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Anonymous Posting Not Protected
jconley writes: "Excite News is carrying this story that indicates that anonymous posting on the Internet is not protected, and subpeonas can be issued to ISPs to expose the poster. Just one of a lot of cases, but still scary." Courts aren't very good at seeing any value in anonymity.
Yes, it is a crime to make threats and it would e nice to be able to enforce that law on the internet too, but there are many many legitimate uses for anonymity (like people in repressive countries who want to run a website in the U.S. --- the U.S. government has been known to harass and even kill U.S. citizens as a favor to some U.S. friendly dictator).
Personally, I think that anonymous threats are a small enough problem that we should sacrafice being able to enforce them to enshure that we have real anonyimity when we need it, but I'm not exactly running an abortion clinic, so I don't advocate this that strongly.
The truth of the matter is that we will always need to work to be truely anonymous (this just influences how hard we must work), so we should try to make shure that the "good people" know how to be anonymous.
Example: If an ISP is contacted by a group who want anonymous hosting and deserves it then they ISP should do the following: Do not let the people who want to run the site tell ANYONE atthe ISP who they are. The ISP should go find some U.S. citizen who is willing to pay for the site, so this can not be traced to the site. The ISP should set up a way for the site to be maintained without making any logs. Finally, the ISP needs to set up some sort of dead man switch where the people who run the site will know if an investigation begins. Now, the ISP can get in trouble for letting the site maintainers know that their site is being watched, but it may be worth it to protect the maintainers. This is not perfect, but it goes a LONG way towards truely anonymous hosting.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
I have not heard about specific examples of the U.S. killing a U.S. citizen within ?U.S. borders, but there are some pretty clear cut cases of the U.S. doing things to U.S. citizens who opposed Pinochet's coup in Chile. I don't think that U.S. troops really killed U.S. citizens, but the state department ordered the U.S. ambasador to leave U.S. citizens in Pinochet's custody to be killed. the French ambasador (for example) simply asked for the return of the French citizens and Pinochet's people complied. The following sources do not really talk about this, but they should give you the names of the people involved:
c h1905.htm
9 7_hrp_report/chile.html
http://www.tni.org/campaigns/pinochet/watch/wat
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/dest/sam/chile.htm
http://www.state.gov/www/global/human_rights/19
Anyway, there are going to be lots of situations where the U.S. aidded a foreign power (maybe just promissing to not investigate) in murdering a U.S. citizen who was active in another country (there have been a few in the middle east too), but I do not know about any off the top of my head where U.S. troops actually murdered U.S. citizens because of something they were doing in another country.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
But, you cannot determine if the person actually defamed without being able to determine the knowledge of that person. To defame, you must publish false statements with malice, recklessness, or negligence (in the case of a private figure). Now, how can you determine that level without knowing who that person is?
What about other laws that are violated? Sexual harassment, retaliation under the anti-discrimination laws, disclosure of confidential information? You can't determine all of that w/o knowing the identity of the person.
But, in the case where something is clearly opinion, the person should have that information blocked.
Maybe have some determination of being false and having damage.
Fight Spammers!
You wouldn't walk into FEDEX to send an anonymous letter, would you? Better maybe if you mailed it from a post box in the suburbs?
You want to be anonymous? Do what you have to do. Fill out that AOL CD mailer with you best friend in high-school's dog's name. Sign up for that free dialup account from [insert name of phone company here] Internet Service. Use a terminal at a branch library and be sure they know your name is Eustace P. Farnsworthy. Find a dial-in stack that doesn't have no-caller-id reject working (harder and harder).
And don't include identifying material in your posts. Like you name...
*whup* "Get along, little electrons. Heeyah!"
Defamation has two absolute defenses. Both of them can be determined without knowing the identity of the anonymous posters.
The judge absolutely should have respected the anonymity of the individuals until the two absolute defenses were exhausted.
If the statements were TRUE or if the statements were not statements of fact, but of opinion, no defamation took place. The speakers should remain anonymous until they are absultely needed to stand behind their actions. The judge does not need the defendents' identities to judge the authenticity of these defenses as long as they are proffering them (through the ACLU). They are questions of fact that judges determine every hour of every day, and the identities of the accused have no bearing on the outcome.
This talk about getting people on the internet to "think about what they say" is code for silencing whistleblowers and people that speak about corporations and their leaders in unflattering, but nondefamatory and fully legal ways.
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
pretty scary, eh?