Re: Press attack on anonymity.

[frissell@panix.com (Duncan Frissell)]

At 09:51 AM 1/3/95 -0800, James A. Donald wrote:
>Yesterday an "opinion" article appeared in the SF Chronicle,
>written by some unimportant person who knew absolutely
>nothing about the internet.
>
>Today a similar, but better informed article, appeared in
>many newspapers, originating from the New York Times.

The later is presumably Peter Lewis' article on anonymity on the nets that
appeared in the Saturday Times.

It was not that negative about anonymity although it did seem to confuse
spoofing with anonymity (since it talked about digital signatures as a
response to "problems").

He did not advocate government intervention.

Since the Supremes have always supported anonymous speech, it seems unlikely
that anonymity could be outlawed.  Things like mandatory identification for
net access (hard to enforce worldwide) would also seem to be a "government
license for publication" which is what the 1st Amendment was specifically
written to stop.  In any case, using companies as cutouts for such
activities is trivial.  Mandatory ID of any sort only goes back as far as
the first entity which can be a company formed to block tracing.

DCF
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