Nobody Knows You’re a Dog

We have the concept of designing for accessibility for the disabled, but we need to include the idea of designing on the web for accessibility to those who are reaching us through national firewalls, or simply concerned with privacy and security. In cooperation with Reporters without Borders, I’m putting together a guide for safer anonymous use of the Internet, this summer.

Right now, we’re documenting and collecting methods that compromise privacy even with the use of anonymity software such as Tor.

Use of some technologies will make a site inaccessible to people practicing “safe surfing.” For example, people with concerns about strong anonymity will surf with javascript turned off in their browsers. If you are concerned that your site should be accessible particularly to users in countries with free speech restrictions, you need to design a site that does not use javascript for anything crucial to navigation or understanding the site.

Javascript can be “leaky” — as a server-side technology (code that is sent from the web site to be run on the surfer’s machine) the user has no control over what a bit of javascript code will ask for. Javascript can reveal the true IP number of a user shielded by a proxy, among other information.
Another piece of code we advise anonymity users to bypass is the Adobe PDF plug in. At the time I write this, this plug in ignores the proxy settings on the user’s machine, and fetches the file to display in the browser window directly. I’ve sent email to Adobe hoping they’ll fix this problem before we publish our guide in the fall.

If you are a person who plays with network security, we’d like you to find ways that plug-ins, applications and system settings can by-pass proxy settings and compromise user anonymity. Comment here contact us through http://tor.eff.org/. Thanks!

Do you know this man?

AOL user 710794 is an overweight golfer, owner of a 1986 Porsche 944 and 1998 Cadillac SLS, and a fan of the University of Tennessee Volunteers Men’s Basketball team. The same user, 710794, is interested in the Cherokee County School District in Canton, Ga., and has looked up the Suwanee Sports Academy in Suwanee, Ga., which caters to local youth, and the Youth Basketball of America’s Georgia affiliate.

That’s pretty normal. What’s not is that user 710794 also regularly searches for “lolitas,” a term commonly used to describe photographs and videos of minors who are nude or engaged in sexual acts.

Declan McCullagh gives a series of portraits of AOL users from an unsanctioned but not inadvertent file of the search activities of about 650,000 AOL users over three months. Most of them he picks out are far more disturbing and unsavory.

Although AOL did not corporately sanction the publication of this data, it was done deliberately in the interest of research. And although AOL yanked the data from the net, it was mirrored and is still as of the moment I write this accessible with its own search facility on a mirrored site.

Although this huge violation of user privacy is not the product of data retention policies, it’s doubtless that the data retention being implemented in the EU and soon in Canada will result in more and more incidents that represent breaches of privacy in this space. With requirements to retain 90 days of all user data, the EU policy creates an “attractive nuisance,” like laying bait for identity thieves, blackmailers, and other unsavory sorts — in the name of assisting EU authorities in tracing cybercrime.

It will be interesting to see how many portraits such as those Declan extracted will start to crop up from hackers “exploring” the data stores of the EU.

I was talking to Robert Winters this week at the Citizen Media Unconference and he mentioned talking to someone on the Cambridge (MA) school board who just tossed any anonymous messages about school board issues.

He admitted that he devalues any anonymous message. What if it’s from a political shill? Yes, but what if it’s from someone who feels chilling effects against expression?

Since I started working for Tor I’ve heard lots of stories about chilling effects. I can imagine a dozen reasons for people to want to give anonymous feedback to the school board. What if it gets back to my kid’s teacher and impacts her treatment? What if I have a contract with the city? What if I am involved in a private school, but my kid attends public schools — but if I comment, it could be taken to be sniping because of my job?

But even devaluing the feedback is better than tossing it. Go figure — the calculation still works. A political shill giving illegitimate feedback has their feedback devalued, which minimizes damage. But the chilled response gets heard, at least a little, which is better than if that person had never spoken out at all.

Ideally, as trust is built, perhaps the formerly chilled person will contact the school board member in person and say, “I sent you that anonymous message about [this issue], and I want to tell you, I’m glad I did because you did something about it.” It could help build the fabric of participation by allowing a trust-building phase.
Of course, this works for folks like Robert Winters, who would read but devalue the message, but not for the school board member using the round file.