Anonymity, protection and privacy
The Center for Democracy and Technology, CDT, announced the launch of a new site today that is meant to “take advantage of the extraordinary collaborative power of the Internet to help CDT craft a final version of its … draft of policy recommendations on Internet and technology policy for the next Administration and Congress.”
Similar to our objectives and projects here at the Berkman Center, CDT is concerned with:
- Protection of free speech on the Internet
- Protection of children in such an open environment (1,2)
- Role of government in Internet regulation;
- Regulating online (government) surveillance which John Palfrey discusses in detail in one of his posts.
- Regulating the juxtaposition of the right to anonymity online, consumer privacy and protection (against predators)?
- Consideration of the Internet as an open, non-discriminatory platform where freedom of global access to it is a fundamental right
I found these very interesting. In particular, the CDT recently released an article arguing that because of the power and potential of the Internet and its tremendous utility to the development and continuance of democracy, governments should consider Internet freedom as a top human rights and foreign policy priority.
Another issue that was raised in their draft, that I found immensely interesting, alluded to the tension between the right to privacy, anonymity and protection of other individuals online. Recently, the Federal court of California charged a woman involved in the MySpace suicide case. The Federal prosecutors in this case have invoked an anti-hacker law to charge the defendant with violating MySpace’s terms of service agreement. This led me to think more about hypothetical scenarios where anonymity, privacy issues and protection clash. Where should we draw the line and say that officials have no right to use technology to determine the true identity of users? Should there be complete anonymity available at all? I ‘m sure that there are situations (for e.g. blogging from inside of a politically-stiffened country) that make the need for anonymity necessary but where is the line between the right to protect and need for anonymity?
