Re: your mail Re: on anonymity, identity, reputation, and spoofing

[Stanton McCandlish <mech@eff.org>]

> Considering that human nature allows for pathological behavior in some 
> individuals, and that anonymity seemingly decreases the potential for
> being held acountable for pathological behavior, I think it follows that 
> it would be unwise NOT to be concerned.
[...]
> You may also find that such gentile methodology as attempting to sway
> opinion or unfairly weight ones opinion in order to alter the 
> flow of disscussion are the least you can expect.
> I bet that clever sociopaths will find ways to leverage anonymity
> schemes to accomplish mayhem of magnitude well beyond these sort of things.
> believe me, you don't want to find out by being subjected to such mayhem, 
> and if it happens you will be much harder pressed to come up with ways
> to patch things than if you take time to try and deal with it now.

I think one thing this argument forgets is that we are not talking about a
herd of poor sheep vicimized by the big bad wolves.  This technology is
available to EVERYONE.  If you don't like being hassled by someone
anonymously, then be anonymous yourself.

Also, lets keep in mind that we are talking about email here.  What are
these sociopaths supposed to do?  >Bonk!< you?  Bug you to death with CTRL-Gs?
What sort of "mayhem"?  Clever pyramid scheme or credit card fraud scams?
Oh horrors.  Anyone idiotic enough to fall for ANY such scheme deserves
what they get.

Right now, I see the main real problem of anon mail to be spamming, and 
the main imaginary one (i.e. the main one people bring up when
discussing anon vs no anon, but of which there are no example cases, just
lots of what if'ing) to be liability for libel/slander.

I can't really see this changing anytime soon.  Perhaps in a world like
that in _True_Names_, but we don't have that right now.  By the time it
becomes possible, all sorts of checks and balances will be in place
(credentialling, digicash, proof of personhood, etc etc) that are only
gleams in our eyes right now.

> How about *credentials* that certify the capabilities or flag the 
> potential dangers of a binary object.
> Aren't there schemes out there that hold promise for that sort of
> *trustworthiness* stamp of approval?
> Aren't such schemes prone to the potential of cliquish abuse?

Sounds very much like [True?] brand names too me, in practice.  In fact I
cannot see the viability of an "It's ok" credential if used by anyone other
than a trusted author/company and from trusted reviewers/users.

> what are you credentialing? that someone *should* know what they are 
> talking about? even so it would not preclude being burned, psychopaths
> tend to be very clever?

This aversion to net.psychos seems very much like the fear of
net.pedophiles that's been evidenced by a few journalists.  Please point
me to some psychopaths.  Where are these folks.  I have a strong suspicion
that psychopaths are generally dysfunctional enough that they will not do
well in a medium like this.  And if there were a lot of them around, we'd
already be seen decidedly psychopathic abuse of the net; instead we get
immature spam, and other wastes of bandwidth but nothing particularly serious.
I think we need to draw some distinctions between what is a possible
threat or problem and was is a likely threat or problem.  

>  > (Of course, this could lead occasionally to a Dr. Jekyll who makes
>  > sensible and weighty posts under his own name, while under his Mr. Hyde
>  > pseudonym he rants and raves.  But hopefully this would not happen too
>  > often.)
> 
> Oh, I don't know anybody who does that sort of thing! :-)
> do you ?

I certainly side with you on this one.  I know quite a few people who do
this, both on "the" net, and in BBS-based networks (as if there's much
difference these days.)

>  > Other credentials could be related to some of the other points Detweiler
>  > raised, such as list membership > some number of months.  The point would
>  > be that these credentials are voluntary, used to get past people's filters,
>  > and that they retain poster anonymity while giving readers useful information
>  > about the poster.
> 
> I want privacy too, and I want as much free-wheeling as possible in the
> matrix. Personally I think that accountability is going to be required
> as the price for reasonably secure encryption, reasonably open access,
> and reasonably secure privacy of data. 

What is "reasonably secure"?  I can't think of any "reasonable" definition
of that.  Something secure from YOU, with your 386 or Mac, that is NOT
secure from the US govt. is not reasonably secure to me.  In fact it is
woefully insecure, IMNERHO.

> IMNSHO, it is unreasonable to expect an anarcho-libertarian outcome to
> these issues. If you can prove me wrong I will be thrilled.

Only time will tell.  I think it'd be utterly silly to expect things to
come out as any of us plan, 100%.  That is no reason to not work toward
whatever goals we have, as individuals, as "the Cypherpunks" or whatever.

> I also see very little regarding potential for breaking the mind machine
> link, or biologic interfaces?

There are other lists and groups for that, particularly alt.cyber*


-- 
-=> mech@eff.org <=-
Stanton McCandlish     Electronic Frontier Foundation Online Activist & SysOp
"A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood of
ideas in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people." -JFK
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