--- Date: Wed, 1 May 2002 21:47:20 -0500 (CDT) From: William Knowles <wkat_private> To: Declan McCullagh <declanat_private> Subject: Privacy vs. anonymity on the Web Organization: C4I.org - http://www.c4i.org http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/3170530.htm By John Balzar Tue, Apr. 30, 2002 [...] Legitimate announcements and news stories are hijacked from Web sites and rewritten by anonymous mischief makers. Once in the vapors of the Web, a stink arose when my byline was circulated over a fabricated story about the president of the United States being a child molester. The creative geniuses who have given us the Web still insist that anonymity is one of its cornerstones. If so, the foundation is wormy. The longer that Web-heads insist on anonymity, the more the credibility and usefulness of their creation will be undermined. Already, one of the first lessons taught in middle-school computer labs is to regard everything on the Web as you might a puff adder -- apt to bite you at any moment. Is this the best we can expect from the information revolution? So instead of worrying ourselves silly about ways to protect these few who are afraid to stand up for their words and actions, we should be going in the other direction: making it harder to be anonymous, marginalizing those who try. We may never humanize the automobile, but we can the future -- by tearing down those barriers that shield us from each other and tempt us to be our worst. ------------------------------------------------------------------ John Balzar is a Los Angeles Times columnist. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sign this pro-therapeutic cloning petition: http://www.franklinsociety.org -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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