have also checked out Snowcrash and The Diamond Age. This is very much like when Carl Hollywood explained how a really secure and private network put the government out of business and made it possible for lots of people to do what the really want to do. This just makes too much sense and we all know that the government to a large extent is all about keeping itself in business. This goes back along ways. Think about it the war on drugs was all about power. The whole thing about violence and crime all about power.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
I am going to argue infinately that an armed society is a polite one.
To invoke the most basic level of morality: I would not trust myself with a gun, therefore I will not trust you with a gun.
on the job as instantly as a .45.
So when somebody gives my girl a lewd look I can bring "justice" through their chest immediately.
-- LoonXTall
~~~LXT~~~
Life is like a computer program: anything that can't happen, will.
Nobody is overthrowing the government with firearms.
Try Scientific American's report on "the new face of war"... specifically, the section "From 100 Men to the Presidency".
-- LoonXTall
~~~LXT~~~
Life is like a computer program: anything that can't happen, will.
IMHO it's not possible to destroy anonimity over the internet, how could this man think to do it?
Cheers
--
Antonio
The issue here is trust.
If a service feels it can trust it's users, it will allow them to remain completely anonymous; If the user trusts the service, they won't feel the need to remain anonymous.
The confict only arises where neither the users nor the service provider trust each other to use the priviledges they're given (ie anonymitiy or access to personal data respectively).
The problem is that the internet is so impersonal that services and their users can feel very remote from each other. Trust can only be earned; no-one gives their trust freely [any more], so you have a catch-22 situation. You can't trust someone without knowing them; and you can't know them without their trusting you with their personal data.
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
"The speech echoed last week's calls from an influential Democratic policy think tank to change copyright laws in a way that would also eliminate anonymity for people"
When are we going to realize, that the Big 2 parties in the US are in league on this: Destroy the right to privacy.
Some of you applaud Bush or Gore for their choice of OS on their website, or announce your support for "prudent measures". Get real.
We are at a crossroads. In 20 years or less this wonderful medium we share can be a version of the Home Shopping Network or it can be what it was designed to be: A equalizing platform for freedom of speech!
There is no fine line between different types of anonymity. That crime can be commited using anonymous communication is the price of this freedom. And if anyone thinks they can eliminate anonymity from becoming a core part of the web, they are mistaken. If Napster thinks they can bow to industry pressure and no one will replace them, they are mistaken. The next phase of the web is just beginning...
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The Face -= o_O
-.Shaun.-
True. Nobody in Germany voted to start killing Jews and gypsies in 1933.
Likewise, the first income tax in the United States was 1%.
www.alarmist.org
What you forget is that governments are typically composed of people. People, as we all know, have their good sides and their bad sides. In a reasonably perfect world, a representative or purely democratic nation would respond to its citizens and encourage freedom, as you said.
The problem, though, is that the United States and several other governments are dominated by leeches. It is easier for these people of low moral fiber to hoodwink, confuse, and mislead the governed in order to maintain their own power. They are not interested in the welfare of the state, except as that pertains to their own personal wellbeing. They are interested in maintaining the status quo--with themselves at the top of the heap--for as long as possible.
That is why novels like Nineteen Eighty-Four are plausible--because Orwell pointed out (subtly or not) that the powers that be want to maintain their own power. If they have to do that at the expense of the people, then so be it. The situation that we are faced with today is no different.
www.alarmist.org
Later today (or perhaps tomorrow), www.alarmist.org will feature an article talking about the War on Drugs. If you simply cannot wait to get your hands on some interesting facts, try going to www.csdp.org. They present the facts in an occasionally biased way, but the figures seem sound and paint a grim picture.
www.alarmist.org
I disagree. While more commerce will be conducted online, governments will deal with this in much the same way that they have always dealt with it: income taxes, excise taxes, perhaps even poll taxes before all is said and done.
If nothing else, governments are very good at making sure that they get their very own over-large slice of the pie. While money made in cyberspace is hard to track, it will be made up for with more real-world taxes. Count on it.
"The power to tax is the power to destroy." It was true 250 years ago, and it has never been truer than it is today.
www.alarmist.org
> Don't be silly, it'll take at least a month to process each application for exit visas.
One month? I've been looking into escaping from the UK and cannot believe how hard it can be obtaining a visa for the likes of the US. Even Oz and NZ are closing the doors to almost everyone without a PhD and a zillion years of experience in the desired field at any given moment!
Isn't the weak link in Gnutella, Freenet and the like the fact that most average people (not /. ubergeeks, of course) access the Internet through AOL? I would think AOL/Time Warner would have a vested interest in prohibiting their subscribers from using any sort of distributed anonymity program, for obvious reasons.
Indeed, what percentage of people access the Internet through the top 10 ISPs? That's only 10 entities to convince to ban the use of Gnutella and the like--with a huge impact on the usefulness of such software.
Th ban ACs is to tacitly sanction the status quo of "shut up or we'll bury you".
It's why the rape crisis hotlines are anonymous. It's whi the FBI and other law enforcement agencies have anonymous tip crime lines. It's why the media has legal protection from and cannot be forced to reveal the source of their news stories.
Will ACs also abuse their power? Certainly. Then again, the crime rate was much lower in the Soviet Union than in a free society. Shold all freedoms be abolished in exchange for a little more order? (that can be filtered out by setting your threshold appropriately anyway.)?
You can't really walk the streets in anonymity unless you are very good at disguises... If you do anything of note, people are going to remember what you looked like.
An engineer who ran for Congress. http://herbrobinson.us
"Registered users only can post ACs. Their AC post starts out at 1 degree lower than a regular post would (my normal is +1, so my ACs would be 1. Many users would have 0 AC posts) A user could not post AC posts until they have been a user for at least a week and/or they have a karma 5 points above the default karma given to new users.
...
This is restrictive, but I haven't seen any good AC posts which couldn't have been made using the above system."
Exactly how many of the "Hellmouth" comments do you think came from regular slashdot readers? I was under the impression that a whole load of these were first time readers of slashdot. If they had had to wait a week or actually have obtained a certain amount of karma, a significant proportion of these people would have been denied a chance to speak.
I agree that the trolling from AC accounts can be a problem, but i think it is an acceptable price to pay.
Another issue would be the number of throw-away accounts that would be created. How much of a hit would the servers take, dealing with all the junk accounts created on a daily basis? How long before an account expires? Or would they all have to be cancelled 'by hand'? At least with AC accounts this is avoided.
-Jon
Just imagine if somebody says (emails) something wrong about them and in three days just dissapears. In short time everybody (out of shere fear) will send just overlaudative messages regarding how wise and inspired is their governement.
If only Salin would live today. Then everybody will have his internet box at home by default. Forget time consumming tasks like tapping phones and reading smails, we have NetRadar those days...
Let's start from the basics:
(With the help of Collins English Dictionary)
ANONYMITY: the condition or fact of being anonymous.
ANONYMOUS: 1. with no name known 2. given, written, etc. by one whose name is withheld or unknown 3. lacking in distinctive features.
FREEDOM: 1. exemption from the control of some arbitrary power; independence 2. civil or political liberty [freedom of speech] 3. exemption from a specified obligation, discomfort, etc. 4. being able to act, move, use, etc. without hindrance 5. being free from the usual rules, conventions, etc. [...]
PRIVACY: 1. withdrawal from public view; seclusion 2. secrecy 3. one's private life or personal affairs
And now I ask you: can the aforementioned terms conciliate, cooperate together (and) with the essence of the word INTERNET? How can we expect to remain hidden when we're (in Internet) potentially connected to _the world_?? The meeting of many "private life or personal affairs" on-line is still "private" or "withdrawn from public view"? If Internet is freedom, i.e. "exemption from a specified obligation", and is as "being able to act, move, use, etc. without hindrance", then why are there clinical cases of "internet-dependence"??
In the end, what do anonymity, privacy, freedom mean IN Internet? Or better, turning the question inside out, what does Internet itself make to anonymity, privacy and freedom? A world of pseudonyms?
Have a nice time, out there.
Somerset (a pseudonym indicating obviously someone else)
Hi, folks!
;-)
The fact of being controlled over the internet or not makes me a bit amused. Why? Because for the things I do in my quiet prototype day, anyone controlling me would be simply... wasting his time!
To be serious, as somebody has just written, anonymity is a myth. Freedom too. It seems that human beings have great fun in building their own cages. The objection now could be that even in a game you need rules. Can rules make the game better? Maybe. Anyway I keep in mind that nothing is good or bad in itself: it depends on the USE you make of it. So, what really makes me angry is not CONTROL, but INTERFERENCE: this is the worst consequence of a nasty sort of control. This is the great danger, because I can't control who's controlling me. My zen conclusion is: for control the cure is indifference, for interference there's one verb, "disconnect."
Greetings from Italy and excuse my delirium and the schizophrenic english
But then, Bendover can soon brag about "2 million registered users".
I dont think that alarmism is a particularly productive response to government intrusion. I think a better way to monitor the government is to have an educated, informed citizenry who are going to protest if the government attempts to work in its own interest instead of its constituents. And isn't it possible that the best way for a government(at least a republic/democracy type) to continue its survival is to be reponsive to its citizens and to encourage freedom? Most of the more stable governments(ie US, western europe, canada) that i can think of have made it a point to keep there citizens educated and involved in the political process.
The impersonators are an annoyance too, but they can be avoided if you look for the differences in name format, the "." in the name and so on. I'm thinking about getting pater to change the slash code to do checks on user names, so that certain names are disallowed.
Anonymity has nothing to do with privacy. When privacy laws aren't working, the tempation is to demand anonymity to make up for the shortfall.
There is no right to anonymity. In fact the US constitution infers otherwise that the accused should have the right to face those that are accusing them. Anonymity IS the cloak behind which tyranny hides, not the other way around. You fail to recognize that those inclined toward tyranny will always have greater resources than the people. That is, YOUR anonymity won't hold since they will have the resources to find you, but THEIR anonymity will hold because you will never have the opportunity or ability to uncover their actions. The 4th estate exists to keep the latter in check in general, but not for specific cases. Keep in mind that they DID find the unabomber in spite of his attempts to remain anonymous. The government did find the resources needed to get him...
What you are inviting the the following:
T: 'You committed this crime'
V: 'What evidence do you have?'
T: 'A number of anonymous people reported you doing this. We're going to send you to jail'
V: 'But I think they are mistaken, can't we challenge this?'
T: 'No, they would no longer be anonymous then'
That people demand anonymity only underscores that privacy laws don't work. There is nothing wrong with any of you knowing my name, so long as I am reasonably sure that you can not invade my privacy because of it.
With identity comes accountability, and we should not demand a loss of accountability. It's one of the underlying priniciples which the US was founded on, but seems to be eroding. Don't accelerate it...
True privacy demands that I have the power to decide for myself when, how and to what extent my personal information is revealed to others, and to what extent others can link or trace that information. I think the only way to ensure true privacy and security is through the use of technologies that integrate cryptography and source code. No amount of self-regulation or legislation will change the fact that if companies have access to your information they will abuse it. But there are solutions out there. http://www.zeroknowledge.com , for example, has developed a solution that protects my personally identifiable information from ever being leaked without being anonymous. I don't have to trust anyone else to protect my privacy, so I disagree with the assessment that there is no such thing as privacy on the Net. Privacy is out there, you just need to find it.
Face it, boys and girls. The day that it became possible to make billions of dollars on the internet was the day it stopped being free.
While it was an unimportant university backwater, nobody cared. Systems like DNS were under no commercial pressure, so worked for everyone.
But now that big money and big business have arrived, forget it. All free resources are being hooverdup and turned into cash (domain name hogs being the prime example). And because free speech has commercial implications (i.e. criticism of products, copyright issues etc) it is under attack too.
Nobody givesa shit about anonymous access to the internet. What people give a shit about itunconditional access to one's rights rather thanthe conditional access wecurrently have.
Code Is Law makes an excellent case for the suggestion that the "legal system" of the internet was written by the hackers that first createdit. Now that "legal system"is being over-ridden and overwritten bythe legal systems of the corrupt and corporate-run states of theso-called "realworld".
Take responsibility and fight back! We've had a good run in the ten-or-so years of freedom that the newnesso f the internet has given us. But now that the old powers have discovered this terra incognita, we will have to fight to defend it asthe settlers of every new frontier have had to fight to defendthemselves against the old empires which have come to take away that which they have found, and their self-determination with it.
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--
This is one thing that pisses me off to no end. The public funding of sports stadiums.
Boy, I wish *I* could start a business where the government pays lavishly for the place where I do it. That's right. A stadium is to a sports team, what a store is to a grocer. Why doesn't the government pay for office buildings? Grocery stores?
Meanwhile, sporting events have turned out to be an obscenely profitable business. Witness what some of the players rake in, to say nothing of the promoters and advertisers. And what if you have no personal interest in sports?
I can understand something like public health care, even if I'm never sick, I gladly pay, because I'd hate to see everyone else get sick and die with no health insurance, I rely on those people. But how is society harmed if there's no public funding of sports? Sports would not go away. And even if it did, good riddance.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I'm glad you are happy with taxes. I do not have health problems or pay for health care even though I have damn good insurance from my employment. I don't get sick, but part of my paycheck pays for those who lead unhealthy lifestyles. It would be even worse if taxpayer money paid for health care as I just could not quit if it got real bad.
The US government got along great for a very long time supported almost entirely on import duties. During the Civil War, IIRC there was an income tax, but it was eliminated b/c it was only needed during the war.
Besides - everything is taxed nowadays. Gas is nearly at $2/gal although if you cut out the taxes it would be closer to half of that. It wouldn't be so bad if the taxes were clearly going to fund road repair/construction, but typically money ends up in general funds. This is begging for trouble.
The government rarely, if ever shows itself to be responsible with money, and since it can tax the people, it doesn't have to be. Determining accountability for misappropriated taxes is almost impossible as well, since it gets obfuscated by the government. (probably deliberately)
Here's a fun example:
Here in sunny Seattle, we had a not-yet-paid-off domed stadium called the Kingdome. The baseball team and football team shared it, which was fine since their seasons don't overlap. Eventually both got it in their heads to build new stadia and tear down the Kingdome. Rather than pay for the rest of the Kingdome themselves and pay for their new stadia (which would be the best way to do it) they got the local government to foot the bill. Which means taxes.
The new baseball field was put to a vote and rejected by voters twice. But the local government ignored that and we paid for it anyway. Now they're working on the new football stadium. While Paul Allen, the other big MS billionaire is helping to pay for that one, I don't think that it's wise policy to rely on charity from convenient ultra-rich people.
So the problem Americans tend to have with paying taxes isn't taxes per se. The large majority of us realize that somewhere along the line taxes on something will have to be paid.
We all like roads, but taxes on roads should be related to usage. Lots of waste disposal is private anyway - mine is, and I pay for it myself. And no one thinks public education is working right; it needs to be fixed, the question presently is how.
The problem is that tax money frequently gets spent on useless 'pork barrel' projects. Taxes are set, raised and allocated to things against the stated wishes of the voters. Taxes are frequently unrelated to the benefit from the tax, which opens the door to all kinds of problems like those above.
So if a government can tax and spend the taxes, it needs to be VERY restrained about what it does. For no small number of years now, our government has not shown itself to be responsible.
That's why.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Isn't the weak link in Gnutella, Freenet and the like the fact that most average people [...] access the Internet through AOL?
... through AOL's Mozilla, which is bound to get freenet URL support built in?
Attempts to mandate traceback will simply fail over time as the various distributed-anonymity projects (Freenet etc) pass version 1.0.
What will have to grow up in the place of guaranteed identity, is the recognition that trust is proportional to identity. ACs must stand on the merits of their data, people hiding behind provable pseudonyms can build a trustworthy reputation, but likely never enough to get credit from a bank, and so on.
People will have to develop thick skins - against anonymous insults and libel, against politics, porn, hate speech, etc, whatever their pet info peeve is. If you don't like it, don't look it up, and if no-one looks for it, it'll drop off the bottom of Freenet.
As to the people who fear free speech will destroy their religion, politics, or agenda: good riddance. Cope or cry.
For the most part, I agree with restricting anonymity online. There are some situations (for example AC's on Slashdot) that warrant anonymity to protect the identity of the user (this is even questionable in my mind however), but Napster is definately not one of them. Anonymity is a shield for cowards to commit acts that they don't have to be accountable for--that's fundamentaly screwed up. If you can't be held accountable for your actions, you shouldn't be doing what you're doing. In RL you are almost never anonymous in what you do, and you shouldn't be able to run around on the internet like a cloaked bandit.
-- Grow up and use mutt.
Suppose everybody at birth were required by law to have a small transmitter embedded in their body which would be used to ensure they could be positively identified at all times. Suppose further that it were made illegal to appear in public without such a transmitter, functioning properly. This would actually be quite easy to do and to enforce. Sickening thought, isn't it?
Now why is appearing on the internet any different at all from walking on the street? In fact, a person walking on the street is capable of causing much more real, physical harm than a disembodied presence on the net.
If there is any legitimate need at all to deprive people of their right to anonymity on the net it should be controlled rigorously so that it cannot be abused. In other words, it should require the same process that is used to deprive people of their right to walk freely on the street: plublic declaration of martial law, or a state of emergency.
Let's repeat this to ourselves over and over again: Surfing the internet is the same as walking on the street.
--
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
I disagree. As US citizens, our rights as decreasing at a phenominal rate. Our first two rights in the Bill of Rights are constantly attacked from the right and left, respectivly. As a government gets more corrupt (as the US's most certainly is) education and involvment in the political process is dangerous. Why do you suppose the government has so many documants sealed and so many secrets. National security is important but it's become an excuse for them to hide anything they wany, thus cutting off our security.
As for education, Clinton has signed a record number of "executive orders", laws that he can write and enact while circumventing congress. Many of these have allowed for such wierd things as FEMA being able declare martial law and removing state's power in favor of federal power. If education is important, then why does no one talk about these "unconstitutional" laws in the media? Why doesn't Clinton ever mention them when bragging about all he has done?
Finkployd
While I agree with many of your previous points I have to take exception to this. Many very disturbed people can appear reasonable and normal to others, rapists and child molesters don't have signs on their back that say "I'm a craaazzy kook, arrest me!". These people dont't "stand out a mile", and that's the problem. I don't see any way to wholesale detect disturbed criminals without institutional, lifelong, government psych profiling which is obviously about the worst possible solution (WRT privacy, and potential for abuse). In any case how would you be able to determine the difference between a criminal and someone who is just different? It seems to me that the only acceptable way to deal with crime is after the fact, don't try to prevent crime, just worry about catching the criminals after the fact and making sure that they will be removed from civilized society until they can learn to play by civilized rules. To do otherwise is to have "Thoughtcrime", where you can be penilized for thinking deviant thoughts instead of the acid test of actually having to act on those criminal impulses.
-- Remember: Wherever you go, there you are!
And any centralized psych training agency has the possibility of corrupting the masses with propaganda, not to mention the probability of abuse. Maybe this is not how you meant to sound but this is like the Stasi, with everybody informing on everybody else, or the WAVE that Pinkerton is trying to get accepted.
-- Remember: Wherever you go, there you are!
It does seem like a good system but I would just make sure that there are solid legal protections for basic rights. Otherwise all you get is mob-rule where the masses trample over the little guy.
As annother counterpoint, what about criminals who travel? Unless criminal records are replicated centrally a person could just move and take advantage of the next town. My dad (who is a cop) always complains about personal license plates for this reason, many cops get killed because they cannot quickly ID a plate and don't know that they might be dealing with an escaped convict, drug smuggler, etc.
Hmmm. . .I just had a thought, how would something like Freenet or Gnutella work for distributing criminal records in a decentralized manner? Maybe with PKI to authenticate that the records come from a genuine source? Hmmmm.
-- Remember: Wherever you go, there you are!
There are only two kinds of goods that can be bought, be it over the Internet or otherwise: material and immaterial goods.
Governments can get as tight a control over material goods as they want: they can intercept the supply lines at any point: the producer, the trader, etc etc.
It is trickier when we're dealing with information-type goods, which can range from the Reuters newsfeed to Mpeg-1-Layer-3 (MP3, for short) music. Here it _is_ difficult to tax on the goods, but indicators of the exchanged volume can be used, and exploited to tax the actual transfers: bandwidth usage, for instance. It's enough to spoof at the carrier level et voila`. Good privacy _and_ taxation.
Want another approach? Think of your income.
total yearly earnings = savings + accountable expenses + everything else
just tax that 'everything else', and you are effectively taxing internet sales. A nightmare when it comes to accounting, but governments are not usually known for being subtle when extor- ahem - collecting money from their citizens.
The problem with the grand-design you envision is that if there is only one weak link in the whole production chain for a good - someone that is easier to check on - then the whole chain becomes (mostly) accountable. In a lot of fields this is not going to happen (that is not to say that it won't happen at all, just not everywhere).
It's about individual rights, not gun rights, etc. Gun control is just one of these rights trying to be stripped or made extremely difficult to excersise. Extremism is rampant, and it would seem to me that the extremists are the ones pushing to eliminate individual rights from either the right or left.
.45.
As per gun control, etc. I am going to argue infinately that an armed society is a polite one. When people feel as though they are not protected by the police, friends, family, or while walking home in the evening etc. they feel violated. Why do people feel violated when they are left completely defenseless you ask? -- I would charge you to ask yourself that question again.
If the government has no right to have armed forces then why do we? If you are so blind as to the reason that guns are an absolute necessity then I will point you in the direction of Australia, or perhaps England, or any number of countries that have outlawed guns -- guess who has the guns now? Not private citizens, but criminals. The Militia doesn't have to for forces OUTSIDE the country, they are DEFINATELY ment for forces WITHIN also, and there is no amount of money we can pay a police force to be on the job as instantly as a
Slashdot'll be forced to take away your anonymity and bar anonymous cowards. :)
(haven't read the article, can't get to CNET for some reason..)
BilldaCat
Without anonymity, there can be no privacy on the Internet.
Well, technically speaking that's not true. Just encrypt everything and you have quite good privacy, but not necessarily anonymity. Yes, you are still vulnerable to traffic analysis, but this is a huge step up from the current situation.
[excuse]It's not that I don't value anonymity. It's just that this particular argument fails.[/excuse]
Pretty much anyone can be tracked down, despite the "anonymous" quality of the Internet as it exists today. If I happen to view a website that the government doesn't like, they can trace my IP, check with my ISP, and get a lock on me pretty quickly.
It depends. Generally, if you don't cover your tracks, tracing you is very, very easy. But if you do cover your tracks and have a clue, then finding you is hard. Exhibit A: The Freedom software (www.freedom.net). Exhibit B: DDOS attacks.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Gentlemen, I have a solution, for Slashdot at least, for total anonymity of posters. The AC flag just does not cut it, but how about this?
Joe Random User. We create a slashdot account in the name of JRU (assuming it hasn't been taken yet), password the same, and anyone who wants to post anonymously just logs in as that person. With several hundred/thousand people using that account there is no way for anyone to PROVE who posted what under that psuedonym.
IP addresses? Wouldn't the account just have the LAST one used? Can Cmdr Taco fix it so that happens if it doesn't already? Does the Hollywood quote "I'm Sparticus!" mean anything to you?
I guess I'll have to take your word for it. A "well regulated militia", seems to me to mean a well regulated, and organized body of people. Although I suppose it could also mean a militia well-equipped with quality firearms.
Yes, well, we HAVE one. And for a democracy, we have a very damn large one. Either we shouldn't have a standing army because of the very threats the founding fathers were afraid of (and because, perhaps, at least to me, it seems hypocritical for a democracy to have to defend itself with a large conscripted peace-time army). Or we should institute a standing army and domestic police force which should render the necessity for the average person to bear firearms void (sure, if you live in a dangerous area, like guns for collecting or hunting, or are just really insecure I suppose you might want to have a gun).
That may be true, but in this day and age it is just plain ridiculous. Arm everybody in the US. We're still not going to overthrow the system with firearms. Perhaps the founding fathers should have made provisions for artillary, bombers, missiles, etc.
I still don't think a gun defends anybody's freedom. A gun may protect your life. But at least in my opinion, the loss of life and potential violence, accidental and opportunistic, of an entirely armed populace far outweighs that of an individual being able to protect themselves from arbitrary and sporadic violence. In short, I believe More Guns = More Injured/Dead Innocent People. Apparently the gun lobby does not agree with this and would rather everybody live in the false security of a personal arms race (I feel safe because a neighbor only has firepower enough to kill off my family 5 times over, while I have enough to kill off his family 10 times over). Shouldn't, by the same token, nuclear proliferation and stockpiling keep us all much "safer"?
Well, that comment came out of thin air. Are you saying that society is violent because people are upset with not being able to take any drugs they want? Most of the senseless gun violence I remember involved insane, emotionally disturbed people, or was accidental. I can't remember the last time some person who was unhappy about not being able to use drugs shot some place up... Sure, the war on drugs is expensive (in various ways) and stupid. But I don't think that is what is causing gun violence. The sickness is much deeper in the society than a bunch of people being barred from using drugs...
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Agreed. Although extremists come in various flavors. Some want to prevent you from doing things they don't think you should do, while others would like to have new rights conferred to them.
Perhaps you are right. An armed society is a polite one because if you're not polite you get shot. Great. I don't want to live in a society in which people are free and able to shoot each other because they don't think others are "polite" in some manner. Being afraid of being shot by everybody is an inhibition on my freedom. I don't want to live in a state in which my neighbors are the police.
I don't feel violated walking home in the evening or when police, friends and family are not around. Why should I? Should I be scared? It sure seems gun advocates are really paranoid. It's amazing how other western countries who have much stronger gun control have much lower gun voilence and a much higher percieved sense of safety. Somehow England, Europe, the Scandanavian countries, which have tighter gun control and a less armed populace are so much safer. You can go overseas and walk the streets of capitals feeling much safer than you can in the middle of nowhere in the US.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Well, this, I guess is really what I take issue with. Sure, I understand the reasoning of the writers of the constitution. I _understand_ that they wanted to build in the ability to overthrow the system. But face it - it's not 1776 anymore. Nobody is overthrowing the government with firearms. It makes the whole argument that "we have weapons to ensure the government behaves because otherwise we'll overthrow it" totally bogus. Nobody is overthrowing anything with firearms. Tanks, bombs, missiles...maybe. Firearms...nope. And IF that provision no longer makes sense, what really is the justification for the collateral damage it causes in excessive accidental or opportunistic violence? What are we really GETTING for this price we pay?
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
This is a typical mentality. It is actually a classic case of tragedy of the commons. Here is the rationalization:
* I percieve that there is some vague threat to my safety.
* I obtain a gun. This reduces the threat to myself some amount, and increases the threat to everybody else by some amount. But this amount is shared.
* This is entirely logical and appears sound to me. Every other rational person behaves in this logical manner, figuring that the safety it affords them as an individual is greater than the danger it poses to the society as a whole.
* Everybody follows this rationale until the whole system collapses at some point because the system as a whole can no longer bear the stress that everybody introduces into it with their individual actions.
Replace "guns" with "nuclear missiles" and you will see this mentality is very stupid. I will not participate in arms-race mentality with you.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I am not arguing that people NOT have the right to keep arms. IMHO it is ridiculous how LITTLE regulation guns have compared to products of other industries. I don't disagree with this at all. But the NRA and the gun lobby do. They like the former right, but they don't like that latter at all. And I'm sure they have no qualms about changing (and plenty of money to help them) the Bill of Rights.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Bullshit. Again you fail to realize that many, or perhaps most, deaths with firearms are caused by accident or as a matter of opportunity. I am not claiming a gun owner is a criminal at all. I am claiming that by having a gun, increasing the number of guns own domestically, will increase accidental and opportunistic injury. What about the kid who finds it and accidentally kills himself or somebody? What about the angry and distraught teenager, who, in a fit of angst decides to kill somebody because the gun is available. What about the guy who gets into a heated argument, and, having a gun in arms reach, in a fit of rage, murders somebody?? All of these cases are accidental or opportunistic. They occur in direct proportion the number of guns we have domestically. Unfortunately, the DON'T only happen to the gun owner or family of the gun owner, so the RISK is increased to society as a whole.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Hmm...what about MAS by getting RID off all the damn nuclear weapons. MAD works only when both parties DON'T want to die. It doesn't work when one party is just friggen off its rocker and doesn't CARE whether it dies or not, or accidentally fires. In that case, REDUCTION, and ELIMINATION and real defense against such weapons (not defense by the assumption that the enemy is too afraid of being eliminated himself) is the ONLY way to safety.
And again, you are just falling into the tragedy of the commons, arms race, short term mentality. "The world is dangerous, therefore I should stockpile as much dangerous stuff as fast as I can". In the LONG RUN this is not a solution. Having a world in which everybody is brimming with nuclear weapons, assured that if ANYBODY fires, we're all toast, having to teach our children how to avoid or live in a nuclear aftermath - THAT is not peace. THAT is not safety.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
And I'm sure firearms would have solved all of these problems. I'm sure the soldiers, seeing the students had firearms would put down their weapons and give up instead of just slaughtering them faster and more indescriminantly. Same goes for the other situations. Firearms would NOT have prevented those situations. They would merely cause more casualties on both sides. I cannot believe the arms-race mentality of gun advocates. Annihilating your enemy MORE than he annihilates you is NOT a victory. If we were talking about nuclear weapons would your opinion be the same? Naturally the safety of ALL would be increased if we were locked in a nuclear stalemate...right? When you are all dead, does it MATTER how many of the other side you have killed? You do not solve violence by more violence.
I submit that this is hardly a logical rationalization. How about doing away with restrictive seatbelt or driving laws and just selecting for people with the thickest skulls and ribcages? Or maybe doing away with FDA regulation and just selecting for those who best survive dangerous chemicals?
What about ACCIDENTAL deaths? Rosy O'Donnell cries "12 children die every minute". How many children a minute is acceptable to YOU? Do you really think that children would have gotten their heads blown off "with or without the use of a projectile weapon"?
I ENTIRELY agree with you here. Columbine was not "because" of guns (although tighter regulation might have avoided their first attempt at getting weapons...they probably could get them elsewhere). Sometimes the liberals obscure the real issue with the whining. Guns were not the cause here. Video games were not the cause. The cause was, for whatever reason, an environment which made two young men emotionally unstable enough to commit a heinous crime. Why and how these individuals felt they should do such a thing should be questioned. Normal people don't just buy guns and blow up stuff randomly.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
You know, I think my taxes are too high...I think I'm going to walk down to Washington and throw off that old yoke of tyranny with my revolver here...
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
And we'll all be very safe when we're all dead right? That's not what I call safety, and that's not a world worth living in.
Being afraid of nuclear incineration daily, and having to teach our children to duck under desks and wear fallout gas masks is not what I consider "peace".
I don't know what jingoistic world you are living in, but Reagon (what a Pollyana) made the START treaty, and Clinton START 2 for Reduction and Limitation of nuclear arms. We DID disarm, keep the peace and remain free. God knows what would have happened if we CONTINUED the arms race. Did you learn NOTHING from the Cold War? Your McCarthyistic claims that we'd turn "Red" are sensationalist 50s mentality. Nobody is or would have turned "Red". But if we did turn "Red" (like those damn hippies! gasp!), I sure would rather be alive.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Well for stories where anonymous input is needed, they could have an 'allow AC posts on this story' switch.
As far as throw away accounts, I don't think that would really be an issue. Sure, there are die-hard trolls that would go through the process of adding an account just to add a comment, but most people adding useless banter to a discussion would be turned off by it.
I read at a 2-4 level most of the time (except when meta-moderating) so I don't even see most of the troll and useless posts. But I think slashdot could improve some of its content by following a slightly more exclusive system. Number one, we wouldn't be wasting moderation points on a lot of drift, and could really moderate up those that deserve it instead of moderating down those that abuse the system.
But, this makes slashdot more exclusive rather than inclusive, and I really don't know CmdrTaco's aim for slashdot.
-Adam
And don't even ask my my opinion on the so called "HellMouth stories".
The only good reason I know of to have AC is that it allows people to say things without most of the fear of legal repercussions. We've had lots of good inside info about companies which we could not have gotten otherwise.
How about we make it harder for you:
Registered users only can post ACs. Their AC post starts out at 1 degree lower than a regular post would (my normal is +1, so my ACs would be 1. Many users would have 0 AC posts) A user could not post AC posts until they have been a user for at least a week and/or they have a karma 5 points above the default karma given to new users.
This would take care of the majority of the crud that appears in many of these channels. The opportunity to post anonymously would become a priveledge, not a right (as it is now). This is restrictive, but I haven't seen any good AC posts which couldn't have been made using the above system.
-Adam
Campaign to regulate Abusive Chatterbox(AC) comments on Slashdot!
Leaving the country en masse? Don't be silly, it'll take at least a month to process each application for exit visas. Seriously, as long as the process is gradual, most people will not notice, or care about a decent into facism.
Intolerant people should be shot.
I connect to the internet via DSL. I connect to a machine in a datacenter in NYC via ssh. I tunnel through that connection, and using a connect() wrapper, appear to always be surfing the web from this NYC machine. several other people do the same thing with NYC-box. we're anonymous in that the NYC-box doesnt keep logs, and any traffic originating from this NYC-box could be any one of us. the more of us there are, the more anonymous we become.
Sure, the telco knows im connecting to the box in NYC, but they dont know whether I'm downloading questionable material as long as they cant compromise ssh, my local machine, or the NYC machine.
what's mythical about that?
Can't you have it both ways? You have to have a login, but you can check "post this item anonymously". Slashdot records who posts an item anon. (dammit! I can't ever spell that word. It NEVER looks right!), and that way could threaten to close accounts that are abused.....
I just thought of the problem with THAT. folks could just keep creating accounts ad nauseum... maybe "posting anon." is only an option for folks who get above a certain karma level?
---
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
There is a need for privacy and freedom on the internet.
Today, at least in the united states of america, there is no law preventing me from collecting and redistibuting a digital biography on any persons activity in the comunity. This data may consist of seemingly irrelevant facts about you and your daily life, but distrobution of this data, or tracking data, has value to the right person in the right market.
The cost of keeping, maintaining and distrubuting this data falls every year, and the laws to address this problem continue to be ignored. As tracking data continues to be collected without the expressed consent of the person being tracked, what is a person to do?
Opt out. Remain anonymous when possible. This is the only tool a person has against keeping bad information from proliforating without his or her consent. There is no legal recourse for an individual whos tracking data is incorrect, incomplete, or patently false. There is also no legal recourse for an individual to try and stop the distrobution of this data. One's only hope is to keep it to a minimum.
I favor laws asking companies to ask the consent of the user before collecting and redistributing tracking data. I favor laws giving the user an oportunity to view and dispute the data being collected about her. When these laws are in place, I'll gladly use my G(lobaly) U(nique)ID(denification) with confedence that I have legal recourse to protect my digital biography. Intill then, anonymity is the only tool.
___
Actually, I live in fear of the people with the guns - both in the government, and civilians. Even if I had a gun, I would still be in fear of them - and they might be in fear of me.
I would prefer that neither had guns, then it would be more difficult to hurt each other. Unfortunately, due to the "prisoner's dilemma"-type situation, if any party has a gun, then to maintain the balance of power, the OTHER parties have to have guns. Then everyone sits around waiting for each other to pull the trigger - and sooner or later, some crazy will.
From what I've read, I'd agree with this. I also think, however, that handing a centralized authority the ability to monitor EVERYone's behavior is not the best way to handle these cases. The preferable way to handle situation is through DISTRIBUTED monitor & enforcement - e.g., training the members of your society to make rational judgements about the health of the others they are interacting with, and to be able to respond in ways that will improve their health, or to protect society from danger.
Any centralized law enforcement organization has the possibility of being corrupted.
True, but when the MASSES have been "corrupted" with propaganda, then they are doing what they "want" to do (even if what they want to do has been influenced by the propaganda).
As far as the mass monitoring is concerned, you will note that I did *NOT* state that the information being collected by the society's individuals go back to some kind of central agency - the means of enforcement must ALSO be distributed. The examples you mention above assume that a centralized organization is using the "masses" solely for monitoring purposes, but keeping the control for themselves.
The whole point is to distribute both monitoring & reaction decisions throughout the fabric of the society. There must be NO centralized point of control, and the "rules" of the society should be set up to resist any attempts to create such a point of control.
With this kind of system, altho there will probably be great diversity (and frustration for ppl traveling outside of their niche), any changes in the functioning of the society must be carried out by the members of the society, and must therefore be accepted by the members of the society, instead of delegating the responsibility for societal functions to centralized organizations which can be corrupted.
A valid point - in a distributed environment, where each person is only really aware of those people that he or she immediately interacts with, they can only really protect themselves from such activity by cooperating with each other to "watch each other's back". If a stranger comes into the community, then they are going to be watched extremely closely by the members of that community before they are accepted.
On the negative side, if the "distributed" society becomes stagnant (e.g., elements of the society are not being exposed to new ideas on a regular basis), then there is a high potential for severe xenophobia (for example, the stereotypical response of small towns in the USA Deep South before mass media became such a pervasive influence).
The system probably needs some kind of underlying "idea churn" - a low-level, chaotic element which makes sure that the elements of the society don't enter statis. (Actually, travelers, and yes, criminals, might actually be part of this churn process.)
I could prob. BS a little more social engineering, but I'm running on 8 hours sleep in the last week, my last brain cell is shutting down, and it took me 5 minutes to type the last sentence.
> But that just doesn't happen anymore - it's all
:)
> just spam like the "first post-a-lizer" and oher
> crap.
Personally, I very rarely post AC (I have on ocasion). I like that the option is there. It would allow me to post things that I would not normally feel comfortable posting under my name becasuse things I say could be traced to real people, other than myself. (people I know whose
story I am relating etc).
Yea, there is alot of stupid spam, but its hardly
so much that it really gets in the way of discussion. I tend to think it gets allot more attention than it deserves.
> if you don't like it, well, it *is* my site
> after all,
Very true. You have the right to do whatever you wish, including getting rid of AC, closing the site, or changing it to a porn site.
Hell if it were my site, I woudn't have logins at
all, I would get rid of moderation, and take steps to make sure that even I couldn't remove or modify posts. (as it is I am planning to setup an IRC server that has no concept of ops and no way for the admin to kick or ban people in any way)...but, thats just how _I_ like to do things
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
I understand the view that anonymity is not as important as privacy. Law enforcement agencies would obviously rather have things handed to them than to have to work for them. In a perfect world (for them), they could trace and locate someone at the click of a button. Unfortunately, that wouldn't be too much fun for those of us who are trying to enjoy our "privacy."
There's little enough privacy as it is. Do we really need to lessen it?
Got Rhinos?
Well, after falling for this, I checked it out, and it seems like it's just a person who figured out a way to impersonate taco... view the source.
A HREF="mailto:malda@slashdot.org">CmdrTaco
-- Dr. Eldarion --
It's not what it is, it's something else.
Well, I have to say that's both a good and incredibly stupid idea. It would be nice not to have to read the "F1R57 P057" crap and other stuff like "taco's mom is a wh0re!", but what happens to the people who are sharing information and need to know that it can't be traced back to them?
/. keep track of which account it is posted from" and "Well, you could always ban IPs if people create a problem..." These are much bigger threats to privacy, though. If you're keeping track of what comments we post anonymously, and also have our IP, what happens when some lawyers come knocking at the door demanding that the information be released? What happens of a court makes you release it?
Will getting rid of AC solve ANYTHING about the situation? People can create a new account rather easily.
When these ideas are brought up, suggestions come in like, "Allow the post to be anon to viewers, but still have
It seems that the easiest thing to do would be to just leave AC as it is, but modify moderation in a way where the crap could be weeded out while not sacrificing points you could use to moderate the good stuff up. Maybe separate 'up' and 'down' moderation points?
-- Dr. Eldarion --
It's not what it is, it's something else.
For some reason (I don't know why) the User Info link still sent you to the real CmdrTaco User information page.
Nice hack but they've fixed it now. Quick going, eh?
take a triptonica to subthunk
Kids introducing their online friends to new music are not "pirates." Congress long has known how to address willful commercial copyright infringement through the Copyright Act, and only recently has clarified the definition of and amplified the penalties for such commercial misconduct. By contrast, for more than 20 years Congress has declined to deem personal music uses as "piracy," and there is no reason to do so now.
While you, people, are discussing the ramifications of elimination of anonymity on the Internet, which I must say I find amusing in a way, I just wanted to remind you that you actually never really had anonymity on the first place.
From the Arpa project and the first BBSs to the latest ISPs and various so-called anonymous services the Internet was always ruled by centralized systems that became more and more dispersed, however I claim that there is no anonymity on the web right now. The only way to really become anonymous is not to own your own Internet connection, not to be registered with any ISP and not to have any computer accounts on any systems. - This is the base case - Maximum Internet Anonymity - it is only possible if y ou are not on the Internet.
There are other ways of-course most of which are considered somewhat illegal or at best immoral.
Using someone else computer account is illegal on some systems, dissallowed on most. Setting trap doors and trojans is mostly illegal, spreading computer viruses is illegal.
Someone might think that such tools as Anonymizer, Gnutella or FreeNet make one completely anonymous on the Internet, but they really do not. Anonymizer (www.anonymizer.com) still has information about your connections, Gnutella protocol can be penetrated and so can FreeNet even if polymorphic protocols with encryption are introduced - there can always be someone sitting for the fun of it (at best) and getting Gnutella or FreeNet or Hotline user IPs.
The question becomes - do we really want to have Laws that prohibit any anonymity on the Internet? I don't think that these laws have merit, I believe that if society is so much afraid of its members and it feels that Laws like that must be established, then the society does not deserve to continue its existense.
You can't handle the truth.
How did they manage to kill Cnet? Based on some of the other articles I have read on this, I don't quite get it. How can you have privacy without anonmitity? I mean if companies were honest, it might be possible, but from what I have seen, if you are not anonymous you can forget about privacy. Companies will say they are respecting your privacy while tracking everything you do. Then act shocked when confronted witht he fact that tracking everything you do is inconstistant with privacy. "What do you mean... We totally respect your privacy.. we just want to make money off of targeted ads... how is that not private?"
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
So, who was Deep Throat? Why is it every time someone speaks out against the government or the big corps from inside they speak on the condition of anonymity? I don't see the mainstream press being forced not to take anonymous sources.
Kiddie porn and warez, even "terrorism," (which is fine when the government perpetuates it but not fine when ordinary citizens engage in anything that could remotely be construed as it, including going into hiding from said government) are nothing but big boogiemen.
The killing of anonymity is something that big governments and corporations want so that they can more easily persecute people for their viewpoints. After all, once you know who is leaking inflammatory memos your CEO writes saying that your product should be made to destroy other companies (for example), you can fire them for something else, or otherwise make things very difficult, even if you don't just fire them for, say, leaking proprietary information?
The spectre of a world in which people are not allowed to think and share ideas is much worse than any of these other threats.
The whole reason that the internet is so empowering is that it allows theordinary person equal footing. On the internet, no one knows that you are a dog. Your writing will be judged by what it is, not on the fact that you are actually Joe the Plumber. The fact that your company is based in your living room and run by you and your wife does not prevent people from buying your products if they are good.
Most importantly, you can speak your mind on the net and then go to work the next day and have a job. Something that might not happen if you say the wrong thing and it is attributed to you as a real-life person.
There is no fine line between anonymity and privacy. In today's world, where a prosecutor can subpoaena your reading habits from barnes and noble, your eating habits from the grocery store (and why did you buy all that vaseline?), your email is read on a regular basis and kept forever, SOME FORM OF ANONYMITY is the only way you can express something and have it be private.
Actually, a decision at the federal level stated that you in fact only need to carry your identification on you when you are driving. I won't even get started on how ridiculous the law is related to driving and automobiles.
Also, the police are restricted from searching your person when on the street for anything but weapons. This doesn't, of course, stop them from taking you to jail for the suspicion of carrying an illegal substance, but it's better than nothing. The rules of evidence say that if they find something illegal on you that isn't a weapon while searching for weapons, then they have engaged in an illegal search and they can claim it as contraband, but they cannot arrest you for it. Sometimes they do, and you have to make a call to the ACLU.
One final note on how the law is different with regards to your car is that according to some interpretations, exiting your car and not locking it indicates a willingness to allow the police to search your car, without a warrant. Hence, if you are asked to step out of the car, roll up the window and lock your doors. In any case, without a warrant, the police are not allowed to search your car without your permission. You have more rights than you may know.
Just remember, you cannot be arrested for failing to show ID to a police officer when requested (Even if arrested!) UNLESS you are driving OR a passenger in a car. If you are under the age of 18, you are exempt from that requirement unless you are the DRIVER of a car; You need not carry one while on foot.
Finally, if you are not a legal resident of the United States, none of this is true.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I think it's a bad idea. An AC by any other name is still an AC.
If you force people to log in to post, you may cut down on some of the spam, but since the spammers that stick around will have to log in to post also, you'll then have ACs posting at 1 instead of 0, thereby lessening the current value of logging in to post.
Also, there is a certain value to being able to voice your opinion without fear of repercussions. Don't let the trolls and flamers take away that privilege from intelligent users.
-Tommy
------
"I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday."
"I got a half gallon of Jack, and 2 dozen Ant Traps. I'm about to get wild." -me
As for the postings of AC, it's a real pain to have to register before testing something out. But, the trolling is also a big nuisance. So who do you want to piss off more: new users and trolls or your regular posters and readers?
-- Diana Hsieh
-- Diana Hsieh
GeekPress: The Weirder Side of Tech News
In an ideal world, anonymity in not necessary in order to have privacy. Even though identifying information would be available, it is possible for people not to use it for personal or commercial purposes. The one factor that my "ideal world" scenario does not take into account is the value of identifying information.
If you stumble across a $100 bill on your way to work, would you pick it up? Even if you knew, at the back of your mind that somebody will probably be looking for it? With personal information floating in the information ether, companies would be hard pressed *not* to amass database of identifying information. If just one company decides to amass a large database of personal information without individual consent (picking up the $100 bill in the example), the possibility for abuse exists. As individuals and consumers, we have a responsibility to protect ourselves from this abuse through the use of anonymity.
ByteMyCode.com: A Web 2.0 code sharing community.
Actually, the first amendment is constantly attacked from both the right and the left. Remember Tipper Gore's crusade against dirty lyrics in music? I suspect that at the moment, more censorship attempts come from the right than from the left because the right is currently ascendant.
For lots of examples, I highly recommend Nat Hentoff's book Free Speech for Me--But Not for Thee: How the American Left and Right Relentlessly Censor Each Other. (Unfortunately out of print--check your favorite library or out-of-print-book-finding service.)
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
I can understand why some people would want to eliminate / reduce the anonymity of the internet, but I think doing so at the risk of losing privacy would be a big mistake. Sure, you might catch some criminals, but I'm sure this would just be exploited to the point where people would be tracked for engaging in harmless activities (looking at homosexual porn, downloading pirated music, what have you) because the practice happens to be illegal (sure, homosexuality isn't illegal in all states, but you get my point), rather than going after serious criminals (like child pornographers). Yes, you might think that law enforcement would only track serious criminals, but think about it ... do you think cops spend more money, time, and manpower looking for murderers, rapists and other serious criminals, or for people who break the speed limit?
Smell the GeekFlavor.
First off, it is NOT the goal of ever organism to survive. There are plenty of examples of organisms which put the survival of the species, and sometimes even the BETTERMENT of the species over and above individual survival. (Prarie dogs and Bottlenose Dolphins are two such species. "Experts" have had a hard time understanding them, because it's "not natural to not be a self-centered bigot". Sorry, but self-centered bigotry has a much worse survival rating, over the long term, than caring and working for the whole.)
Secondly, the price of freedom is NOT "having to listen to other's opinions". That's why we've got filters. Freedom to speak is NOT equal to an obligation to hear. If anything, it's the reverse. The more we can filter out the crap, and concentrate on the useful, the more time we have to speak! Without boundaries, there is no freedom, because there is no choice.
Now, back to the topic at hand. Privacy versus anonymity. I don't see that there's a conflict. The only way to be truly private is to restrict access to information. Your identity is information. Therefore, anonymity REQUIRES privacy, to be enforced. Privacy, likewise, REQUIRES that anonymity be an option. If it weren't, then whatever you transmit can be traced to you, and privacy is lost.
People mention law enforcement, as though it was some kind of Holy Grail. Sorry, but if law enforcement officers are so incompetent that they have to rely on the villains handing them the evidence, they've no business enforcing anything. Take a child abuser - the typical sort of target the Law Enforcement agencies are claiming to want to catch. If a person is capable of abusing a child, both they and the child will stand out a mile. It is impossible for abusers to act like other people.
(This is NOT the same as the "profiling" gumph that Pinkerton threw out. It is possible to be different and yet have a strong empathy for other people. It is NOT possible for an abuser, thief, axe-wielding maniac, etc, to have that same empathy. If they had, they couldn't do what they do.)
But, instead of looking for what Scott Peck calls "People of the Lie", the agencies would rather sit on their backsides and get paid for drinking coffee & screwing their secretaries. Maybe they fear that too many of them would show up positive if they implemented such a program. From their attitude, I couldn't disagree with that.
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)
People forget that the US postal system has always allowed anoymous mailing. This has allowed people like the Unibomber to commit some terrible crimes. They do have people that monitor and try to intercept some things (kiddie pron, etc.) but pretty much anyone can send illegal material by snail mail completely anonymously.
The problem is picking up packages anonymously. You could get a PO box, but those can be monitored easily.
At least there is a way to allow anonymous publishing of material.
Gee, I never realized that there were bracketed clauses inserted into the 2nd Amendment. Funny how no one but you has noticed them for over 200 years.
_MY_ copy of the 2nd amendment reads: A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.
Now then. In 18th century English 'well regulated' roughly means 'well maintained' or 'competent.' Thus, a well-regulated militia means one that knows how to use their weapons, and/or where the weapons are in a state of good repair. It has nothing to do with a chain of command.
Militias are composed of any able-bodied person who can serve in them. Virtually everyone in the US is implicitly a member of their state's militia. The National Guard is not a replacement for this. It is more of a supplement on the one hand, but remember we're talking explicitly about STATE militias, and not the Federal military, so in that respect the National Guard doesn't count very much. (While organized by state, that means nothing. Until WW1 most army divisions were raised from states. Which is why in the Civil War you had units like the 12th Pennsylvania Cavalry, or whatnot.)
But here's where you make your biggest blunder. You assume, erroneously, that only militias, or the National Guard, or the Military have the right to bear arms. It very clearly states, 'the right of the people.'
The 2nd Amendment does NOT read: "The right of well-regulated Militias to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
It does NOT read: "The right of the Army and Navy to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
It does NOT read: "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall be regulated."
You seem to find a million hidden meanings in a very simple 2 clause sentence. Perhaps you should work in the field of data compression. I'd like to be able to expand a single bit into the OED without needing to transfer anything else.
Have you considered the ultimate use of the 2nd Amendment? Let's go back to that 'defense of a free state' bit. The framers of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights did not trust their creation. They were human. They were fallible. The government they made was not perfect and they were well aware of it. But they did know that it is more important for people to be free than it is for the United States of America to exist. When these two conflict (and don't be a dope - we all know that we must make a sacrifice of the most miniscule parts of our freedom in order to continue to exercise the others) freedom must trump the government.
The people have arms, without being required to be in the militia, though they can call pretty much any organization they like a militia; without being required to be in the formal military; without having to be in favor with the government. Because just as the founders of this nation rebelled against THEIR government, so may the people one day have to rise up against the US Government.
Freedom is more important than the US. The US is just a name basically.
Now I hope to God that it never does come to this. The government serves the people, derives any claim to legitimacy it has from the consent of the people, and no government anywhere, ever has the right to infringe on the freedoms of the people any more than is absolutely necessary. Tyrants can disguise themselves as members of democracies, republics, monarchies, communes, etc. but their guise does not erase the need for the people under their thumb to be free.
I am 100% unwilling to bet my freedom and the freedom of countless generations after me on the continued good will of the government. This is one of the most important reasons (though not the only one) for which I support the 2nd Amendment. History shows us, sadly, that good governments do not last. Good governments may arise in the place where bad ones once stood, but you would have us foolishly throw away the means by which bad governments are felled to make room for good.
It must be nice to be a Pollyanna. I hope you enjoy it.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
What do you want us to use? Harsh language?
Guerilla warfare *is* feasable as long as the opposing side can't tell the difference between civilians and guerillas and doesn't want to kill off the civilians.
Vietnam and Afghanistan are rather good examples of successful guerilla war, though there were other forces at work as well (enemies of the would-be conquerer helping the conquered)
An oppressive government is more likely to want to rule the people who live there, rather than have to replace them with people from somewhere else.
Besides, even in 1776 hunting muskets were insufficient to fight the British. The Americans bought, stole and borrowed heavier armaments like cannon whenever they could.
So fortunately (another example of thinking ahead) the US military is sworn to uphold the Constitution and protect it from all enemies foreign and domestic. If the President ordered the army to kill everyone in Montana it's debatable what they would do. Most likely, in a situation in which the populace or a significant fraction therof rebelled, the military would be divided in their loyalties. We've already seen this during the Civil War.
So it still makes sense for people to have arms for the purpose of fighting against the government. But there is no explicit reason why people MUST bear arms - simply that if they want to be free they had better be willing to defend themselves, when necessary, from those who wish to infringe upon those freedoms.
To say that the 2nd Amendment is ONLY good in protecting the right to keep and bear arms in the defense of a free state is like saying that the freedom of speech only protects political speech. (which has been argued before) Neither is true.
People have a natural right to defend their freedom. Do you believe that this is not true - that people must always submit to those who want to rule them?
Freedom is dangerous bucko - free speech is objectionable, free religion is heretical, free assembly can lead to violence or conspiracy, privacy from the government can permit crime to occur. I'm willing to take those risks and be free. I'm not excusing criminal behavior, but I'm not going to give away the rights that I derive from my very existance for the 'safety' you would rather have.
Besides, we live in the real world - would you really be safe? No. People who want to kill will still do so. It's sad that accidents happen, but perhaps education would be better; it works for cars. I would have taken Firearms Ed in high school.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
The constitution was written at a time when firearms were hand-made and unreliable. The term "well-regulated" referred to the firearms themselves, not to the militia. A well-regulated firearm is one that is kept in good working order, like a "well-regulated clock."
The militia was, at the time, defined as the available pool of adult, male citizens who possessed firearms -- NOT a standing army like the military or the national guard.
The founders abhorred the concept of a standing army. In fact, the constitution does not allow for a standing army. The authors of the constitution had just overthrown their own government -- the British government, and were well aware of the danger of having a standing army. The founders intended that the ordinary citizens possess the power to defend themselves, not only against foreign enemies, but against their own government if necessary.
A modern translation of the amendment would be, "Because it is necessary that the citizens be able to personally defend their freedom, and because it is necessary to ensure that the citizens have working weapons to do so, the government may not interfere with private gun ownership.
Saying that the 2nd amendment provides for gun control completely turns the intent of the amendment on its head.
The reason our society is violent isn't because of the guns. It's mostly because we are living under drug prohibition -- which has progressed farther and destroyed more of our freedom then alcohol prohibition ever did, and because the government is actively waging a civil war -- the drug war -- against its own people. Violence is the natural result of prohibition and the black markets it creates.
Well, the problem here is a very blurred line between privacy and being anonymous.
Some may say you don't have a right to publish information anonymously (ie posting to slashdot as AC). While I don't know why they would want to take away a freedom that we enjoy in meatspace from the cyberspace folks, I can see the reasoning behind this (copyright violations, slander, etc). Plus, this is not really a privacy issue.
Well, along with this comes the ability to not only trace public information postings, but also track online activites (you have to track online activited to catch the 'anonymous' posters). So who's to stop the government from going even further and 'profiling' a person's online habits to determine the possibility this person may be doing something illegal.
At this point we are deeply into privacy issues. Sure it sounds like a jump at first to go from outlawing anonymous speech to online monitoring, but it's not that far fetched if you think about it.
Make no mistake about it, the government would love to be able to listen to every conversation, log every online user, and have access to every letter. Not for some wacko conspiricy theory, just "for our own good" and to "protect the public".
Eliminating anonymous speech would be my first step also.
The government for some reason doesn't understand that power corrupts. Sure all of this monitoring would be used for good and noble purposes (subjectivly speaking), but it's human nature that with that much power, there would be abuses.
Finkployd
Still I think that the Post Anonymously option should be kept for those who are logged in.
Absolutely. To post, you should be logged in, but have the option of hiding your info from the world. If your login ID abuses the system too much (judged by downward moderations), then it should be disabled, or automagically adjusted to -1 for a day or so.
---
---
"Go Metallica. Die RIAA." -- Linus Torvalds
"First, take away the guns from all law abiding people - now they can't hurt each other, or better yet let's use the media to teach the common person how evil guns are."
*Bullshit*
"Amendment II
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."
Note: A _WELL_ _REGULATED_ _MILITIA_, [in its function of] being necessary to the security of a free state, [confers] the right of the people to keep and bear arms...
It is clear that the second amendment was intended, in a time when we had no free standing army, to allow a militia for the defense of the nation, and HENCE the right of the people to keep and bear arms to the extent required for said militia. The right of people to keep and bear arms is ONLY a CONSEQUENCE, and is CONTIGENT UPON, having a militia.
We have no militia. We have a free standing army. Which is well trained and well armed. That it is our God-given right to tote around guns for the sheer pleasure of doing so is a fantasy fabricated by the NRA and gun lobby, so that they can make people feel good, nay, MORAL, in holding up their "responsibility" as citizens.
Unless you are shooting a clay disk or bottle, or hunting some animal (for pure sport itself an activity of questionable ethics) guns ARE evil. Bombs ARE evil. Devices intended to kill people and things in general ARE evil. The media is not the one to confer these values to people, but still, the "common person" SHOULD be aware that these are generally "bad" things.
However, since most Americans believe it is their right to arbitrary own guns, the society for the most part plays along. In fact, of all things that it would seem should be extremely regulated, guns are regulated very little, if at all (despite the fact that the second amendment says "WELL REGULATED"). Toys for children go through intense scrutiny...but the gun they pick up and blow their heads off with goes through none.
"Second, let's make certain that we again use the media to educate the common man and tell them how infinately small and insignificant they are, and tell them they don't have the right to privacy."
Oh please. Stop charging your argument by attempting to link gun control with privacy. Since when has owning a gun lead to a social good? Does owning a gun confer freedom of speech or expression or religion? Having a right to privacy, and the freedoms that spring from it are not comparable with the "right" to own a gun. No freedoms spring from owning a gun, and a gun won't protect your freedoms (yeah, I'm so sure you're going to take on the entire military and police establishment by yourself with your magnum like some lone cowboy).
"Heston on Dateline the other day, he referred to Benjamin Franklin when someone asked "what kind of government have you given us?" - and when he replied "a democracy - if you keep it"."
Hmm...I suppose the gun lobby is actually trying to "keep" the democracy by dumping tons of lobbying money into the government. Sorry I was confused about that. Funny how this special interest has managed to stifle the voice of the vast majority of citizens for so long. Yes, please, let's have democracy. It certainly won't be in the gun lobby's favor.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Sorry, I don't understand why many US citizens are so fascination with weapons (about 20 lines of my rant deleted) but in stark contrast to weapons anonymity has more defensive character, forbidding it is more like forbidding kevlar vests, because with em you might raid a bank without the government being able to shoot you.
The bogus thing about most arguments against anonymity is, that the people who really want it (the big bad mafiaboss planning to soak america in cocaine) will still have it, there are too many ways on the net to become anonymous by redirecting information, if i want to hide the source i redirect the information often enough, if i wnat to hide the recipicient i encrypt it and send it to some newsgroup.
So a government will always have a hard time explaining to citizens who think a little about it why anonymity must be forbidden, the catch is they don't need to do this, since most citizens don't stop to think about it, even most politicians don't, it's much easier to listen to the big industry and reiterate their phrases.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
Vernor Vinge, a personal favorite Science Fiction author of mine, predicted the problems with Anonymity vs. Privacy in a networked world in his short story True Names. This short story is collected in the anthology True Names and Other Dangers in 1987, but I think the short story True Names predates that collection by several years.
I really enjoy Vernor Vinge. Being a Comp. Sci. Professor helps him get the tech "right", which I enjoy in Science Fiction.
-Jordan Henderson
The anonymity and more importantly the privacy of the Internet denies an essential element to the survival of any goverment: the ability to tax its citizens.
The internet enables people to conduct commerce, both internationally and domestically without a nation's government being able to monitor exchanges, and thus determine who can be taxed what.
It is quite ironic though that if national governments do fall due to being unable to tax, then who is left to maintain the same communication networks that bought governments down in the first place?
-- "I can't tell the future, I just work there." -- The Doctor
As it is difficult to defeat a knowledgable citizenry without the use of arms, every government bent on maintaining itself as a parasite on its people will try to regulate (and perhaps eventually, eliminate) access to the Internet.
Eliminate it? I don't know. That's going a little far. I'd think that any country that eliminated access to the Internet would have some serious problems with it's citizens... either mass riots and whatnot, or everyone leaving the country and going to one that allows them access.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
It's not what it is, it's something else.
Loose your anomynity and they promise to stop crime.
Try to be anonymous and you're a criminal.
#!/don/carnage
--
Wooden armaments to battle your imaginary foes!
Actually, having a handle is significantly less anonymous in the context of this forum (than ACs are). Moderation is performed, karma is ascribed, and one's reputation is formed. To some people, their public persona is of the utmost importance. To others, it does not mean squat. That difference is reflected in their posting scores, and their ability to affect moderation on others.
No, you really cannot pin down someone's true identity through the handle. This "anonymity" is proportional to the amount of "damage" that can be done through their speech; it is extremely unlikely that words on Slashdot are going to do more harm than good IMHO.
-L
I can't get to CNET, so I haven't read the article.
But when have we ever really been anonymous on the internet?
Working in the telecommunications field, I can tell you that hardware/software exists that can, should someone want to, track every call from your house to an ISP, and print it out in a neat little list.
Compare that with the server logs at the ISP and we can associate name with IP.
When you've got a name/IP association, you are no longer anonymous.
Now, i have no idea about any laws governing this kind of thing, but regardless of laws... If it's possible to do, someone is doing it.
It becomes even easier when your ISP is your phone company (SWBell, Spring, AT&T) as most of the new broadband technologies seem to be.
Anonymity is a myth.
I will repeat - if it's possible to do, someone is doing it. And once it's been done, no court of law can undo it.
wish
---
$ su
who are you?
$ whoami
whoami: no login associated with uid 1010.
Then you must be PRO kiddie porn.
At least this is how issues like this are turned into law in congress. Worst case scenarios of how anonymity can be abused are invented, portrayed as "this could happen to your kids", and then legislators must then vote on the basis of either being for this or against this. Classic spin tactics. (Like the "million" mom march that wasn't even 10% of that.)
A free person should be able to walk the streets in anonymity. I would like to see the same principle applied to the internet.
Interestingly, the United States, the preachiest of the "free" countries, doesn't seem to respect this principle. After moving there for a few years I was shocked to discover that one is expected to carry ID at all times. I was told that I risked being being treated as a vagrant, etc, by the police if I couldn't produce ID on demand. Hmmm, sounds like an authoritarian police state to me.
I don't know how any one government could force anonymity on the web: it's an international system. I certainly hope that they don't try. The internet isn't fully understood by enough of the population for such decisions to be made: this will effect everybodies lives in the future. Only in the future will the implications of such actions be more fully understood by the populace, by which time it might be too late
Perhaps one ought to stop worrying about the terms "anonymity" and "privacy" and wonder about the role of "identity" instead.
;) and you might find that either it's an organization where more than one 'real live human' knows the secret-key password or it's been compromised...
.|` Clouds cross the black moonlight,
The thing is, the use of a GPG or PGP key does not say "everything signed by this key is written by PigleT"; it says "there is a creature called PigleT who's applied a signature to a document". The nature of this creature is debatable - you have to find some way of pinning it down to the same chap who pays his taxes at a given address (or in criminal cases, doesn't pay...
The thing I'm driving at is that people have multiple identities: there's one of me that types this here, potentially "another me" who you get to know by verifying one signed document, potentially another for another signing key... you have to piece them together like a daisy-chain to prove "identity".
Anonymity is defined as using one identity with no chains off to other identities.
Privacy is limitation of knowlege of a particular set of data to a restricted set of identites. (E.g. PigleT on his own; MyOrganization.co.uk; or "my private key and your private key, babe" or whatever.)
Anonymity is a good thing to be able to use at will. If an idea needs expressed but doesn't want to be traceable for some reason, it should be possible.
Privacy is also essential. I just don't *want* the US or any other government poking its snout in my life - and I don't have anything particular to hide, either.
~Tim
--
~Tim
--
Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
There seems to be this assumption that the laws we have today are the right laws to have from now until hell freezes over. If this is what you believe, then of course you want to see all law breakers prosecuted. If not, you will realize that civil disobedience and protest are an essental part of a democratic society and much easier if one can be anonymous.
As more people realize the oppresive nature of intellectual property laws, they are going to want to change them. This scares the hell out of corporations and hence they want to see all such individuals silenced and jailed. This is much easier to do if anominity is non-existant.
When there is inequality in any system, being able to strike bat at the opressors without being caught is important. If I were to describe a place where everything you say or do is monitored- where you have no shield against your oppressors- what comes to mind? Nazi Germany where neighbors were encourages to report their neighbors? Communist Russia where saying the wrong thing could have sent you to a Siberian Gulag? Communist China where reporting the truth could have you put in jail? Anonymity is sometimes our only sheild from tyranny.
There are prices we pay for freedom.
A price for freedom of speech is having to listen to opinions we do not like.
A price for the ability to protect ourselves from an oppressive government is having to protect ourselves from each other.
A price for a person to be secure in their person and things is the loss of control of what people do with their persons and things. This applies to the current situation. With the right to be secure in my person and things, I can get away with doing almost anything. This creates a fundamental problem in a free society in which corporations want to control what happens with their product AFTER possession is taken of it. (There is another analogy in a certain war the US government has been losing for 30 years, but leave that for now).
Personally, I value the right to privacy more than I value the right of the copyright owners to be secure in the "free" sharing of their copyrights. Invasion of privacy is no solution to the problem.
Let's all live in fear my friends! Because a crime can happen by the few, let's make certain that the many have no methods of privacy, protection, or overall peace. Because we think we can do better, let's force everyone else to do the same.
Rubbish, this flawed logic irritates the hell out of me.
This is how it really is:
First, take away the guns from all law abiding people - now they can't hurt each other, or better yet let's use the media to teach the common person how evil guns are. Second, let's make certain that we again use the media to educate the common man and tell them how infinately small and insignificant they are, and tell them they don't have the right to privacy. You DO know that individual freedoms are always compromised at the expense of the greater good. Third make sure -- well sure that you please them just enough to get re-elected (such as in Washingon State's i695
This is mostly the corrupt government's fault - but I would charge the reason that it exists on the American voter. We don't vote, don't care, or vote for who everyone else votes for. Very few people take the time to think critically that actually *do* vote - most of these people go off of gut feeling, or "moral" beliefs. Disgusting isn't it? As I was listening to C. Heston on Dateline the other day, he referred to Benjamin Franklin when someone asked "what kind of government have you given us?" - and when he replied "a democracy - if you keep it".
To the chagrin of those who would control us [the government], time and time again the US Supreme Court has upheld the right to publish anonymously. This also includes the right to read anonymously. Much of the "Federalist Papers" were published anonymously for fear of reprisal.
Anonymity [in spite of it's pejorative connotation] is nothing more than a stronger form of privacy. Privacy is the right not to be snooped "at home". Anonymity is basically the right to make snooping impossible "in public". If everybody followed certain confidentiality rules, you might be able have privacy without anonymity. If people don't follow the rules, then the only privacy _is_ in anonymity.
Since rules are always broken, skirted, loopholed or otherwise compromised by interested parties, the only safe privacy is through anonymity.
Hogwash, ladies and gentlemen.
The goal of any organization is, first and foremost, continued survival. Beyond a certain point, organizations take on characteristics of living things: they consume, they repair damage, they grow. They also defend themselves against perceived threats.
Governments (and large corporations, but it's really the same story) everywhere in the industrialized world realize that the Internet is a powerful weapon against them if they choose to deprive their citizens of freedom. The Internet is an excellent medium for dissemination of information and collection of same. As it is difficult to defeat a knowledgable citizenry without the use of arms, every government bent on maintaining itself as a parasite on its people will try to regulate (and perhaps eventually, eliminate) access to the Internet.
The era of thoughtcrime and the Ministry of Love is not far away, if we do not do something about this now. Remember this: your government may not have your best interests at heart. Realize this and act accordingly.
www.alarmist.org