more ideas on anonymity

Here, I think one policy might be that if the poster seems to be
repeatedly and blatantly fabricating the data himself, maybe some
restriction or warning is in order. But if ever the poster includes
`real source' (no matter how trashy) from the outside world, and makes
it clear that they are not the originator, only the purveyor
(`messenger'), perhaps this is less serious.  (I think Mr. Helsingius'
current standards in this area should be held up as an outstanding
model of commitment to privacy and free speech.)
2) some kind of global system for keeping track of `abusive' posters.

Here are some interesting ideas--how about lists circulated among
anonymous server operators only (not public) that record barred users
by their email address or even real identity? The lists could be
categorized and tagged so that the administrator can prohibit use based
on the seriousness of the offense.  Here are some things that operators
`might' look at:
1) ad hominem attacks
2) flame baiting
3) lying outright
4) defying Usenet conventions: posting copyrighted material, binaries
to regular groups, massive amounts of data, etc.
5) number or existence of *any* complaints
6) `racist' remarks
7) terrorism
8) `harassment'
9) anything illegal in the poster's country (yes, tricky I know)

ad infinitum ad nauseam. Maybe we could try to organize the severity of
this kind of stuff, and classify servers as `type 1' or `type 2' and we
can get a feel for how liberal or conservative the operator is. The
operator would say which lists he subscribes to, and which lists your
email address will go on if you abuse the site. Really extreme
operators (like Mr. Kleinpaste) might actually be interested in
`public' lists -- abusers get their email addresses, along with the
offense, posted on the public list, i.e. `outed'.  Now, I think a lot
of this is pretty unpalatable, but we have things to gain by
formalizing these mechanisms, and as long as the anonymous user is
*warned* in the server intro-use message, and possibly even has ways of
redress, and has choice of different servers, then the system could be
fairly agreeable by most.  Remember, no one is preventing operators
from being conservative or liberal as they like, the only thing wanted
is adherence to their stated policies.

Look what we have to gain. Currently, there is a lot of censorship
(attempts? conquests?) going on behind the scenes, as a recent episode
here attests. No one really knows how effective in general it is
currently to hunt down and bar `abusive' users (hence a lot of
misinformation and paranoia about the effects of anonymous servers). If
we could have some *statistics* that show x% of nonanonymous users get
complaints and y% of anonymous ones do, this would be very useful for
gauging the social impact of our technologies. (There could be some
very surprising results---I get the impression that many very
responsible people *prefer* anonymity, and conceivably the overall
complaints on anonymity could even be *less*).
3) Possibility of net.trials
Ok, so don't flame me too much on this one. But if `abusers' (this
could be for anonymity on a local server, but eventually involve to
other realms) were subject to a `trial by peers', imagine what this
could do to enhance the legitimate reputation of networks. Suddenly, a
judicial system. I certainly don't want to be known as an advocate of
bringing in lawyers and bureaucrats. Actually, that's precisely why I'm
proposing this, to prevent that scenario. Imagine that the net
establishes these formal self-regulating mechanisms. People in the
real-world law enforcement would be much less likely to become enraged
by perceived abuses when they realize that there are intrinsic
mechanisms for quelling the psychopaths (uhm, maybe, anyway). Also, if
people weren't added to blacklists just by the caprice of one operator
but after a perceived fair `trial', people at other sites would be much
more willing to enforce the sentences of suspension, expulsion or
whatever. An electronic trial by peers? (with voting at the end?) A
very interesting idea. Each server may develop a kind of peer or
family structure, keeping kin in line.
Maybe everyone that replies to an anonymous message could vote in their
header whether to get rid of the user, with the default `one vote of
approval' (limit voting regularity). Approves add, complaints subtract.
The user starts with some initial balance. If he gets down to zero,
*poof*.  Lots of `approval'? No problemo. Post something really
outrageous? You might get enough zaps to lose it all. Imagine, this
could improve the accountability of users in *general* (the mechanisms
could be applied to new Usenet groups, for example, or if very
trustworthy and fair even logins themselves).
I've been a bit vague and ambiguous in some of these statements. This
is because, as I hope has become clear, the kind of things that start
out on anonymous servers could eventually have a much greater scope, so
that it `behooves' us to develop effective and dynamic mechanisms for
self-regulation. Keep in mind a lot of these things are happening
already albeit in much less formal ways. For example, the convention is
to send complaints to the system adminstrator at a site regarding their
users, and they act as judge and jury (or use whatever other local
procedures are in place). The user may or may not be able to justify
their actions (redress). There is already a loose confederation of
cooperation between administrators, esp. over extremely abusive
posters. We already get somewhat public `trials' of extremists, where
people put forward all the evidence on Usenet and argue both sides. 
`Enforcement' and `punishment' sometimes consists of revoking logins,
feeds, or whatever.  I think we ultimately stand to gain by
`formalizing' a lot of the currently informal mechanisms in place.
My feeling is that if we don't head off these issues at the pass, so to
speak, Real World (tm) courts will start deciding them for us. Let's
develop something we can be proud of and will be a model of excellence
for the future, and not something frail and unstable.
Perhaps our anonymous motto:
``I disagree with what you say but will defend to my death your right
to say it.'' --Voltaire
(written pseudonymously)

>[...] and we might help some people and advance the cause by
>codifying `legitimate use'.

The only perfectly unambiguous position is that every use is a
legitimate use.

Eric

me:
>[...] and we might help some people and advance the cause by
>codifying `legitimate use'.

Eric Hughes <hughes@soda.berkeley.edu>
>The only perfectly unambiguous position is that every use is a
>legitimate use.

Once again I'm very seriously disturbed at the sentiments presented by
some eminent members of this list.  I believe in free speech perhaps as
rabidly as the next guy, but many of the most rabid advocates recognize
that there are limitations on `freedom'.  Everyone, please take the
following remarks impersonally but seriously.

Let me be very clear about this: I'm highly committed to pseudonymity
and anonymity as new, revolutionary social tools. However, completely
unrestrained anonymity (which, by the way, is related to but not
equivalent to freedom of speech) is unworkable and extremely dangerous
to *everybody* (not just corrupt government officials or big businesses
that were so ignorant they didn't hire you). Anybody here that thinks
that an anonymous service can act something like a Unix pipe that just
passes the raw stuff through forever unhindered and uninterrupted is
seriously deluding himself. Whoever does is ultimately discrediting and
detrimental to the cause itself.  If you think the problem is
exclusively because of self-appointed puritannical `censors' on the net
(which, I admit, exist), you are *wrong*. It gives me great anguish,
dread and fear to read of `limitation' of anonymity misguidedly
satirized as nothing but brutish censorship.

You can submit and agree to some minor and essential self-regulating
mechanisms, such as barring illegal and unrepetant users, `convicted'
email addresses circulated among anonymous server operators
voluntarily, a complaint-and-response system, perhaps even automated,
etc. Or you can call it all the most obnoxious and insidious stab at
your true God-given freedoms ever to ooze out of the sewer. But one
exemplary and commendable somebody who posts here and has committed
superhuman energy and dedication and commitment to the ideal of
anonymity for the Usenet masses, running a server TODAY, recognizes
that certain basic limitations are unpalatable but NECESSARY and
CRUCIAL. And if you don't sufficiently protect yourselves (and
unrestrained anonymity transfers to operators the most supreme exposure
and vulnerability) you will inevitably be rudely, shockingly surprised
at your liability and loss.

``Be careful what you wish for, you might get it.'' Everybody here that
thinks anarchy is kinda neato should reconsider.  By one meaning of
anarchy, at least, you cannot have even the most basic of conveniences
you have taken for granted, e.g. longtime social contacts or clothes,
food, privacy, or whatever (and you'll not easily convince me there are
more appealing variations thereof). Enclosed, an essay by a friend of mine...



WHY DIGITAL ANONYMITY SHOULD BE UNRESTRICTED
by D. Lewdud

I want net anonymity to be completely unrestrained, and anybody who
thinks otherwise is an unAmerican communist censor sleazebag Puritan
prude spy who should be ruthlessly exposed and stoned for the sheer
criminality of their ideas. 

I happen to like it when the Usenet groups I'm reading have a lot of
irrelevant junk, with the signal-to-noise ratio approaching absolute
zero.  Anonymity is great for vicious flame wars and haranging
diatribes, but anonymously posted binary files in science groups are
the best, especially if they are posted multiple times and take many
megabytes. In fact, if they crash my newsserver, that's even better. It
gives me an enviable vacation during which I can look forward to the
next assault and relish the inspiring poetry of it all.  But then the
narrowminded ignoramuses talk about shutting down some system or
excluding some users, depriving me of my sheer joy.

All this idiotic drivel about pornography and copyright violations
sanctioned by taxpayer money. OF COURSE!  That's everyone's right, to
exploit all that gushing money in our government--that's why it's
there.  Clearly our corrupted officials don't know what to do with it
besides pocket it.  Why, if some bloated bureacrat misses his snack of
caviar to subsidize this lovely GIF specimen, this masterpiece of
nudity spread before me lasciviously, posted by some exemplary
anonymous user, that's one small favor for humanity and a giant drool
for me.  Wow, think of what we could achieve and accomplish if we
completely dismantled the NSA, the FBI, the CIA, and my local pig
trough!  (Ah, but not everybody objects to pornography, so maybe I'm
preaching to the choir on that one.)

I want to be able to get mailbombed with regularity, I like it when my
system goes down and I am helpless and the cruel butt of other's jokes.
Its fun! Esp. when I know where the mail is originating from, but the
operator makes eloquent, impassioned, and irate speeches against
stopping the flow based on Constitutional rights. I've started a
collection of all the neat stuff I've received (millions of lines of
exquisite profanity and threats), and to make room for it have gotten
rid of all the other junk on my account like mail from my friends and
family and my previously-favorite programs, which pale in comparison to
records of the heights of eloquence of my tormentors. To think that
others pay for this gives me great pangs of ecstasy.

I paid good money for all my hardware, and my network connection is my
pride and joy, and finaly I'm getting a return on my serious
investment. Why, I'm so happy I'm going to buy another new computer to
replace the last three that have crashed. Rather than put in the many
hours required to repair them (which would definitely be gleeful), I've
decided they'll go up on my mantle as monumental testaments to the
grandeur of the great anonymous feats of humanity.

I want to see illegal, sinister, and evil groups like the Mafia to
flourish, using new technology like networks to perpetrate their
patriotic services.  The net is such a close-knit set of orderly people
and upstanding citizens, I'm sure they'll love to join the party. I
want them to be able to terrorize me without consequence. Anybody who
objects clearly is wholly ignorant of the beautiful social implications
wrought by this wonderful technological innovation, a blind mute living
in a black and white closet and a zealot of thin line-drawing. 

Although I haven't personally yet had the great joy of this, I can't
wait to receive an anonymous death threat or ransom notice via email,
possibly even directed at a close relative or loved-one. In fact, I'm
saving up as much digital money as possible right now for exactly this
eventuality.  Its my digital insurance fund.  That this can all be
completely untraceable with anonymity, well that's something as
exhilarating as a quivering digital orgasm.

Imagine the splendor of delivering an anonymous note to the mayor of
New York and the world that in 15 minutes a large chunk under a large
building, a symbol of international unity, will be conveniently
rearranged, at only minor risk to nearby inhabitants!  Wow, this could
really advance the cause of establishing a vast electronic
infrastructure for promoting all the splendid possibilities of digital
anonymity. Considering what's happened to the country's `real'
infrastructure, we need another! If the assurance of anonymity was
absolute, it would really encourage everyone to find similarly noble
uses of their own.

Don't get me wrong.  I'm totally free of bias for and prejudice against
various uses of anonymity (anything less, of course, would be fascist
totalitarianism).  For example, I like individual terrorists just as
much as the organized collections.  They sound like they could be
really completely uninhibited in their creative grasps of our true
freedoms, and more numerous with their stellar utilizations.  In fact,
the potential for individual, unassociated citizens to thwart the
abuses, and profoundly destabilize the foundations of frigid, faceless
bureacracies like big telephone companies, and even the government, I
find spine-tinglingly majestic---it even looks like this could soon
happen.  Imagine: nothing left but pure, omnipresent cyberspace!

I wrote:
>The only perfectly unambiguous position is that every use is a
>legitimate use.

and then L.D. wrote:
>Once again I'm very seriously disturbed at the sentiments presented by
>some eminent members of this list.  I believe in free speech perhaps as
>rabidly as the next guy, but many of the most rabid advocates recognize
>that there are limitations on `freedom'.  

Gotcha.

I make no claim above as to the propriety of an unambiguous position,
merely that there is one and only one completely clear position.
(There is another, that no use is legitimate, and we here conveniently
ignore that one :-)

The consequences of unambiguity must affect our discussions of this
matter.  If we desire unambiguity, then there is no need to
distinguish between uses.  If, however, the unambiguous solution is
not desirable, then there must be decisions made about propriety.  As
with every other question of power, the real question is

	"_Who_ decides propriety?"

The questions "What are significant criteria?", "When is the decision
made?", and others are all subordinate to the question "Who decides?"
Roughly speaking, there are three situations regarding anonymous
communication: the sender, the carrier, and the receiver.  In each of
these, we can examine what decisions they are _able_ to make.

As sender, I can choose who I present myself as, whom I send to to,
what carriers I want, and what I want to say.  As carrier, I can
choose whom to accept messages from, whom to send them to, what
content I am willing to pass.  As receiver, I can choose what carriers
to receive messages from, and from whom to accept mail.

>Anybody here that thinks that an anonymous service can act something
>like a Unix pipe that just passes the raw stuff through forever
>unhindered and uninterrupted is seriously deluding himself.

Well, an anonymous service _can_ do just that.  Whether or not the
rest of the world continues to communicate with them is a separate
question, an important question in the short run to be sure.

Acknowledgement that a procedure is an exigency does not make that
procedure desirable of itself.  All differential carriage based on
content is censorship.  I acknowledge the exigency of certain forms of
censorship in currently deployed anonymous systems.

Nonetheless, I will never desire censorship for its own sake and I
will also fight to remove the conditions which make censorship exigent
in the first place.

The problem is, who decides what is exigent?  We can either answer
that question, or change the world so that we never need ask it.

I decline to respond to the essay by Mr. D. Lewdud.

Eric

> I want to see illegal, sinister, and evil groups like the Mafia to
> flourish, using new technology like networks to perpetrate their
> patriotic services...

> Although I haven't personally yet had the great joy of this, I can't
> wait to receive an anonymous death threat or ransom notice via email,

> Imagine the splendor of delivering an anonymous note to the mayor of
> New York and the world that in 15 minutes a large chunk under a large
> building, a symbol of international unity, will be conveniently
> rearranged, at only minor risk to nearby inhabitants!  Wow, this could

The person who wrote this stuff hasn't thought it through.  Any of these
things can and do happen right now over the telephone (anonymously)
and through postal mail (anonymously).  Somehow, society has not fallen
into anarchy because anyone can drop a letter in a mailbox.  Why not?

(pause here and actually think about it...)








> Wow, think of what we could achieve and accomplish if we
> completely dismantled the NSA, the FBI, the CIA, and my local pig
> trough!

Now you are closer to reality.  It appears that at least the DEA is
getting *severe* funding cuts under President Inhalation.  It's about time
someone fired those thugs.

> 		  For example, I like individual terrorists just as
> much as the organized collections.  They sound like they could be
> really completely uninhibited in their creative grasps of our true
> freedoms, and more numerous with their stellar utilizations.  

There are two problems with terrorism.  The first is that it is regularly
practiced by governments -- against their own populations as well as
against non-citizens -- so governments can't truly be too opposed to it.
I'll give you the definition of terrorism from the CIA in 1980
(as reported by Admiral Stansfield Turner):

	Terrorism:  The threat or use of violence for political
	purposes by individuals or groups ... when such actions
	are intended to shock, stun, or intimidate a target group
	wider than the immediate victims.

("Terrorism and Democracy", ISBN 0-395-43086-0, p. 181).

If forcibly arresting someone and putting them in jail for selling
drugs to a willing buyer doesn't fall squarely into this definition, I
don't know what does.  Every law that Congress passes "to send a message"
falls into this definition -- it's to intimidate a group wider than
the group who will be arrested and tried.

The second problem is *not* that it's too hard to tap the phones of
identified terrorists -- it's that you can't pick out the terrorists
from the billions of other humans.  Even police states have trouble
with this, but they tend to provoke more people to become terrorists.
Anonymity makes it possible (as in alt.whistleblowers) for people who
know terrorists to safely expose them.  Have you noticed that the way
the Feds have attacked the Mob has been by convincing insiders to
testify and giving them untraceable new identities (the "Witness
Protection Program")?

The beauty and the strength of an open society is that it brings all
kinds of problems and conflicts out where everyone can see them and
they can potentially be worked out -- BEFORE anyone sees a need to
escalate to mass violence.  In a rigidly structured society, by the
time the government knows it needs to change, it has already been deposed.

> In fact,
> the potential for individual, unassociated citizens to thwart the
> abuses, and profoundly destabilize the foundations of frigid, faceless
> bureacracies like big telephone companies, and even the government, I
> find spine-tinglingly majestic---it even looks like this could soon
> happen.

It has already happened.  A small number of individuals have done this
-- Freud, Marx, Moses, Jefferson, for example.  Most profoundly
destabilizing ideas are derived from the work of a single mind
(nanotechnology for example).  But most destabilization of
bureacracies comes from ordinary change, not profound change, and
the improved communication tools we're building will *help*
individuals and bureacracies to deal with change.

	John Gilmore