Surveillance by Design By Wendy Grossman

lcs Mixmaster Remailer mix at anon.lcs.mit.edu
Fri Aug 17 10:40:49 PDT 2001


> Even without the proposed legislation, anonymity is increasingly fragile on
> the Net. Corporations have sued for libel to force services to disclose the
> identities of those who posted disparaging comments about them online.
> Individual suits of this type are rarer, but last December, Samuel D.
> Graham, a former professor of urology at Emory University, won a libel
> judgment against a Yahoo user whose identity was released under subpoena.

Actually the tide is turning on this issue.  There have been two
high-profile cases this year in which suits designed to reveal the
identities of pseudonymous posters have failed.

In May, Medinex dropped its lawsuit attempting to learn the identities
of its online critics.
http://www.eff.org/Legal/Cases/Medinex_v._Awe2bad4mdnx/20010522_eff_dismiss_pr.html

Wonder why they were concerned?  Take a look at
http://quote.yahoo.com/q?s=MDNX.OB&d=c&k=c1&t=2y&l=on&z=m&q=l.  The stock
has fallen from almost 10 to about 0.2 in the past 18 months.  Ouch.

A month earlier, the EFF and ACLU were successful in quashing a subpoena
by foundering auctioneer 2TheMart.com attempting to identify pseudonymous
participants in an online bulletin board.
http://www.eff.org/Legal/Cases/2TheMart_case/20010420_eff_2themart_pr.html
The company is currently defending itself against charges of securities
fraud.

It seems that the same kind of people who run a company into the ground
are the ones who want to muzzle their critics and who are least tolerant
of anonymity.  These two recent successes by the EFF will hopefully set
precedents for better protection of identity.

Of course, the real problem is the use of utterly inadequate technology
for pseudonymous activities.  People don't realize how risky it is
to participate in an online financial discussion without adequate
technological protection.  When things go wrong, litigants will lash out
at anyone who is a target.  Financial chat without layered protection
is like sex without a condom.

The list posted earlier (thanks, Seth) provides a good starting point
for online protection: http://sethf.com/anticensorware/bess/loophole.php.
The gold standard for this technology is the Freedom software from Zero
Knowledge Systems.  But if you're not willing to pay, at least go through
another site before trusting your identity to an online chat service.

Practice Safe Chat!





More information about the cypherpunks-legacy mailing list