Date: Sat, 18 Aug 2001 14:43:55 -0400 To: Matthew Gaylor <freematt@coil.com> From: Matthew Gaylor <freematt@coil.com> Subject: Re: Surveillance by Design By Wendy Grossman Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed"Date: 17 Aug 2001 17:40:49 -0000 From: Anonymous mail service Subject: Re: Surveillance by Design By Wendy Grossman
> 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_di smiss_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!
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