Anonymity on the net

Alan Wexelblat writes:

[Asks, why is anonymity/pseudonymity useful when posting?]

> Case 1) technical postings of a research/white (in the sense of whitenet/
> blacknet) nature.  Here anonymity would be a hindrance.  I post in large
> part to help my name be known in certain academic circles.  In this case I
> would tend to wonder at people who posted anonymously and would (as was
> mentioned in this list) tend to discount their information.  In research
> circles, name value means a lot.

An anonymous/pseudonymous poster may want to expose faulty reasoning or
research methods on the part of a previous poster, where that poster is
their boss, faculty advisor, department chair, [employee of] generous
donor to a nonprofit org .. etc.

This is also useful for revealing insider information of a sensitive
or "whistleblowing" nature; see below.

> Case 2) technical postings of a black nature.  Here anonymity is a big help,
> as you may have some question about the legality of what you are doing.  But
> the question I have is: why post at all?  What gain is there from
> publicizing this kind of information?  Perhaps the gain is some assurance of
> safety from retaliation from parties who might feel themselves wronged by
> what you posted.  In this case, anonymity wins.

This is useful for posting security holes that CERT/vendors won't
acknowledge or address; it seems generally useful when posting something
that might get you (a) fired or (b) sued. Consider the (ongoing, I think)
litigation against the person who posted negative comments about a stock
to Prodigy. SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participants) actions
aren't (to my limited knowledge) common in the online world, but aren't so
uncommon in, say, logging-protest world. Even where a SLAPP suit isn't
successful (in terms of a favorable verdict), they can be very burdensome
to defendants. (The suit against the poster to Prodigy may or may not be
a real SLAPP, but it's at least similar.)

> Case 3) non-technical postings (social, talk).  Again I wonder what is the
> value of anonymity in this case.  To have a social conversation is to build
> a community of like-minded people and to contact people whom you want to
> relate to in some way.  Anonymity defeats this social building and relation
> process.

There are still several places where it's not 'politically correct' to be
known as a reader of/poster to groups like soc.motss, alt.sex.bondage, or
other "controversial" groups. People may still want the sense of community
that they can get from participating, while wanting to avoid the enforcement
of PC-ness, possibly at the end of a baseball bat.

Famous/infamous people may also want to participate in the online world
without being swamped by "fan mail" - I suspect it'd be virtually impossible
for, say, William Gibson to post to Usenet without being overrun by
zillions of letters. I believe that Steve Wozniak (post-Apple) attended
college under an assumed name for similar reasons.

> A counter-response to this might be to say that we want to put privacy in,
> not anonymity.  But again, I wonder about this.  If I want my message to be
> read only by a certain list of people, why am I posting to a newsgroup
> instead of to a mailing list?

Distributing "secret" information widely, in an encrypted form, can
frustrate traffic analysis - if I suspect that X is doing something
nefarious, I could look through sendmail logs (or whatever) to see
who she's talking to, and create a list of suspects. However, if X
posts her secrets to the net - in an encrypted format - and those secrets
are dispersed to the world, I can't draw any conclusions about anyone
who happens to receive that encrypted message in their alt.test newsfeed.
There's also no chance that anything peculiar will be showing up in
postmaster mailboxes because of bounced mail; it's also a much easier
way to talk to 200 people at once. (Assuming that it's meaningful to talk
about sharing a 'secret' with 200 people .. :)

> There's no point in privatizing the substrate, since anyone can get a client
> that will decrypt at the far end.
> 
> In sum, I guess I'm somewhat baffled at why one would want to use anonymity
> and/or privacy enhancement technology on one's news postings.

Generally, to (a) say/do something controversial, and avoid retribution;
(b) for an [in]famous person to say/do something mundane; or (c) to make
anonymity/pseudonymity not seem so peculiar, so instances of (a) and (b)
won't stick out like sore thumbs.


--
Greg Broiles
greg@goldenbear.com                     Baked, not fried.

> 
> Alan Wexelblat writes:
> 
> [Asks, why is anonymity/pseudonymity useful when posting?]

[excellent reasoning by Mr. Broiles deleted]

Also, as in the case of newsgroups such as alt*.abuse.recovery, the very
fact that your perp might be on the net, and harass or attempt to extract
revenge or retribution for posting, is a great reason to be anonymous.
There is a very real threat that if you post about your perp and he finds
out who you are, you might find yourself facing the business end of a
rather large, loaded, gun in the hands of a very pissed-off individual.
-- 
Ed Carp, N7EKG			erc@wetware.com			510/659-9560
                   an38299@anon.penet.fi, anon-1157@twwells.com
If you want magic, let go of your armor.  Magic is so much stronger than
steel!        -- Richard Bach, "The Bridge Across Forever"

From: greg@ideath.goldenbear.com (Greg Broiles)
>An anonymous/pseudonymous poster may want to expose faulty reasoning or
>research methods on the part of a previous poster, where that poster is
>their boss, faculty advisor, department chair, [employee of] generous donor
>to a nonprofit org .. etc.

This is closer to my case 2 in the sense that it's something black or
nefarious that is being discussed.  In these cases, as I noted before,
anonymity may help, but ultimately reputable researchers will have to review
the results to determine if there is in fact a fraud or other deception.

In addition, public "exposure" by anonymous sources is -- at best --
questionable.  The anonymous poster may simply be a rival with hir own axe
to grind and no interest in promoting the truth.  One or two instances of
this happening and people will (if they don't already) simply start
discounting anonymous denunciations.  There is a very good reason why our
legal system provides for people being able to face their accusers.

If you really need to get out information of this sort, posting is probably
a very poor second to informing a source with the ability to do a real
investigation.  This is what happened in the Patriot case: the Pentagon was
claiming amazingly high accuracy for the Patriot missile in the Gulf War.
Someone inside the Pentagon knew this was false; shortly thereafter about a
dozen people in the Establishment, in industry, in the media, and in academe
got information they could use to expose the fraud.  [I happen to know one
of these people personally; another is a professor at MIT.]

>This is useful for posting security holes that CERT/vendors won't
>acknowledge or address; it seems generally useful when posting something
>that might get you (a) fired or (b) sued. Consider the (ongoing, I think)

Again, we're in agreement here: Case 2 requires anonymity.  I continue to
harbor the dream that someday this country will move to a position where
people will be able to more freely speak their minds, no matter how ugly
their minds happen to be.

>There are still several places where it's not 'politically correct' to be
>known as a reader of/poster to groups like soc.motss, alt.sex.bondage, or
>other "controversial" groups. People may still want the sense of community
>that they can get from participating, while wanting to avoid the enforcement
>of PC-ness, possibly at the end of a baseball bat.

Yeah, this is true.  I'm on a very large mailing list which discusses a
number of private issues.  Many people get the list at their work email
addresses and contribute to the list anonymously for reasons like these.  I
guess I'm just too much of an idealist -- Greg is probably right here as
well.  I will just note that I tend to believe the gay theorists who note
that the closeted-ness of gays makes homophobia easier and more widespread.
Still, it should be each individual's decision how much sie wants to be
"out."

>Distributing "secret" information widely, in an encrypted form, can
>frustrate traffic analysis [...] (Assuming that it's meaningful to talk
>about sharing a 'secret' with 200 people .. :)

This is sort of the equivalent of the old coded-message-in-the-personals
approach.  Delivering a text which has no meaning except to a specific
intended recipient is probably a reasonable idea, but I wish there was a
better use of network resources than sending hundreds of bogus copies of
something to hide the real intended recipients.

>for an [in]famous person to say/do something mundane

That's a good point I hadn't thought of!  I'm still so jizzed about getting
my name recognized here and there it hadn't occurred to me that there would
be times I'd rather not be recognized at all.

Good points all!  Thanks for contributing to discussion.

--Alan Wexelblat, Reality Hacker, Author, and Cyberspace Bard
Media Lab - Advanced Human Interface Group	wex@media.mit.edu
Voice: 617-258-9168, Pager: 617-945-1842	PUBLIC KEY available by request
"To pleasure!" "To passion!" "To paradise!" "To pain!" "Tonight!"