Nick Levesque: June 2011

Over the past few years online anonymity has been seen as an unnecessary medium for all types of unwanted internet persons from frustrating trolls to immature insulters to uneducated ramblers. This can be seen in the first person in places like YouTube’s comment section to sites like reddit.com as well as it being blatantly displayed on many of 4chan’s message boards. It seems that the general consensus on the matter is that online anonymity is bad. Claims from enraged mothers arguing that we need to stop online anonymity and that kids need to start taking responsibility for their actions online are circulating throughout the nation. Many new articles are popping up about the problems with anonymity, on top of psychological studies proving the effect of anonymity on the quality and morality of posts, and all thrown together with news articles depicting suicides and other tragedies caused by online bullies and other forms of cyber harassment. This is a serious issue. Sites are starting to prevent anonymous comments through diverse means and online identities are threatened to be revealed to the public. Why is that a bad thing? Attacking online anonymity as the cause for its negative effects is comparable to attacking the mailman for receiving hate mail or getting mad at a hatemonger’s megaphone. You probably would never have gotten the mail nor would you have heard the hate speech without those two, respectively, but you would never see to any action against either. We are dealing with a problem amongst people, and the way people are behaving or interacting with other people. We are not dealing with an abstract idea as the root of all the evil that has come out of it. It is important to understand the difference. The truth is that online anonymity has become essential to us. Moreover, it is vital that our culture includes it. Some of the many reasons we need it are support forums, anonymous tips, as well as general and personal privacy reasons. The point is that although online anonymity has been scrutinized by the media for its negative effects, it is a necessary and crucial part of a larger online community that itself is not only needed but also already integrated into our culture.

Before we delve deeper into the subject, we need to take a step back and look at the background of anonymity in general. Surprisingly enough, anonymity has been a huge part of the United States ever since its establishment. Thomas Paine’s Common Sense was first published anonymously simply signed “an Englishman.” Moreover, many politicians including John Jay, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton wrote The Federalists Papers under a pseudonym, and the Anti-Federalist, including Samuel Adams and Richard Henry Lee, wrote back also using pseudonyms (Wallace, 1999). Anonymity has been used since then around the world far before the invention of the internet. It was not uncommon for women to use male pseudonyms in order to get their message across, as well as just about every persecuted race or ethnicity had members of it use pseudonyms in communities when and where that race or ethnicity was victimized. Before we continue, it will be convenient to distinguish between different types of anonymity. The spectrum of pure anonymity runs from full anonymity (which is one extreme, where there is absolutely no link between the author and the message) to the thoroughly named (the other extreme, where the author is completely identified). A pseudonym, however, is a different type of anonymity in that although it may be untraceable to a real-world person, it may have a reputation in itself inside of a virtual domain. Because of this, a pseudonym can come with plenty of contextual information about the sender whereas a purely anonymous message entirely stands alone (Donath 1996). The simple advantage of a pseudonym as opposed to pure anonymity is that it allows the possibility to link a number of messages to the same author, therefore building a reputation for the pseudonym. Other advantages include that it is possible to communicate with a pseudonym; in fact it is possible to have a complete conversation between two pseudonyms with neither knowing the real identity behind the other sender (Palme & Berglund 2002). Pseudonyms, which are currently the most common form of online anonymity, definitely do, however, create a problem. The more messages are sent from the same pseudonym, the more context clues can be gathered about that pseudonym, and ergo the more likely it is for the real-world author behind the pseudonym to be revealed. Latanya Sweeney, a computer scientist, showed that 87 percent of people in America could be identified using only a zip code, a birthday, and a gender. What does this mean for a pseudonym user? Leaving simple comments such as “I saw that game, it was great” or “I can’t believe this happened on my birthday” may be innocent comments by themselves, but by piecing together these comments I already obtained a zip code from the first and a birthdate from the second. All I need to identify this commenter is a gender, which is most likely the easiest to find hints of, although that could be debated.

So now that we have established the basis of anonymity and its uses let’s talk about why this is important. Imagine that there was no such thing as anonymity; by that I don’t mean that there is a vanishing of the concept of anonymity, but instead I want to assume that the government (or companies, internet providers…whoever) has taken preventative measures against the possibility that a message is sent out without the original author being identified. Initial reaction is to assume this would be great: we would have no more annoying posters, no more trolls, no more obscenities and a numerous amount of other seemingly positive effects. Before we explore the actual effects of this let’s talk about the ethical issues with this dilemma. This can be analyzed thoroughly rather than summarized with roughly the same conclusion, but a full analysis of each ethical theory and what each would state about the dilemma is far beyond the breadth of this paper. Instead, we choose a basic summary of some major ones. Keeping in mind that we are trying to decide if it is ethical for an influential body to prohibit anonymity or any form of it, we will first review this from a utilitarian point of view, more specifically, act utilitarian. We need to assume that the people who benefit most from this are the common website users who will no longer be annoyed by pesky anonymous babble. Above that, the smaller minority who arguably benefit more will be the higher-class well educated website users who are trying to have meaningful political, religious, scientific, or philosophical discussions on a forum, but simply cannot get their message across due to a flood of useless comments. All in all these are at best a minor inconvenience; therefore the benefit of their disappearance is minimal. The people who are hurt by this, in short, include literally every single person who are members of or can be affected by this influential body that is prohibiting anonymity. If I am in the same country as this prohibition I am losing all of the benefits and necessities of anonymity. The anonymous version of me and the real me send out completely different messages, whether it be out of fear of being persecuted, out of embarrassment, or out of a general want to privacy on the issue. I would essentially have my anonymous-self censored completely to the public. This would be true for everyone. It is easy to see the vast majority of negative effects this has on the people affected, and for that we claim that act utilitarianism would not allow the censorship of anonymity in any form. Let’s delve into a possibly more moral than logical ethical perspective: Kantianism. There are two formulation rules we need to check.

1. Act only on moral rules that you can at the same time will to become a universal law.

2. Act so that you always treat yourself and others as an ends in themselves and never as means to an end.

This is partially proven since trying to censor a person is clearly not a maxim that one can wish to be a universal law, but it is a bit fuzzy since the maxim can depend on the person wishing it and the situation, so let’s look at the second formulation rule. Censoring anonymity in general treats all parties who are being censored as means to an end, the end being the abolition of anonymity and the means being the censoring. Simply for that reason we can say that preventing anonymity is unethical according to Kantianism. At the risk of getting too deep in the ethical side of this argument, let’s look at one more ethical theory before we move on: the Social Contact Theory. The idea is that there is an unwritten unsigned social contract that a person is able to express himself freely and with no limitation given that it does not violate another person’s rights. This paper will not begin to argue the necessity of freedom of speech, but basically just state the commonly accepted belief that a social contract of freedom of speech exists. This is true not because the United States law says so but because it is vital to a culture similar to the one we have in place today, and solely for that reason, we can state that freedom of speech is part of the social contract. Trying to prove its existence would be like trying to mathematically prove 1+1=2, it would take far too long for an accepted basic knowledge. Preventing anonymity is preventing free speech and therefore violating the social contract, rendering this action unethical by the Social Contract Theory. From an undisputed victory of the unethicality of three different perspectives on the issue, it is safe to conclude that it is unethical for any influential body to prohibit anonymity or any form of it.

Moving away from an abstract, almost philosophical argument, we next take a look at more concrete examples of why we need anonymity. Firstly, we need to initialize the idea that anonymity can be used for good or bad purposes, but we will start by describing positive uses of anonymity. Going back to Common Sense and The Federalist Papers, it is apparent that anonymity can be used to send out a message without having to worry about personal actions such as persecution taken against the author. Thomas Paine published it anonymously because of the treasonous nature of his work, which became one of the most influential works of the American Revolution. People working for an organization that misuses or dismisses ethical standards are able to expose that organization for the greater good of the public. This kind of anonymous tip is also used by newspapers as well as police officers, welcoming tips to catch criminals (Palme & Berglund 2002). Kabay (1998) argued that anonymity has an unusual effect: it actually increases prosocial behavior instead of antisocial behavior (as cited in Spivey & Prentice-Dunn, 1990). Apparently completely anonymous peoples will interact much more openly and have more positive discussions of personal matters. Following this, people are much more open to discuss embarrassing or personal matters anonymously and get the support or advice they need, as can be seen on countless support forums. This is even true in real-world support programs such as, and most famously, Alcoholics Anonymous. As Rheingold (2000) puts it “anonymity seems to free people from their inhibitions.” He carries on to say that males will sometimes present themselves as females online not to deceive others but to see how differently they will be perceived in that community. On top of all that, Connolly, Jessup, and Valacich found the following:

A laboratory experiment was used to evaluate the effects of anonymity and evaluative tone on computer-mediated groups using a group decision support system to perform an idea-generation task … Identified groups working with a supportive confederate were the most satisfied and had the highest levels of perceived effectiveness, but produced the fewest original solutions and overall comments.

To summarize, idea-generation is enhanced by anonymity, where the risk of being judged for one’s opinion is not present. Generally speaking, anonymity in its pure form (assuming no traceability) grants freedom of speech without consequence or limitation, whether it is for better or for worse.

So we must now transfer to the ‘for worse’ portion. Allowing anybody to say anything with no chance of tracing the message back to the sender also allows malevolent acts to run amok. Cyber bullying, where one person essentially harasses another person online, is one such example. It also allows not only malevolent acts but also actual illegal acts to occur. A free online service called JAP (JonDonym Anonymous Proxy server) helps users stay completely anonymous on the internet, by acting as a proxy on the local machine. While this is used for both personal and business uses for reasons such as protection against profiling, observation by ISPs, and even the secret service, there are serious misuses of the service. According to Federrath (2006), typical suspected crimes by the use of JAP include “credit card fraud, computer fraud, sending malicious code to vulnerable web servers, insult, defamation, death threat, (and) access to child pornography.” Other arguments against online anonymity include the fact that governments are inherently bad at protecting the victims and punishing the abusers. Kabay (1998) furthers this by declaring: “Governments will continue to fail in their efforts to govern cyberspace because electronic communications networks are inherently divorced from geographical jurisdictions.” Another enormous concern with online anonymity is traceability. The argument there is that even the people who are using it and not abusing can be traced by almost anybody to find the original sender. McCullagh (2001) puts it best with “Privacy is dead on the Net, and being able to shield your identity online is about as likely as winning the lottery. Twice.” He continues to explain that even with the use of privacy-protected web surfing products, the user is still prone to traffic analysis, such as the FBI’s Carnivore system – now replaced with improved software such as NarusInsight. This does not stop at just government agencies, however. Anybody with enough knowledge and skill can determine an anonymous user’s identity and expose it for any reason, while still staying anonymous themselves. The problem thickens. How can we prevent all of these evil uses of anonymity and protect ourselves while not eliminating our freedom of speech and privacy? Before continuing I want to state that I completely agree with every single problem that anonymity causes, and I am in no way refuting the adverse effects propositioned by the other side of the argument. The disagreement, however, lies in the solution to these problems, specifically in the difference in the maintenance of the second part of the question asked above, about preserving free speech and privacy. There must be a better way to dissipate these side-effects without stabbing at our cultures vital tissues.

From the previously stated fact that anonymity grants free speech without consequence, we can see that the root problem of online anonymity where all of the negative effects originate from is the abuse of anonymity, NOT the use of anonymity. So far just about every single positive effect can be said to be a negative effect if it is used incorrectly and maliciously. To put it differently, every single negative effect stems from the abuse, and only the abuse, of online anonymity. So what can we do to stop it? Theoretically we would need to be able to legally persecute all illegal uses as well as misuses of anonymity, thereby creative an incentive to not start abusing it, and enforcing the removal of the current abuse of it. Again, as hinted, this is not a feasible option. An easy but equally problematic fix is actually one of the arguments against online anonymity, namely traceability. To use traceability as a solution we would need for every single message sent online to, if anonymous, be easily traceable. This would allow for any user that is abusing anonymity to be traced and exposed and/or punished by law. Like we have already discussed, this ironically allows for the abuse of anonymity tracing, where non-abusive users are exposed by abusive users at the expense of the non-abusive user’s privacy, reputation, and possibly even monetary value. By solving the problem of online anonymity abuse we have created another equal if not greater problem of online anonymity traceability abuse. What a headache! Instead of dismissing this idea, let’s refine it and try to solve both problems. Our new problem is that users who are anonymous can be exposed by other users, organizations, or the government. What we need is for there to be a checkpoint between a user and his ability to identify an anonym. This checkpoint would have to be able to identify if the user is abusing online anonymity or if the user is upholding the integrity of online anonymity by exposing an abuser. Unfortunately, we cannot inject a sentient being with perfect morals into a software and make it pop up every time sometime tries to access private information, but at least we know that this is what we need to get as close as possible to with our current technologies and resources. This “being” would most likely have to be the government. My reasoning for this is that if a company gets to decide who gets to identify an anonymous source there is too much influence that can sway the company’s opinion, as well as providing too much power to one company. Fixing this could include making multiple companies, such as ISPs, regulate these checkpoints, but sending in a request to your ISP to get the identity of an anonym would likely cause competition bias, where a company with fewer restrictions on the checkpoints would be favorable by some users. It can be disputed that the government could also have conflicting motives that would cause one trace to be allowed over another so we need to allow for checks within this system. To recap, a new government agency controls which traces are allowed and which are not. In order for me to identify who sent a hateful message to my e-mail address I can send a request to this agency and, if they approve, they can give me the identity of the sender and I can decide to take legal actions. Police officers can do the same to catch criminals, and other government agencies can do the same to stop threats such as terrorism. To figure out how this agency makes these decisions we take a look at the theoretical optimum, which would be where everybody votes for every request in order to have the fairest decision on every request. It doesn’t take long to realize this is not achievable. Instead we need to place a system of checks and balances on the agency, where different parties and/or agencies evaluate the decision, and we need to make the agency transparent, where the public can see which requests were accepted and which were not, while keeping the identities of the requesters private. Let’s take a step back and look at this now. Remember that I am assuming that this agency has information on literally everybody. The newly created problems as well as ethical and social implications of this type of agency need to be a serious consideration. What happens if a hacker can get into the agency’s database? What if the agency itself finds a way to fool the public into believing it is transparent or regulated when in reality it is not? How much power are we giving to this agency and how concerned should we be about that? Who says we can even trust the government anyhow? There are many problems and loopholes with this system, and I am sure the reader is capable of describing a scenario where this would fail. Perfection is impossible to achieve, and keeping that in mind, the structure of this solution seems to be, for the most part, successful in solving the problem of online anonymity abuse while keeping freedom of speech intact. I leave it to the reader, software engineers, and politicians to take this solution template and iron out minor problems, create the structure of the system in much more detail, and delve deeper into the subject.

Coming back to the main point, online anonymity is so far integrated into our culture that it has become a necessity for our community and it must stay alive in order for our rights to freedom of speech to survive. Furthermore, this type of censorship also jeopardizes our privacy and can potentially be harmful to the way we behave online, including the decline of new ideas, inventions, and thoughts. The many problems that online anonymity can cause are far outweighed by the effects of its disintegration. Instead of disabling our capabilities to use anonymity altogether we need to tackle the root problem, anonymity abuse. Although I strongly believe in the structure of my proposed solution, whether this paper correctly solves the problem is irrelevant, we need to start thinking differently about the way we handle these types of issues. Technology creates solutions, and these solutions can create more problems. While this is true, it should not be regarded as reinforcement to the idea that we should simply do away with technology. If we were to follow that, we should all go back to living without any form of technology and, therefore, living without problems. It is obvious that this is not true; there will still be problems no matter what the technological advancements are, just as there have always been. Technology creates solutions, and inevitably there will be other different problems, but the two are not linearly dependent. We should further ourselves and our technological advancements, continually and endlessly brainstorming and problem-solving and advancing our culture. For these universal reasons, arguing that online anonymity should be abolished by stating “grow up and accept responsibility for your actions on the internet” is not only an insult to the users who need it and use it but also a slap in the face to the many in history who have used anonymity for righteous reasons. The arguments for the preservation of online anonymity are not cries of immature young persons who just want to annoy others on the internet without facing consequences; they are the just protection of the rights that this country was founded on. Attacking the medium of the problem as opposed to its source and, consequently - censoring, disabling, or preventing online anonymity - is unconstitutional, unethical, and unintelligent.

Bibliography

Rheingold, H. (2000). The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. Boston, MA: The MIT Press.

Palme, J., & Berglund, M. (2002, July 30). Anonymity on the internet. Retrieved from http://people.dsv.su.se/~jpalme/society/anonymity.html

McCullagh, D. (2001, April 27). You can hide from prying eyes. Wired Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2001/04/43355

Wallace, J.D. (1999). Nameless in cyberspace: anonymity on the internet. CATO Institute, 54. Retrieved from http://www.cato.org/pubs/briefs/bp54.pdf

Donath, J.S. (1996). Identity and deception in the virtual community. Informally published manuscript, MIT, Cambridge, MA. Retrieved from http://smg.media.mit.edu/people/Judith/Identity/IdentityDeception.html

Kabay, M.E. (1998). Anonymity and pseudonymity in cyberspace: deindividuation, incivility and lawlessness versus freedom and privacy. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the European institute for computer anti-virus research, http://www.mekabay.com/overviews/anonpseudo.htm

Federrath, Hannes (2006) Anonymity in the Internet. In: ZISC Information Security Colloquium, 20. Juni 2006, ETH Zürich.

Connolly, T., Jessup, L.M., & Valacich, J.S. (1990). Effects of anonymity and evaluative
tone on idea generation in computer-mediated groups. Management Science,
36(6).

Nick Levesque

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Tuesday, June 28, 2011

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Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Review: ASUS

Importance of Online Anonymity and why it is necessary

Monday, June 20, 2011

Code: Rigid Body using Quaternions

Sunday, June 19, 2011

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Friday, June 17, 2011

Review: Home Depot AC Repair

Thursday, June 16, 2011

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