Right to Post Anonymously Protected

JudTaylor writes " ZDNet has an article decribing a decision by a Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge allowing Yahoo to protect the privacy of posters to message boards. Lee Tien, an white hat attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, stated "This is a great victory for anonymous speech. I believe Judge Cabrinha's ruling will signal to other companies that judges will not permit corporate executives to abuse the courts in ferreting out their critics." Critics of Pre-Paid Legal Services had posted messages disparaging the company on Yahoo boards. Representatives of the company had no immediate comment." I'm glad to see a decision for freedome can still happen in this country.

Comments

Insider trading...

[mjh]

I fully expect to get moderated into oblivion for this post, but....

An interesting thing happened at a former job. I used to work for a company that provided capital markets trading services. Someone found a post on a very popular web forum which included information that was *clearly* insider trading information. This is information that could only have come from *inside* the company, and released like this put the entire company in jeopardy with the OCC (Office of the Comptroller of the Currency) and the SEC (Security & Exchange Commission).

We were under SEC & OCC requirements to track down who posted this thing, or potentially shut down all of our operations. But that wasn't the only pressure. We had an ethical obligation to track this down. A crime was being committed. The ability of this person to continue to post to this forum, enabled them to perpetrate a fraud and steal money from our investors. At the time there was not a single reason that I could think not to try and get this person's identity, and I can't think of a reason now, either. Failure to do so meant that someone (potentially lots of people) lost money (potentially *LOTS* of money).

So, we checked our firewall logs, and found a couple of *possible* leads, but nothing conclusive. After checking as many internal logs as we could find, we came to the conclusion that we had to get the web forums to give us the email address of the person who registered the account. We called the web site, explained that a crime was being committed and politely asked them to provide the identity of the person who posted the comment. They declined, citing their privacy policy.

This is the point where I no longer have first hand experience with what happened. But as I understand it, our attorneys drafted a letter to the web site stating that this information was absolutely required. Eventually, the web site backed down, provided the information. The person who allegedly posted the information was arrested.

I post this here because there seems to be a huge number of folks who seem to think that under every circumstance internet anononymity should be retained... and most of the time I agree. But sometimes it can enable crimes and I think we have to be careful about how far we take the demands for internet privacy.

$.02.

Please, commence with the karma draining moderation.

Re:Insider trading...

[Jerf]

I think (hope?) you're defending against a false belief. The point that I've yet to see mentioned in any postings is that an increasing number of companies are filing lawsuits for the sole purpose of "unmasking" an anonymous spokesperson, then dropping the suit as soon as they accomplish that, often with the intent of following up on the issue themselves. For instance, your company might have chosen to do internal discipline without regards to the law.

Your example is bad for this purpose, because a real, honest-to-goodness crime is being committed; your company never considered merely unmasking the suspect and internally disciplining them. But there are other cases that have occurred. Suppose someone was merely badmouthing the company, in such a way that they clearly worked inside the company. Companies have been bringing frivolous slander lawsuits against "John Doe"s, finding out who "John Doe" is, then dropping the suit and pursuing internal discipline against the now-unmasked employee. These disciplines are often on the wrong side of legal.

Nobody with any sense is supporting the idea that anonymity is some sort of ultimate goal; instead, people like me recognize that this abuse of the law system is dangerous, and insist that the courts establish that some crime was committed before issuing the unmasking order. Normal procedure up to this point was to unmask before establishing the existence of a crime, and it is this fact that people have been abusing. If a crime is committed, unmask away! But if the statements ticking off the company aren't truly illegal, then they have no particular right to unmask these people, and it is this anonymous speech we support: legal anonymous speech.

Thus, as far as people like me are concerned, your company acted perfectly ethically (as well as legally). You established the existence of a crime (and a rather serious one at that; insider trading seems harmless (due to its abstractness) in some ways but it truly is a victim-crime), then pushed a bit (legally) to discover who was doing it. As far as I'm concerned, if you had to go to court to get that information, more power to you!

I run a weblog tracking this sort of stuff and this story isn't actually interesting enough for me to run; this kind of decision is actually fairly common at this point. The judicial system has "seen the light" of this argument and basically agrees, unless you get unlucky and get a bad judge.

How much anonymity is reasonable?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

OK, so as a starting principle, let's suppose that anonymity is a Good Thing. It lets people post what they like, without fear of reprisal. Clearly this has benefits, particularly for people living or working under oppressive regimes.

But now, stop and think objectively for a minute, please. How many of the big problems with the internet are a direct result of anonymity? Let me offer some suggestions.

1. Pretty much all of those spam mails you receive every day are illegal, but you all know better than to reply to the "remove" address. (UK residents may now snipe at our Euro-MP who voted for an "opt-out" policy.)
2. How many websites, newsgroup postings, e-mails and bulletin board postings can untruthfully badmouth people, groups or products without fear of reprisal, in spite of the fact that the lies concerned would clearly constitute slander or libel if claimed by other means?
3. Thousands of people get away with copying music, games and so on without paying for it, thus increasing the cost to the rest of us. There are ways to deal with being ripped off, but breaking the law (and doing so at the expense of other people, not just the target companies) isn't one of them.
4. Websites can get away with downright damaging advice. Financial tips sites and sites offering medical advice are notorious for this, but no-one can stop them if they can't identify who's behind it.
5. Finally, of course, there are websites used for blatantly dangerous activities -- check out the vigilantism in the UK when a list of suspected paedophiles was put up on a web site during the big anti-paedophile frenzy a few months back. People really are stupid enough to believe this stuff. One paediatrician was done over because someone didn't even understand the words after reading this stuff, and several people who were totally innocent but unfortunate enough to look like suspects were assaulted.

Basically, this all comes down to crime. Anonymity lets criminals -- quite literally -- get away with murder. (Yes, really -- remember the site listing doctors in the US prepared to carry out abortions, who were systematically being bumped off?)

So, while I support the notion of anonymity from the general public, I think it's equally important that lawful authorities can always identify someone using the internet to effect, encourage or facilitate illegal activities. Of course, that runs the risk of encountering downright unreasonable or abusive authorities, but you get that all the time in real life, too. It's a small price to pay for the many benefits that come from letting the police and courts identify someone on-line in cases where it's necessary to achieve the right result.