Re: more ideas on anonymity

Re your posting on categories of offenses and so on.  Agreed strongly that
sites should post banners stating the policies they adhere to.  I'd suggest
the following division of offenses:

1) Anything involving physical violence, threats of violence, incitement to
violence.  (this includes acts such as rape, pedophelia etc., since these
acts involve power as much as anything and can be seen as primarily violent
acts)  (this also includes things like Nazi propaganda where there is a
historic precedent or strong undertone that violent acts are encouraged)

2) Other (not violent) crimes against persons or property.  

3) Antisocial or questionable actions such as victimless crime, propagation
of lies (for instance a faked Challenger transcript), violation of Net
rules.

Obviously these have descending levels of severity by most reasonable
standards.  I would not in any way make sysops or admins responsible for
postings which may be illegal in their country of origin: both for pragmatic
reasons (no one can possibly be held to know the laws in all the other
participating countries) and for ethical reasons (stalinist coup in Russia;
fascist consolidation in ex-Yugoslavia, now you have to play cop against
dissidents from both; no thanks!).  

I believe unpopular opinions ought to be protected as long as they don't
encourage illegal or violent actions.  The test case for this is racism or
some equivalent.  If someone wants to argue a case that their race is the
Master Race or whatnot, I can't see squelching them for making opinion-noise
unless they're also e.g. advocating violence.  Once we get in the
opinion-censoring biz, it's a steep slippery slope.  OTOH, we also shouldn't
be an arm of LE, and hence the idea that discussing victimless crimes ought
to be a very bottom-of-the-list kind of thing.  

-gg

We have to keep an eye on each others' knees here -- there's a
tendency for a knee-jerk reaction not based on reality.

Squabbling over what "crimes" or "antisocial acts" should disqualify one
from being able to use anonymity is ***WAY*** missing the point.  It is
the people who have crossed one of those lines who need the protection the
most!  And, at least the US Supreme Court thinks it is in society's interest
to protect them:

    The case is Talley v. California, 362 US 60 (1960), in which the
    Supreme Court invalidated an ordinance which prohibited the
    distribution of any handbill not bearing the name and address of the
    person who prepared it.  The Court rejected the state's claim that the
    ordinance was necessary to help identify those responsible for fraud,
    false advertising, or libel.  According to Tribe, the Court reasoned
    that "a ban on anonymous pamphleteering falls with much greater force
    upon individuals and groups who fear majoritarian disapproval and
    reprisal -- upon dissidents and upon the unpopular -- than upon those
    with widely approved messages to deliver."

To quote a cypherpunk who usually has more sense:

> I believe unpopular opinions ought to be protected [as long as they don't
> encourage illegal or violent actions].
> 						 Once we get in the
> opinion-censoring biz, it's a steep slippery slope.

I inserted the [ and ].  He forgot to note that he's *already*
advocating opinion-censoring, and yes, he's already sliding down the
slope.

	John Gilmore

PS:  There is no way to enforce rules on the content of messages sent
through encrypted anonymous remailers.  Think about it for a minute.

All there needs to be is *one* remailer anywhere in the world, which will
send any message to the final destination.  Anyone can send an encrypted
message to the "freedom-loving" remailer, via their local remailer.  Even
if the inputs to the freedom-loving remailer were tapped, the messages
that arrived there would already be anonymous (headers stripped) and
encrypted.

Since what passes through the rest of the "freedom-hating" anonymous
remailers is encrypted, they can't see the content anyway.  You could
prohibit encrypted messages through your freedom-hating remailer, but
(1) that's easy to circumvent, and (2) what would be the point of
your running a remailer?

From: gnu@toad.com (John Gilmore)
   Date: Fri, 26 Feb 93 03:01:53 -0800

   Squabbling over what "crimes" or "antisocial acts" should disqualify one
   from being able to use anonymity is ***WAY*** missing the point.  It is
   the people who have crossed one of those lines who need the protection the
   most!  

It is perhaps tempting to say that people committing antisocial acts and
crimes should be protected, if the image that comes to your mind is the
courageeous freedom fighter.  On the other hand, it behooves us all to
remember that "protecting criminals" also includes protecting the people
who threaten rape, murder or other violence.  

It may be the case that in order to protect the "freedom fighter", we
must also strike down the laws that protect us from the "axe murderer".
But we must make this choice consciously.  It is silly and stupid of us
to be obsessed with protecting ourselves from the axe murderer, that we
we are also surpressing basic freedomes.  At the same time, however, we
must not wax over-romantic thinking about the plight of the "freedom
fighter", of the "angry young man", without remembering that there are
also some really nasty people out there.

While anonymity has its features, we would do well to acknowledge that
it also has its dark side.  That people may hide behind a remailer, and
send hateful, petting, harrassing things that they might otherwise not
say if they actually had to take personal responsibility for their
actions.   Keep in mind that part of the mystique of the "freedom
fighter", who takes on the government in his/her selfless task of
Democracy and the American Way, is his courage and his willingness to
take personal risk and personal injury in his Quest For the Right.

Would we have the same respect for a coward who evades his personal
responsibility by sending petty, hateful mail through a remailer; who
breaks laws that he/she thinks are unjust, but is unwilling to face the
consequences of breaking said laws?  Remember, a big part of civil
disobedience is the willingness to be arrested.

						- Ted

Umm.. Isn't all this talk about anonymous remail abuse really beging
for an pseudonymous/anonymous certificate service?

j'

>  Umm.. Isn't all this talk about anonymous remail abuse really beging
>for an pseudonymous/anonymous certificate service?

Well, yes.

There has been a huge conflagration on the pem-dev list lately
concerning naming issues, X.500, etc.  I am somewhat disturbed by what
I see as a fundamental mentality of PEM: the desire to lift intact all
existing political, economic, and social relationships into the
electronic domain.

Naming is done in the ISO way, that is, subordinated to existing
national boundaries.  Individuals are expected to be registered in the
naming hierarchy.  Identities in the electronic world are expected to
map to entities in the real world.

Does this not seems fundamentally limiting to the potential of the
electronic world?

I agree with Tim that we have made good progress.  But we need more
than simple remailers.  We need people to use remailers, and we need
to make that easy to do.  We need key distribution mechanisms.  We
need better meeting spaces than mailing lists and Usenet newsgroups
and private mail.  We need markets and contracts.

If we wish to re-envision the world, we must do so while there is time
to implement it.  Let us proceed quickly.

Onward.

Eric

>>>>> Eric Hughes <hughes@soda.berkeley.edu> writes:

	Eric> There has been a huge conflagration on the pem-dev list
	Eric> lately concerning naming issues, X.500, etc.  I am
	Eric> somewhat disturbed by what I see as a fundamental
	Eric> mentality of PEM: the desire to lift intact all existing
	Eric> political, economic, and social relationships into the
	Eric> electronic domain.

That doesn't surprise me in the least. There's a paradigm shift going
on in the networking community, but it's difficult to tell which way
it's going to land. The US, in have a very open, almost anarchic
protocol development process based highly in meritocracy, built
the core of the Internet while everyone else in the world was working
to start passing 128-byte X.25 packets, and trying to decide how much
to charge per packet.  

The unfortunate reality is that the same people overseas have found
the "golden goose", and are trying to figure out how to domesticate
it. The U.S. Government and the industry marketeers aren't helping,
either. I see a growing bureaucratization of the standards process
which may well not advance development much.

	Eric> ...Identities in the electronic world are expected to
	Eric> map to entities in the real world.

I think a lot of this is a combination of the "One lifetime phone
number would be great" phenomenon, and a lack of imagination regarding
pseudonymity. I think that we should start writing RFCs for any and
all applicable technologies and throwing them into the arena. At best,
we might get stellar contributions, at worst, we might slow down the
juggernaut that is the ISO.


	Eric> I agree with Tim that we have made good progress.  But
	Eric> we need more than simple remailers.  We need people to
	Eric> use remailers, and we need to make that easy to do.  We
	Eric> need key distribution mechanisms.  We need better
	Eric> meeting spaces than mailing lists and Usenet newsgroups
	Eric> and private mail.  We need markets and contracts.

I think that remailer authors should seriously consider spec'ing out
their technology and publishing RFC's as soon as possible. The
development of on-line markets seems to be one of the best-kept
secrets on the Net. I only know of a handful (if that) of companies
actively working on such things, but they're not known outside of
their own backyards.

Laissez faire,
---Strat