-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- politas@dynamite.com.au (Politas) wrote:
Surely that isn't the important thing. More important is that the person really has an email address of "john_smith@hotmail.com". Then it's up to Hotmail to be able to trace that email address back to the previous step, assuming that they are being forced to do so by a warrant or some other legal reason.
Personally, I think that all messages should be able to be traced to a real person, although this tracing should not be possible without legal action.
Are you saying that Hotmail should be made a guarantor of the identity of its accountholders, or merely that they could be required, under certain circumstances, to divulge what information (if any) it possesses, regardless of its accuracy? AFAIK, the latter case is currently operative, since Hotmail's records are presumably already subject to subpoena (in the USA, at least -- I just realized you're posting from an Aussie domain). IOW, when you sign up for a hotmail.com account, you're presumably required to give them a "name". If I signed up as "John Smith", should they be required to verify that I'm really John Smith, or merely disclose that the account belongs to someone who identified him/herself as "John Smith"? If you're saying what I hope you're NOT saying, it would amount to a form of "identity escrow", and I suspect that Hotmail would probably choose to discontinue offering free e-mail accounts rather than take on that sort of responsibility. - --- Finger <comsec@nym.alias.net> for PGP public key (Key ID=19BE8B0D) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: noconv iQEVAwUBNJaaXwbp0h8ZvosNAQHqtQf+LGGPWLQFPGfGgwKIHKOTAXQ74S08rGqt i8yiuSY2RgC+CXzbXJaMmDQ9gAcPMmCKJqzc2O4bkresg+hz6/Cl6d+m+3FO4Nz+ HKeaEMlg3EXHuxTnhsx4vSAWubdbpC+OfkU6kQHf1YU1zWZnIV9c7SbWmSNeaYhq sXLl6+YlPFwwZ0N5bUBqNkOsAQQveNFd/91mYGAZBi2R6P95F+RDV3/Jv3elhXgu egBb2Igf7imK/U6zFhgm6+jCdFdpGOfJ030UAMulezFi/czaiNdLNR3jE4nnfrwQ 4qexxqUkwzNrNWX0M9T/YQ7wl+jIWi3KKj4s4QLHTKXhoHNDY7hPsw== =W6Zl -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----