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Anonymity on the Internet
Enoch Root was the first to submit a new briefing paper on internet anonymity, published by the libertarian Cato Institute and written by Jonathan Wallace. Wallace cites Supreme Court cases and important historical precedents in favor of anonymity - "Given the importance of anonymity as a component of free speech, the cost of banning anonymous Internet speech would be enormous."
Anonymity and the net just can't work... It's too much effort for the user, and the websites have much more to gain by actually knowing who they are dealing with... Because of issues like libel, etc... you're hard pressed to have a page hosted anonymously as well. I think it all comes down to accountablility... Everyone needs to be accountable for what they say. Just like how we all hate anonymous cowards around here :)
I can't seem to find an email service (a la hotmail, netscape mail, etc...) that will let you get a mail box without supplying a valid email address. I also can't be using Anonymizer while filling out the forms required... So I guess for me to do it would be to pay anonymizer for an email box and then sign up with that email as my address... Of course, they'ed know what IP i used to log in, and i suspect that most ISP's track IP usage if only for long enough to be sure that no complaints are being generated by that user...
Sorry for the ramble... it's that time of the day where i begin to shut down.... probably took to long in writing this to qualify for first post status too....
Just the other day I got into a discussion of why anonymity on the net is good. This article says it better than I ever could.
Looks like I found my new sig.
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
It sounds like his argument could apply to the earlier article about color copies as well. If I ever decide to hand out pamphlets that could be considered "subversive" by anyone in the gov't, I'll be sure to make them black and white. :)
Seriously, though, this seems to be completely the opposite view of the police and FBI. They use every means at their disposal to track down someone whom they consider to be a suspect. They will even do things that they know are illegal and would not stand up in court (i.e. wiretapping without a warrant) to gather information on the suspect so they can find out how to get legal evidence so that they can get a warrant/make an arrest.
These two viewpoints, while each has obvious merit and obvious failings when taken to extremes, need to be met with some kind of compromise. As it stands now, the only compromise is that the technically savvy can have anonymity and the technically ignorant masses get to have their privacy violated.
I understand a many of the issues relating to anonymity online. But, I don't think the current state of affairs is acceptable in the long run. The net is a great tool for communication, but it's not the only tool. If you have a valid issue that does require protection, you always have the recourse of walking down the street to a payphone. Do we really need a situation where it is possible to say anything you want, even false comments that are damaging to others' way of life and livelyhood, without having any real possibility of having to be responsible for your actions?
-sw
Anonymity *can* work. Check out Freedom for one example. Proxying is the way to go - non-logging proxies, that is. Does this impede law enforcement? Yes, but only if they're very stupid and don't know what a packet sniffer is.
Another thing about anonymity - I can run off 100 copies of a position I hold against our Governor, which in this case is Ventura (I live in MN) and post it up across the twin cities - anonymously. To do this on the internet, I can use a service like Freedom. There are plenty of alternatives with equal functionality (so don't think I'm plugging /just/ this product), however.
Anonymity isn't dead... the problem is that modern media has the collective intelligence of a lobotomized flatworm... *sigh* it's very easy to cover your tracks... if it wasn't so-called "hacking" (it's cracking, ppl!) would be impossible.
And it *is* real on the internet. For instance, while Slashdot knows my IP when I post this, they aren't publishing it with my post.
If I wanted to say bad things about the FBI or other powers that be, they could pressure Slashdot to give up my info, but what if I'm using an anonymyzer like the one here, and you can chain these together, folks.. to make their chase quite lengthy. Not truly anonymous, in the end, but for all practical purposes, yes.
I think it is necessary to retain this for first amendment freedom.
~~~Socrates is a man. All men are mortal. Therefore, all mortals are Socrates.
What Freedom basically does is provide you with different IDs to navigate the Internet. It also keeps your cookies in different profiles, and basically allows you to forge a complete "identity", or multiple ones, to surf. It's anonymity without the need for a proxy or any such crap.
It's too bad it's a proprietary project, though... I would figure that these guys would dig Open Source. I'd sure love to take a peek at their code and algorithms.
Cause right now, the price tag is a bit stiff.
(Hey Sig. :) )
Here in the UK we have a kind of anonymous citizenship.
We can choose whatever name we like and it's valid on any form etc. so long as it is "the name by which you a known" and you can "prove" that you are known by it. Legally I could now use my email address (or any one of them) as my name if I was arrested.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
It would seem to me like lawsuits could be brought upon web forums that allow anyone view but require login to post. By allowing anyone to view the statements they are making their forum public, which - apparently - the Supreme Court has stated that anonymous input should be allowed.
It's a good thing that Slashdot still has Anonymous posting. But what of other sites, like Mozillazine - an advocate of an "Open Community" forcing logins and registration in order to communicate on their forums. This kind of backwardness makes me wonder what sort of legal rights anonymous users should have.
Joseph Elwell.
<META>
Troll? Some moderators are feeling cranky today. Go to bed earlier! Get more sleep!
</META>
[If it weren't for Anonymous Coward] I wouldn't post at all...
Same here. Maybe I'm just neurotic, but when someone disagrees angrily with a post I made, I feel like I've been attacked personally. I also feel a little uncomfortable with that feature in "User Info" which displays that last 20 to 50 posts you've made. There's nothing wrong with it, but I don't want people who disagree with my views starting some kind of vendetta against me, especially if they get moderator access. Look at Signal11. A lot of people are jealous because of the amount of karma he has accumulated. I'll bet they're thinking, "When I get moderator access, I'll moderate him down! And, if possible, I'll mark his posts as off-topic, redundant, or troll!" For evidence, look here.
The Slashdot admins can probably tell which Anonymous Coward posts are mine and which aren't-- you can't convince me Slashdot doesn't log IP addresses-- but the average user just knows I'm "anonymous." I feel a little more secure that way.
I was working on building a good anonymous remailer system a few years ago. The idea would be to distribute the anonymizing effect over as many systems as possible, while denying each system in the chain the ability to work out where the message was coming from or where it was going to. There are several variations on this theme, and a couple of implementations of things close to it.
I stopped working on it when it occurred to me that there were people in the world who would probably put up $50k or more to help me build such a system: terrorist organizations, people plotting to kill someone, street gangs, Hells Angels, etc.
I decided I would stop work on it until I figured out whether or not it was a good idea. I still haven't figured it out.
I'm a Cato sponsor. Depending on one's sponsorship level (read: donations), we receive these. Cato publishes these sorts of briefings all the time. Typically they try to cover issues of the day from a libertarian/free-market perspective. The Internet is a hotbed of both libertarian and statist/regulatory action. Recent relevant briefings cover important policy issues like the need for strong cryptography, non-American encryption products, and the negative effect of corporate welfare on Silicon Valley.
There's an awful lot in the world of regulation that has nothing to do with tech. Cato is at the forefront of exploring free-market alternatives to social security, term limits, welfare reform, and lots and lots of other important topics. As a person closely involved with technology, I'm not always up on these other issues. Cato briefings provide some intellectual ammunition when these non-tech things come up. Lots of people with a libertarian bent come at it from other perspectives - like, say, a pro-laissez-faire-business or a free trade focus. They might not have thought privacy and anonymity issues through. I'm not influential, but maybe some of the people I talk to are. At worst, Cato papers tend to be well thought out and researched; suitable for distribution to and consumption by people who need an alternate viewpoint. Like my congressman.Who really needs one.
I assume Cato sends these to relevant policymakers too; I don't know. Cato staffmembers show up all the time on the political talk show circuit, op-ed columns, etc.
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I am unaware of any current law or proposed law forbidding anonymity on the Internet. Their case seems largely built on an obviously unconstitutional (and technologically illiterate) law in Georgia which was immediately struck down by courts, an article in Communication Daily about some cops' wish list for the 'Net and by a quote, taken heavily out of context, from a justice department official.
/. handle. Most cops also want the Miranda decision overturned, and probably would mind some weaker protections regarding the rights of prisoners, probationers and juveniles - that doesn't mean it's going to happen.
(BTW, here is the quote in it's entirety. I found it in the endnotes:
"I think we are perilously close to a lose-lose situation in which citizens have lost their privacy to commercial interests and criminals have easy access to absolute anonymity." -- Justice Dept prosecutor Phillip Reitinger
This is hardly the statist plea to end anonymity that the author makes it out to be - the concern is legitimate. Reitinger is lamenting the loss of anonymity as much as deploring its drawbacks.)
I have difficulty seeing what kind of law could ban anonymity. As the author points out, "Laws requiring the disclosure of identity in cyberspace would require far-reaching changes in Internet technology." The current political climate makes that unlikely, nor are the courts in the US likely to put up with it.
Conceivably, a law could ban IP spoofing (probably not a bad idea) and anonymous remailers (probably a bad idea, but not the end of the world.) The people who would most suffer would not be those with controvertial ideas to disseminate.
Yes, police tend to be paranoid about anything they can't control and some cops have stupid ideas about how the 'Net ought to work, but that doesn't mean the government is about to come swoop down and take away your
This is like the constant rumours that the FCC wants to regulate the Internet - juicy right-wing government conspiracy theories.
ISP's don't let you sign up anonymously for accounts - not if they want to get paid - and if police trace you back to your ISP they will bend over backwards to tell the cops who you are. ISP's have an interest in rooting out spam, and often try to trace anonymous messages back to their source. If you have lost your anonymity on the 'Net these days, it's not the government that did it to you.
I would think the Cato Institute would fight to the death for companies' freedom to deprive you of anonymity. Perhaps the Cato Institute is taking the distinctly anti-libertarian stance that ISP's should be required to provide you with anonymity, or perhaps they are trying to defend the right of spammers to use communication lines without permission of the owners.
Don';t let this strawman argument get you riled up against a problem that doesn't really exist.
Anonymizer is crap. They ask you to pay a good sum of money to use their service, AND they ask for your email address and other coordinates. They're riding the anonymity bandwagon and understand it's hot, but have no clue what the hell it is.
When Meept!! originated, he did not have a user account, but it didn't take him too terribly long to get one. This was long ago, before even I registered, when I was still lurking as an anonymous coward.
The original Meept!! was:
http://slashdot.org/users.pl?nick=MEEPT!!
Notice the id of 4102.
Since then there have been several other Meepts!!
meept (73445)
MEEPT!!!! (62711)
MEEPT!!!!! MEEPT!!!!! @ MEEPT!!!!! . com (61607)
MEEPT!!! (19213)
The Glorious Meept!! (17395)
The GloriousMeept!! (14479)
Glorious Meept!!! (124300)
MEEPT!!!!!! TheGloriousMeept@netscape.net (124467)
The last of which [who is the Meept!! in question] seems to hold more true to the original Meept!!, at least in terms of user info and posting style. The other Meepts!! were usually easy to spot, as they were not nearly as crazy or funny.
Over the past month, there have been increasing amounts of Anonymous Meepts!!.
[FYI, I am preparing a paper on the Meept!! phenomonon--the start of the mass spamming of slashdot. It will be here: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=meept!!!]
This sig is false.
Take any public web service, for example. How anonymous are you? Really?
Answer: Depends on what you call anonymous. If you mean "will another casual reader be able to see where I am", the answer is probably no, so in that sense, I suppose you are anonymous.
On the other hand, the web logs are available to the web master, along with any person who knows what vulnerabilities exist and how to exploit them.
Then, of course, there are packet sniffers, that can monitor everything that passes through a given segment of the Internet.
Many language labs have software for analysing text, to look for similarities in style. In the hands of a wannabe-PI, these could be used to track all the boards you write on, your views and the times you typically write. This can give someone a VERY good profile of you, and a likely line of longitude.
Anonymous remailers get busted weekly, so those don't protect anyone. Even the "better" ones have either been shut down, raided or both.
Proxies only shed the IP, and are only effective if they block traceroutes and pings (including TCP pings). Even then, time-frame analysis, content analysis and correlation between boards can give a good idea as to where you are.
Of course, proxies are useless if they don't protect the packet. Even if encrypted, when going into the proxy, the stream going in and the stream going out only need to be correlated ONCE for your identity to be revealed.
You also have to secure the network between you and the proxy, decently. Someone only has to do a man-in-the-middle attack, by DNS spoofing & telling the Internet that their computer is the proxy, rather than the real one, and all the IP-laden packets will float straight to them.
Of course, none of this is really necessary, if you haven't secured your computer. A portscan of every computer in the US isn't going to take long, on a decent machine. If it was a serious corporate or Government move, you can assume they'd have high-power machines in each State, making it possible to waltz into any computer, ANYWHERE in the US, in a very short span of time.
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)
"Given the importance of anonymity as a component of free speech, the cost of banning anonymous Internet speech would be enor-mous. It makes no sense to treat Internet speech differently from printed leaflets or books. "
Lovely little quote to describe a concept isn't it. I am just thrilled to see someone base an argument on an assumption. Little things like logic need not apply here. As long as we can say "Given" preceeding any assumtion, then the assumption must be true, right?
Apparently it is safe to assume that anything printed in a fancy briefing paper is true. Let me ask you first amendment thumpers out there, "Did Thomas Jefferson and the rest of our constitutional fathers add an amendment to the bill of rights guaranteeing anonymity?" In fact, I believe the constitution does say something about the accused having the right to confront their accuser. Also, the printed word does not guarantee anonymity either. I'm sure the New York Times or the Washington Post are fascinated by this new idea of publishing stories without bylines, and then claiming innocence when hit with a libel suit.
Those posts are showing up because they're getting the "Long Comment" bonus. Increase the lower size limit for that bonus to a ridiculously high number if you don't want the bonus to be applied. (I set mine at 999,999, and those posts no longer show up.)
It's sloppily converted to HTML here.
It traveled through word, so some of the symbols might be gone... err... just read my disclaimer...
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I mean, if ACs are being censored, God knows what else they're censoring.
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Long live ACs on Slashdot!
What is more likely to happen is that the agent will take the stand, and lie about what happened.
In a very recent case, Florida Highway Patrol Trooper Douglas Strickland testified that it is routine practice for the highway patrol's drug interdiction teams to lie under oath in exactly these cases.
From an editorial on the case:
THE CONTROVERSY STEMS from a May 19, 1998, car search. At the time, Strickland and Trooper Bruce Hutheson told a Polk County judge that they had pulled up alongside a broken-down Lincoln Continental stopped on Interstate 4. They said they became suspicious of the driver, Michael Flynn, because he would not give them access to the trunk so they could check if a fuel shut-off switch had malfunctioned. When they called over the police dog they just happened to have with them, it homed in on the back of the car. Inside they ``discovered'' 220 pounds of cocaine. The state judge, on the basis of this evidence, set bail at $1 million.
Trouble was, the troopers neglected to tell the judge they knew all along that the car contained drugs. They had been with the FBI when the car was loaded. The FBI, we now know, was conducting a reverse sting and had used a remote control device planted in the car to make it inoperable.
So, in theory, he "won't do anything" because the information was obtained illegally, but in the absolutely corrupt-to-the-core "real world" of the FBI in the 1990s, he will simply lie to the judge about where the evidence came from.
Anonymity currently exists on the Internet largely due to dynamic IP addressing by dial-up ISPs. The more rigorous alternatives (www.anonymizer.com) are problematic and troublesome for casual use. The anonymity comes from the difficulty of dredging through ISP logs to link an IP with a userid, and the limited number of requests ISPs will fulfill, mostly from law enforcement. Often, the logs will have expired [been deleted by rotation].
However, all this will vanish with 128-bit [sic] addressing in IPv6. Many bits will be used for routing, but you can bet some bits will be dedicated to identifying _you_, even if you did dialup. Essentially, you will have a static dial-up IP address. Since any site you commpunicate with has to be able to return packets to you, they will have to know your IP.
-- Robert
Well, it seems that plenty of people don't like a little sarcasm. It just seems odd that places like Zdnet - that can be harmed by public criticism etc... - allow anonymous posting while mozillazine stifles would be anonymous users from using their forum.
Anyways, for anyone interested there is a really good research paper on Public Forums, calledWhose Forum is this Anyway?
I guess it's an American thing to use litigation as sarcasm. When I was in Switzerland I went Canyoning - two weeks before 21+ kids died at the same place I went. Anyways, when my group was being driven up the mountain in our van - some guy backed up into the van. Wham. Someone in the back seat yelled out, "I'm suing". To which, the drive - a swiss local - replied, "This is Switzerland, go back to America."
Go read the research paper.
Joseph Elwell.
In some ways a site like /. serves as a new publication populated by a bunch of amatuer journalists and a couple of wet-behind the ears editors. Great. But there is smoe precident here.
Journalists have to face the issue of anonymous sources every day. Anonymity will sometimes allow people to reveal information they otherwise would not, BUT anonymity also prevents people from verifying information. Thus journalists (at least good ones) try to avoid using anonymous sources whenever possible.
Anonymity may be a cloak for illegal action, like making claims intended to influence the price of a stock (very common on the internet) or slander a political candidate (like the recent campaign claiming that John McCain was suffering psychological damage from his tour as a prisoner of war).
It is important for journalists to be able to use anonymous sources, but it is ALSO important for journalists to take information received from such sources with a large dose of salt.
The boon and the flaw in the internet is that you get the news unfiltered. The danger is that the audience may take too much of it as fact, especially if the sources are not verifiable.
What is really needed when reading places like slashdot is a healthy dose of schepticism and a willingness to do a little thinking. The first is easy, but the second?
Actually, there's very little new in this paper, although the presentation is very snappy, and the PR blitz is impressive, verging on excessive (I've seen this announcement about 15 times on various lists today).
For a much more detailed, and perhaps more tedious, look at law and anonymity issues, see my paper Flood Control on the Information Ocean: Living With Anonymity, Digital Cash, and Distributed Databases (1996), which discusses the cryptographic foundations of anonymity, and the legal issues it raises. You may also be interested in my 1996 paper on the Clipper Chip, which discusses whether a legal restrictions on crypto use would be consitutional.
Hmmm. Maybe next time I write a paper I should issue a press release? (No, I know, I should write shorter papers....)
A. Michael Froomkin,
U. Miami School of Law,POB 248087
Coral Gables, FL 33124,USA
I have a blog.
The first link points to Anonymizer.
:)
That site requires signup for decent service but if you are patient enough the site allows anyone to load pages anonymously, except that a frustrating delay is imposed deliberately to "encourage" users to pay the $50/year.
Unfortunately there are several problems with the Anonymizer approach. To hide the origin of the HTTP request, active content including Javascript and applets must be disabled. (Otherwise bad things happen: for example using the object-model script could force another HTTP request to server revealing the original IP)
This means that pages which have dependency on script will not work. It is entirely another story whether designing one's site to require Javascript for proper functioning was such brilliant idea and surely Jakob Nielsen will have plenty to comment on this. But the reality is that especially among the recent breed of ecommerce sites have all the latest DHTML incorporated and script is crucial there.
More importantly cookies are not exchanged meaning that shopping carts will not work. Technically you could browse but you could not buy-- moot point since there are other privacy problems in electronic transactions. (Shipping address, credit cards, etc.) Neat feature would have been to create a temporary cookie jar used per session and discarded.
Paradoxically this service creates a problem of different type. Because the number of registered users is small, web servers getting requests from Anonymizer.com will assume that it is coming from one of the handful of registered users
In other words previously you could be one of the millions on the web-- but thanks to your proxy you are now identified within a few thousand people. One could only hope that the company can manage to keep its user database private.
BluesPower
The supreme court has in fact ruled that it is an essential part of liberty to be able to distribute anonymous flyers.
I wish I had a reference for you. but I am absolutely positive about this. I remember well the day I saw the article, and rejoiced that there was still some sanity left in this world.
--
Infuriate left and right
There was the article recently on Slashdot about Tim Berners-Lee's sidekick who wanted to license all internet surfers. Now if this guy, supposedly on the side of good, can advocate banning anonymity, imagine what the idiots in the NSA and FBI must be wanting.
--
Infuriate left and right
For example, if you just got the "Quicken TurboTax December Tax Alert" email and you read it with a web browser, then they've made a connection between your name on file, your IP address, the email address configured in your browser, and other HTTP data. Look in that message and you'll see
And every time you reread that message and tickle that web server they get another look.
The real significance of this is the fact that there is definite Supreme Court support for on-line anonymity.
I'd be suprised if the author was not a lawyer; if he is not, it is the best written legal analysis by a non-lawyer that I have ever read.
The first amendment is the last refuge of freedom in the Constitution; that, and attorney-client privlege.
It is comforting to have ACLU v. Miller as a cyber-leg-up into the Supreme Court free speech anonymity case, but it isn't enough. The Anonymity cases do NOT proffer absolute rights, and there have been some very dangerous trends.
Notwithstanding what we may think of the Klu Klux Klan, the Second Circuit ratification of Giuliani's enforcement of New York's gag law is a harbinger of dangers to come. There, claims of anonymity during a pilitical demonstration took the back seat to claims that folks are less likely to do harm if they are "unmasked."
The difference is that Georgia didn't recite its "compelling governmental interest." Regrettably, Miller may in time stand more as a roadmap how to make an enforceable cyber-mask law than as proof that the right to anonymity exists.
The long and short of it is that we must remain politically vigilant. You never need to test the constitutionality of a law that doesn't pass. Rather than using "rights" language ("you can't do this because its unconstitutional"), we must use the "policy" language that legislators understand ("you can't do this because its bad for America and bad for you, and because you'll never get reelected if you vote for it").
We must make our case for privacy on the net in terms Americans understand, before the debate is seized and controlled by the censors. It is we who must seize the initiative, and create a status quo of public sympathy that the censors must overcome.
Cybermask laws are the next CDA -- count on it! The Courts now have told the censors how to do it, and they are just waiting for the next big opportunity to make it happen. Let's seize the initiative before they have their chance.