remarkably bad media

A remarkably bad article by Peter H. Lewis in today's Times -- front
page, actually -- on anonymity on the net. He manages to confuse the
"Microsoft aquires Church" spoof with problems from anonymity -- in
fact, he opens his article by apparently chalking up the whole episode
to anonymity rather than complete stupidity on the part of anyone
believing an obvious spoof. (The original "AP" article was not
anonymous -- someone just posted a satirical message to the net. The
connection with anonymity is so tenuous as to be nonexistant.)

Things get rapidly worse. Just to list some of the problems, he calls
digital cash a way for people to open swiss bank accounts, confuses
the case of that kid at MIT who was running pirate boards with a case
of anonymity, spreads lots of FUD, gets lots of quotes from some
alarmist professor no one has ever heard of, makes a hash of
explaining why anonymous remailers are useful (and doesn't understand
that forgery and anonymity are sort of inherent in the fabric of the
net), makes a hash of explaining digital signatures, etc. Truly one of
the worst articles I've ever seen in the New York Times on any topic
of any sort -- and given the Times, thats an amazing level to have
fallen to.

The man seems devoid of even a basic understanding of journalism -- as
one example, journalists are supposed to interview the people they are
discussing to get comment (this is nearly the first rule), but he
never bothered to interview a single remailer operator, it seems, even
though he mentions Julf by name. Maybe sending some email to Julf
would have been too much effort, or maybe it would have made the story
less sensationalistic if he'd bothered to be balanced. He didn't seem
to check any of his facts, either (another rule), and the whole thing
reads like an editorial instead of an objective piece of reporting.

I really wonder if Lewis actually lives and works on the internet, or
if he's truly the amateur he seems to be. He comes of as not
understanding the basic mechanics of how things operate day to day
that even a non-technical person would understand.

I would complain somehow to the Times, but I suspect that it would be
impossible to convey properly even the rules of simple journalism that
he broke, even ignoring all the technological misunderstandigs. Sadly,
the editors would have no reason to listen to me, a random guy they'd
never heard of.

Another step in the slow disintegration of a once proud "paper of
record", I'm afraid.

Perry

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
This is really the first line of this message. Ignore the line below
-- it was added by mistake by my autosigning scripts. Also, I was
completely thrilled by the Peter Lewis article. Now that I've thought
about it some more, the Microsoft hoax _was_ a problem with anonymity.
Please just disregard the rest of this post. Thanks. -- Raph

This is the first line of this message.

I agree with Perry that the article has some serious problems. Very
little of the actual stuff he talked about has anything to do with
anonymity at all, especially with anonymous remailers.

I was interviewed but not quoted. I mostly talked about the remailers,
their political situation (the fact that the average half-life of a
remailer seems to be about six months), and what my role is in trying
to make the whole mess useable. When I talked to him on the phone,
Peter seemed pretty clear about the distinction between spoofing
someone else's identity and being anonymous. However, I don't think
this distiction made it into print.

The sidebar was particularly problematical. It presented digital
signatures as a relief for the problems posed by anonymity. Well, of
course I think digital signatures are a wonderful idea (which is why
I've signed this post), but it certainly won't protect anybody against
being exposed to disturbing ideas that are disseminated anonymously.
Thus, I would consider the sidebar to be misleading.

I first saw the Microsoft spoof posted to rec.humor.funny. I don't
recall it being anonymous, and even if it was, it was clearly labled
as a joke. Any problems it caused are due to human gullibility. I
found it to be a great demonstration of how effective the AP
inverted-pyramid style is in conveying misinformation.

I can sympathize with Peter a bit, having just written an article for
Wired magazine (Feb '94, pp. 68-69). They used about half of the text
I originally wrote. My hard-headed skeptical review of stochastic
screening techniques was transformed into Wired's trademark gee-whiz
boosterism.

As the NYT article appeared, I'm just as happy that I wasn't quoted.

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PGP key available by fingering raph@netcom.com