On Wed, Mar 05, 2003 at 10:40:37PM +0100, Hadmut Danisch wrote:
On Wed, Mar 05, 2003 at 01:00:37PM -0800, Brad Templeton wrote:
b) Don't forget privacy rights and the (in the USA, constitutionally
protected) right of anonymous communication in designing any systems
of authentication.
Interesting. Could anyone give me a hint which part of the
US constitution is stating this?
Just waiting for replies before doing the unsubscribe so I will
comment.
The U.S. supreme court has repeatedly ruled on a right to anonymous
speech. That however applies to government laws, it does not
require it in private systems. The government is not allowed to
pass laws or take actions to force you to identify yourself just
to speak or publish.
I am however, encouraging us to follow these principles in designing
the global architecture for e-mail, since the values that demand
them are the same, regardless of enforcement.
E-mail and other private internet communications are replacing the
old forms of speech which took place in the public commons and thus
had the constitutional protection. Many don't want this move
from the public commons to an all-private network to mean the end
of hard-won free speech protections.
Note as well that the courts sometimes consider de facto prohibitions
on anonymous speech to be the same as de jure ones. Ie.
setting up a regime where "We don't force you do identify yourself,
but we've arranged so nobody will listen to you if you don't" can
also be a violation of that principle.
It's OK, if some people decide to refuse anonymous communication.
However, if the system encourages that or makes it the default, so
that the majority are refusing anonymous communication, then
it is considered to be the same as banning anonymous communication,
since the result is the same.
There are solutions to this. This is one area where the e-stamps
can make sense, if they were to get adopted. A person could
communicate anonymously with an e-stamp, and people would listen.
Or the person could use a trusted "front", so long as we don't put
too much burden on the fronts so that they all have to shut down.
In the end it's the result that counts. To use the extreme example,
if it is not possible for me to publish the Federalist Papers, or
whistle-blow on Enron or Watergate, because we have built an E-mail
system where everybody discards anonymous e-mail, then we have
failed. If we make it substantially harder than it is now, we have
failed.
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