

      On 2/08/2011 4:57 AM, Tony Rutkowski wrote:

      > The reality is that a very
        large number of miscreants use

        > communications networks for exponentially increasing crime,

        > infrastructure attacks, and all kinds of behavior that
        significantly

        > harms others. They far outnumber the Buddhists in Kansas.

      

      That might be literally true, but I'm pretty sure that Kaliya was
      speaking abstractly and generally about minority groups with a
      legitimate need to engage anonymously.  

      

      So ... 

      

      (1) What evidence do you have Tony that there are more miscreants
      than innocents? 

      

      (2) As an engineer, are you comfortable making up requirements for
      identity management (in particular deeming that users need not be
      given anonymity options) or would it better, as with all IT, for
      requirements to be handed over from some authority for
      implementation?  When technologists make up requirements -- let
      alone public policy -- IT goes off the rails. 

      

      (3) If you use crime prevention as the rationale for taking away
      users' rights to anonymity, then you're not so much on a slippery
      slope, so much as already at rock bottom.  There would be no
      inhibition left, no separation of powers, nothing to stop us
      allowing interception of all communciation contents, in the name
      of law enforcement. 

      

      

      > Most rational societies will
        opt for protecting themselves, and those

        > folks in Kansas will have to deal with their neighbors.

      

      If there is a new social contract in the making, one where we all
      agree to protect ourselves by ceding a degree of privacy, then
      let's negotiate the new parameters in our conventional law making
      fora: the parliaments and the courts.  I have no absolute
      attachment to privacy; I agree that the reality of terrorism and
      the like probably does demand a rethink of conventional freedoms. 
      

      

      But for pity's sake, let's not let the informopolies of the world
      be the arbiters.  

      

      Can anyone seriously believe that Facebook and Google demand "real
      names" for other than commercial reasons?  If they were remotely
      interested in crime prevention, they would lifted a finger against
      pedophiles by now.  They conventionally disclaim responsibility
      for bad acts on their platforms by claiming their networks are
      simply communications platforms, but now they feign security
      interest and insist on changing the fundamental ways in which
      people manage their own identities.  The hypocricy is
      breathtaking, but what's really surprising is that so many
      technocrats don't see through it. 

      

      Cheers, 

      

      @Steve_lockstep