Dnia poniedziałek, 20 stycznia 2014 20:35:48 Philip Shaw pisze:
On 20 Jan 2014, at 19:40 , rysiek <rysiek@hackerspace.pl> wrote:
Dnia niedziela, 19 stycznia 2014 22:43:28 Troy Benjegerdes pisze:
The experience (experiment?) did, however, confirm my personal conviction that privacy and anonymity are expensive, and we as a society generally have to pay that cost for others, and the cost continues to spiral out of control as surveillance capabilities spiral out of control.
Indeed. However, *pseudonymity* offers the benefits of identifiability without many of the drawbacks of total anonymity.
In many ways psuedonymity is easier, but it does increase the importance of being very careful to avoid giving out revealing information.
Ah, apologies. I was unclear. I was refering to the perspective of a community, not the individual (as has Troy, I believe). As in: anonymity poses significant problems for any community that tries to honour it. For example anonymous remailer trolls and flames on this list are a concrete "cost" of the fact that the list accepts anonymous remailers. Pseudonymity (along with some reputation-based mechanisms) helps to alleviate that, to some extent, while retaining some of the most important advantages of personal anonymity. By the way, I'm perfectly okay with the cost-benefit trade-off we're making on this list with anonymous remailers, please do not treat the above as a suggestion (pardon! idea ;) ) to remove that option.
Over time, small details which are easily leaked (either explicitly, or through unintentional references to local facts, events, and jargon, areas of interest, personal details hinting at age, gender, etc., and so on), can build up into enough detail to identify a person down to a very few people, at least for those with the resources and inclination to make such an attempt.
Indeed.
One strategy I have heard of to mitigate that risk is creating a deliberately false persona, one which lives in the same city but in totally different circumstances (changing their family relationships, type of house, etc.), and adjusting tehri comments to fit that, which reduces the risk of accidental disclosure but requires more effort than ordinary psuedonymity.
Seems legit, thanks. -- Pozdr rysiek