Traceability on the Internet

> This is an example of differential traceability; the police department has the authority to demand ownership information from the Department of Motor Vehicles that issues the license plates. Ordinary citizens do not have this authority

This is a fantastic example, but not in the way he intends!

While it is only the DMV that has the official database of license plate numbers, simply having attached a unique identifier to each car means that we're trivially subject to all sorts of independently-implemented surveillance, from the lone PI stalking a target to the wide scale ANPR dragnets we're currently grappling with. In fact I'd go so far as to say that in the face of modern technology, the current implementation of license plates is a gross rights violation.

As other commenters have noted, where is this glaring threat? We've had Eternal September for 25 years and this "harmful behavior" has yet to manifest in a way that can't be solved by a combination of good old fashioned policing and Postel's law. Yet we repeatedly hear this tired refrain of ominous ne'er-do-wells who simply must be stopped.

The current concern is harassment on quasi-public communications platforms like Twitter. Yet Twitter is already operating with everyone having a nym, and still not succeeding at the goals each of its critics envisions. Making these nyms more permanent doesn't change the actual technical difficulty of the problem of moderation!

If we're concerned about "social network bullying and misinformation", then we should first demand to see progress on the topic from independent entities that can each try many approaches and fail in isolation. Changing the Internet to have a baked-in totalitarian identification regime and assuming these platforms will then address our wishes is downright foolish.

This position invites a slippery slope which will lead to the identification of us all at all times. Especially, to suggest giving the power of traceability to “official” law enforcement only is a really bad recommendation.

Did you forget what happened at the NSA?

Please don’t make these recommendations while using the name Vint Cerf, father of the Internet. It sends a bad signal as if you (supporting traceability) are not the minority here.

I have had enough of my /heroes/ supporting backdoors. Please stop it. I hate working against you (supporting anonymity is clearly something you don’t wish to achieve). :(

Even if it were somehow possible to achieve pseudonymity (i.e. permanent and unchangeable – but anonymous – identifiers), any work in this area towards this goal will first be heavily funded, and later heavily co-opted, by the people wishing for actual identification without pseudonyms, and this will ultimately then be presented as the only possible technical solution. The large companies in the field will then adopt the completed “standard”, thereby forcing every user of their services to use it, and any form of actual anonymity or even pseudonymity will then have been lost.

We have seen this phenomenon before in other fields. Large actors provide funding for groups with ostensibly beneficial goals, and the funders then influence the groups’ work towards the actor’s own desires, often subverting the goal of the original group completely, but getting the percieved aura of legitimacy of the original group onto the subverted standard.

Isn't the point of RMS and others in the libre-internet movement that it's exactly those groups that Cerf identifies, namely governments, that we want to ensure don't have unique traceability capabilities because they also have coercive capabilities?

When I visited Tim Berners-Lee’s SOLID project, I recommended one thing to them: do NOT have one canonical WebID for everything.

I had to grapple with these issues years ago and here are some solutions:

http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=114

> In most societies today, it is accepted that we must be identifiable to appropriate authorities under certain conditions (consider border crossings, traffic violation stops as examples). While there are conditions under which apparent anonymity is desirable and even justifiable (whistle-blowing, for example) absolute anonymity is actually quite difficult to achieve (another point made at the Ditchley workshop) and might not be absolutely desirable given the misbehaviors apparent anonymity invites.

Border crossings and traffic stops occur in meatspace, where there is some potential for an actual threat. What exactly is the threat that justifies the need to identify individuals at all times on the internet?

Google Cache link: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?source=hp&ei=A...

LGBT friends of mine defend anonymity for the protections it seemingly affords similar youngsters - but as more of the real world moves online then more of the bad actors move too.

We have traceability IRL and we can choose how much bad behaviour we are willing to tolerate - and it is that choice that we need to focus on, what society is willing to let slide not anonymity.

it's not a protection. we can let it go.

It would make a lot of sense. The fact that currently there isn't a single unique identifier per online user allows for an unregulated environment. Obviously, there are things like IPs, the mobile device identifies (phone number...) or even single-sign-on platforms but the bottom line is that there isn't something that is unique per user and platform independent. Should there be a unique credential per user just to access anything online? From the security perspective, you would definitely say yes but you could also imagine that this could be taken too far

http://uk.businessinsider.com/how-china-is-watching-its-citi...