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Anonimity is a basic human right that one should be free to exercise at any time. Without it, those in power or those crazies out there that have nothing bette
by ballard 13y ago
Anonimity is a basic human right that one should be free to exercise at any time. Without it, those in power or those crazies out there that have nothing better can easily find something to attack those they don't like. This is not the providence of "something to hide" but that people should be secure with certainty against all forms of intrusion that lacks probable cause.
Anonymity is difficult for naïve people to understand: that what you say, online or offline, can at any point in the future (potentially indefinitely) may arbitrarily be used against you in familial, legal, political, business, personal, romantic or any other context. This amounts to individuals unwittingly manufacturing ammunition and handing it to their enemies.
- yuhong 13y agoAgreed, but there is something wrong if people have to use it all the time.
- ballard 13y agoThe world is the world. Because there are so many other people out there that might be up to no good, so many laws (US commercial code, anyone) that an individual will create so much digital dirt over their lifetime, it becomes very easy to attack anyone that does not just keep most things private as a best practice. It's nearly impossible to know which digital bits will be at some point in the future X years taken out of context for political, employment, romantic, legal or other purposes. "Three Felonies a Day" https://mailman.stanford.edu/pipermail/liberationtech/2013-June/008815.html https://mailman.stanford.edu/pipermail/liberationtech/2013-J...
- yuhong 13y agoOf course, how much that matters depends and if you limit to a subset it becomes much easier, but I definitely agree that people should have the right to be anonymous. I just don't like it when people have to do so, and do want to fix the problems if possible.
- cbhl 13y agoI think that anonymity is impossible; you could assign a unique number to each individual in something like 33 or 34 bits, which means you could de-anonymize your pseudonym in as few as 33 or 34 bisecting pieces of PII. (Gender identification provides at least one bit, and possibly more for someone who is homosexual; specifying a geographical region provides a few more.) It's a nice ideal, but I think being anonymous is going to die in the next five years -- if it hasn't already.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]