The Supreme Court has frequently ruled that anonymous free speech is protected by the First Amendment. In McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission, a resident of Ohio was fined for distributing handbills signed “Concerned parents and tax payers” rather than with her name. The Supreme Court, in their 1995 ruling, stated, “Protections for anonymous speech are vital to democratic discourse … Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority.” Indeed, this nation's tradition of respecting anonymity has made many great causes possible.
Anonymity can be the greatest equalizer in a discussion. People participating in such discussions shed, along with their names, their race, class, gender, and more. Though these traits can always be disclosed again, doing so becomes a choice of the speaker, who is no longer burdened by inescapable expectations, stereotypes, and discriminations. Whistleblowers who call out misconduct within corporations and governments would almost never have the courage to speak up if their voices could be traced to their identities—they would be placing their livelihood (and in some cases, their lives) at serious stake. Had Deep Throat not assisted Woodward and Bernstein in their investigative journalism, the Watergate scandal and Nixon's corruption might never have been revealed. More recently, Iranians used psuedonymity on the Internet to help organize rallies and protests with Twitter, speaking out against election fraud in the supposedly landslide victory of incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Yet the less noble have just as many uses for anonymity. Without the fear of being caught, anonymity allows people to freely commit wicked crimes. Distribution of computer viruses and other malicious software, reproduction of child pornography, and illegal threats are all largely risk-free if one takes the proper precautions. Fox Nation, a recently-launched opinion site, predictably has some threads that go beyond death threats to the President, suggesting forceful takeover of Washington D.C., which would be treason.
Aside from such flatly detested and illegal activities, gray areas such as defamation and cyber-bullying are also essentially risk-free. Without fear of any repercussions, people are emboldened and say lecherous, insulting, and/or plainly untrue things they would never otherwise dare to—not only because they wouldn't have the courage to say it to their subject's face, but because they also would have to worry about their reputation becoming that of a perver, asshat, or idiot. Last year, Korean movie star Choi Jin-sil killed herself after malicious online rumors spread. She had also been harassed repeatedly for being a single, divorced mother, and said in interviews she “dreaded” the Internet. Anonymity might allow people to escape negative judgments regarding their gender, race, and defiance of social norms, but it also allows people to mock public figures for these same traits without becoming known for ugly speech. Much of the reason parts of the Internet have become cesspools of bigotry and perversion can be attributed to anonymity. Are we okay with that?
Of course, “perfect” anonymity—in which a evidence regarding a user's identity is literally impossible to find—is extremely difficult to achieve, but (to my understanding) it is possible, especially when one controls his or her own server equipment. Should we be allowing it? Thankfully, the most severe threats of death against Presidents and the like have been made by people who do not have a perfect understanding of how to avoid discovery, but if such techniques become more widespread and, eventually, commonplace, we might not be so lucky. We should stop and think about the impact of perfect anonymity before it becomes to late.
South Korea already has thought about it, and in an extremely controversial decision decided to order popular web portals to collect identifying information linked to their posts. Now portals with over 300,000 visitors a day must require users to enter names and matching national ID numbers. The move has led opposition parties to accuse the party in power of ruling the Internet with attempting to “rule cyberspace with martial law.”
Though this might be considered a rather extreme solution (not to mention one that is unlikely to exist in the US due to our lack of a national identification system aside from the laughably easy to steal Social Security Numbers), it will be interesting to see how it plays out. South Korea is on of the countries (if not the country) with the highest percentage of citizens using the Internet—over 75% of the population is on the Internet—so they can be viewed as a example of how other countries' Internet culture might look like and behave in the years to come.
I personally believe that the proper authorities should always, without fail, have the ability to trace Internet activity to a person, or at least to a small group of people. Of course, I'm sure many people would disagree with me, especially given the recently popularized distrust in any kind of government power whatsoever. They would likely scream about abuse, and I agree that allowing the government the ability to find out such information on a whim isn't wise. I would propose some kind of warrant system, where the authorities only have the ability to find a person's identity 1) to help them prevent some urgent and dangerous act (terrorism, shooting, assassination, invasion of DC, etc.) or 2) when there is significant evidence that a serious crime (production of child pornography, harassment, etc.) has taken place.
This is getting a bit long, so I guess I'll end by pitching Gabrielle a question. Do you think absolute anonymity—in which it is basically impossible for a person's identity to be discovered—is a good thing to have?
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