The drumbeat against all those anonymous pedophiles continues.... _Wall Street Journal_, 6/30/94 PERSONAL TECHNOLOGY by Walter S. Mossberg "Keeping Your Kids Away From Creeps As They Play Online"
Does anyone have Mossberg's email address? I tried to guess a hostname, but wsj.com, dowjones.com and dj.com all do not exist. I'd like to suggest a couple of things to Mossberg to go along with his ban on anonymity: 1) Mandatory Caller ID. Not Calling Number ID, but Caller ID, where all new phones sold after January 1, 1995 are required to have a smart-card reader which verifies the identity of the caller and transmits that to the called party. 2) Mandatory licensing of print media, from photocopied fliers to scholarly journals. Licensed publications would agree to accept material for publication only when accompanied by either a notarized statement of identity or a digital signature from the same smart-card used for #1. 3) And, of course, to stamp out anonymity in face-to-face encounters, all subjects would be required to carry their smart-card at all times and present it upon demand by anyone. There! That should protect us from all the creeps in the world. Of course, there will be a few anarchist crybabies who will call these measures fascist, and a few victims of the new openess, but this is a small price to pay for the protection of our children from all the freaks and motherfuckers of the world. --- davehart@eskimo.com