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Worse, by taking this position Tor has no idea what privacy is. Privacy is not anonymity. Anonymity is the right to remain hidden independently of your communi

Worse, by taking this position Tor has no idea what privacy is. Privacy is not anonymity. Anonymity is the right to remain hidden independently of your communications. Privacy is the right to prevent disclosure. If third parties can access your correspondence you have no privacy regardless of your anonymity. If anybody can assert your identity you have no anonymity regardless of your correspondence, if any. The inability to separately define these terms sacrifices them both.

anonypla 5y ago
My take is: Privacy is when people know who you are but not what you are doing. Anonymity is when people know what you are doing but not who you are (some people will argue this is pseudonymity but I disagree with them in a practical context). Basically Batman is "anonymous" and Bruce Wayne is "private".
- LocalH 5y ago
  There is also a difference between truly anonymous (where no connecting identity is established between different events) and what I'll call a form of pseudonymity (where an identity is constructed, with or without a known connection to one or more real identities, and that identity builds its own reputation). I do not consider Batman "anonymous" unless he does something without revealing that it was Batman who did it. Batman is pseudonymous, simply because "he" is a known identity, whoever may ever be behind it at any given time.
funklute 5y ago
> Tor has no idea what privacy is This is unnecessarily inflammatory, and just makes it sound like "Tor doesn't see things as I do and therefore they are dumb". Practically speaking, the question of privacy largely disappears if you are anonymous. The two terms are not orthogonal, even if they are also not identical.
- beardyw 5y ago
  I think the point being made is that Tor is using the word privacy here where anonymity would be, in their case, much more correct. My view is that privacy gives them a better emotive spin (as witnessed elsewhere here). "Anonymity is a human right" is much more likely to be questioned.
- austincheney 5y ago
  I would say the terms are mutually exclusive only because there is no expectation of privacy where a party is anonymous. This is reinforced against online communications in a very practical application by presence of digital certificates.
  - funklute 5y ago
    > I would say the terms are mutually exclusive only because there is no expectation of privacy where a party is anonymous. But as an end-user, do you really care about privacy if you are already anonymous? I can think of situations where you would. But for most scenarios, it seems to me that anonymity renders privacy a moot question. At least that's the case for me --- therefore I also think that the statement "the terms are mutually exclusive" is fairly meaningless, at least for my own online activity. My intuition is a lot of "regular" people (i.e. the non-hackernews crowd) would see it the same way...
    - austincheney 5y ago
      Your logic assumes the remote party in a transaction has no privacy considerations only because you yourself have anonymity. In a very practical sense it means they are not likely to disclose things to you. Even still would you really be willing to give out all your financial and sexual preferences to a stranger even if you are anonymous? I suspect most people would continue to harbor reservations.
      - funklute 5y ago
        I see it more as a soft trade-off, than something that has hard limits. The more I trust my own anonymity, the less I worry and care about the privacy at the other end. And the more willing I would be to give out details that could come back and bite me if my anonymity was blown.
BlackFly 5y ago
People in certain situations require anonymity for privacy. Anonymity is a tool of privacy, not always necessary but certainly necessary in some circumstances. Privacy is choosing who knows what about you. Anonymity is a tool to do things in front of some people without them knowing who you are. Clearly if you don't want those people to know that you (your real identity) does those things, you require anonymity to maintain privacy in that respect. > If third parties can access your correspondence you have no privacy regardless of your anonymity. This is false. For example, a citizen in a repressive authoritarian regime can only protest the government "publicly" so long as they are anonymous. You can let all the world know that Anonymous4321 (if you have real anonymity) thinks the government is bad on Twitter and even leak government secrets. Sure, the protest will not be "private" in the sense that it is public, but the privacy angle is that nobody knows that the individual is involved in such activities: they can show up to work at the government the next day after leaking details about the government and nothing will happen to them. Clearly, from the perspective of their real identity, their leaking and protest activities remain "private" from the government even though the government very publicly is aware of the protests and leaks. In the scope of TOR, it clearly helps individuals maintain privacy. I want to keep which sites I visit unknown to even my ISP; that is clearly your version of privacy. On the other end of the connection, I don't want the website operator to know who I am either; this is your version of anonymity. To me those are both just different aspects of the notion of privacy defined by: choosing who knows what about me--with that choice defaulting to knowing nothing about me. Privacy is a broad category, anonymity is a piece of it, necessary only in some circumstances but generally desirable as a default. You can choose to give up your identity, you cannot choose to take the knowledge back from someone.

anonypla 5y ago

My take is: Privacy is when people know who you are but not what you are doing. Anonymity is when people know what you are doing but not who you are (some people will argue this is pseudonymity but I disagree with them in a practical context). Basically Batman is "anonymous" and Bruce Wayne is "private".

LocalH 5y ago
There is also a difference between truly anonymous (where no connecting identity is established between different events) and what I'll call a form of pseudonymity (where an identity is constructed, with or without a known connection to one or more real identities, and that identity builds its own reputation). I do not consider Batman "anonymous" unless he does something without revealing that it was Batman who did it. Batman is pseudonymous, simply because "he" is a known identity, whoever may ever be behind it at any given time.

funklute 5y ago

> Tor has no idea what privacy is This is unnecessarily inflammatory, and just makes it sound like "Tor doesn't see things as I do and therefore they are dumb". Practically speaking, the question of privacy largely disappears if you are anonymous. The two terms are not orthogonal, even if they are also not identical.

beardyw 5y ago
I think the point being made is that Tor is using the word privacy here where anonymity would be, in their case, much more correct. My view is that privacy gives them a better emotive spin (as witnessed elsewhere here). "Anonymity is a human right" is much more likely to be questioned.
austincheney 5y ago
I would say the terms are mutually exclusive only because there is no expectation of privacy where a party is anonymous. This is reinforced against online communications in a very practical application by presence of digital certificates.
- funklute 5y ago
  > I would say the terms are mutually exclusive only because there is no expectation of privacy where a party is anonymous. But as an end-user, do you really care about privacy if you are already anonymous? I can think of situations where you would. But for most scenarios, it seems to me that anonymity renders privacy a moot question. At least that's the case for me --- therefore I also think that the statement "the terms are mutually exclusive" is fairly meaningless, at least for my own online activity. My intuition is a lot of "regular" people (i.e. the non-hackernews crowd) would see it the same way...
  - austincheney 5y ago
    Your logic assumes the remote party in a transaction has no privacy considerations only because you yourself have anonymity. In a very practical sense it means they are not likely to disclose things to you. Even still would you really be willing to give out all your financial and sexual preferences to a stranger even if you are anonymous? I suspect most people would continue to harbor reservations.
    - funklute 5y ago
      I see it more as a soft trade-off, than something that has hard limits. The more I trust my own anonymity, the less I worry and care about the privacy at the other end. And the more willing I would be to give out details that could come back and bite me if my anonymity was blown.

BlackFly 5y ago

People in certain situations require anonymity for privacy. Anonymity is a tool of privacy, not always necessary but certainly necessary in some circumstances. Privacy is choosing who knows what about you. Anonymity is a tool to do things in front of some people without them knowing who you are. Clearly if you don't want those people to know that you (your real identity) does those things, you require anonymity to maintain privacy in that respect. > If third parties can access your correspondence you have no privacy regardless of your anonymity. This is false. For example, a citizen in a repressive authoritarian regime can only protest the government "publicly" so long as they are anonymous. You can let all the world know that Anonymous4321 (if you have real anonymity) thinks the government is bad on Twitter and even leak government secrets. Sure, the protest will not be "private" in the sense that it is public, but the privacy angle is that nobody knows that the individual is involved in such activities: they can show up to work at the government the next day after leaking details about the government and nothing will happen to them. Clearly, from the perspective of their real identity, their leaking and protest activities remain "private" from the government even though the government very publicly is aware of the protests and leaks. In the scope of TOR, it clearly helps individuals maintain privacy. I want to keep which sites I visit unknown to even my ISP; that is clearly your version of privacy. On the other end of the connection, I don't want the website operator to know who I am either; this is your version of anonymity. To me those are both just different aspects of the notion of privacy defined by: choosing who knows what about me--with that choice defaulting to knowing nothing about me. Privacy is a broad category, anonymity is a piece of it, necessary only in some circumstances but generally desirable as a default. You can choose to give up your identity, you cannot choose to take the knowledge back from someone.