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Date: Sat, 6 Dec 2003 10:59:39 +1100
To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private>, Lawrence Lessig <lessig@private>
From: Roger Clarke <Roger.Clarke@private>
Subject: Re: [Politech] Larry Lessig replies to Politech over limiting
anonymity [fs][priv]
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed"
G'day Declan, hi Larry
The conversation's quickly generating more heat than light, because it's
started on the wrong basis.
As a combination consultant-researcher-advocate, I'm well aware how vital
it is to find ways to make uncomfortable-but-important lines of argument
palatable to a variety of different interests. Without that, the necessary
dialogue simply won't happen.
The calming pitch I've been using in this area for years is as follows:
1. Anonymity *is*, and will be.
Whether it's good and/or bad is a great argument to have at the bar.
But it's discussions at an ethical / moral level are inevitably
divisive and consequently seldom ever achieve anything. So let's not
go there *at all*.
2. Pseudonymity 'is' too, but it isn't good enough yet.
To be effective, pseudonymity needs to combine technological,
organisational and legal elements.
And to attract people to use it, it must be credible, in the sense
of not being able to be broken simply by the uttering of some magic
incantation like 'Al Qaeda'.
I had conversations with Phil Zimmerman at CFP many years ago about how we
harness secret-sharing technologies more effectively. But I've never been
able to get the doctoral candidates I wanted to work on it.
So what we need is a task force that blends the technical expertise (Phil
Zimmerman, Bruce Schneier, Steve Bellovin, Eric Young, Ian Goldberg and
similar), with the legal perspective (Larry Lessig, Marc Rotenberg, Michael
Froomkin and similar) and the policy perspective (Declan McCullagh, Deirdre
Mulligan, Simon Davies, Stephanie Perrin and various other dissimilar),
with the aim of producing a series of white papers on effective
pseudonymity services that will complement the anonymity services that are
bound to exist in any case.
What we *don't* need is for Politech readers to work themselves up into a
lather on the ethics and political economy of anonymity, and to thereby
divert people's energies and effort away from the real work.
Regards ... Roger
References:
http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/DV/HumanID.html#AnPs (1994)
http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/DV/AnonPsPol.html (1996)
http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/DV/UIPP99.html#Ps (1999)
--
Roger Clarke http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/
Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, 78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
Tel: +61 2 6288 1472, and 6288 6916
mailto:Roger.Clarke@private http://www.xamax.com.au/
Visiting Professor in the eCommerce Program, University of Hong Kong
Visiting Professor in the Baker Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre, U.N.S.W
Visiting Fellow in Computer Science, Australian National University
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