> other’s desperate need for anonymity
Can somebody list some positive, legitimate, not illegal uses to desperately be anonymous?
Can somebody list some positive, legitimate, not illegal uses to desperately be anonymous?
Most people, when they hear of things like "the dark web" and cryptocurrency think about the massively publicized instances of drug trafficking and ordering a hit on someone.
It's going to take a lot of work to reframe the utility and purpose of them to a more universal, humanitarian angle.
People in this world live in oppressive circumstances. This should be viewed as a step toward helping them not be systemically silenced.
If one is willing to argue that the US government throwing someone in a cage because the grew or bought the wrong plant is legitimate, then I don't see how they have any standing to complain about China doing something for someone who held up the wrong sign at a protest.
Reminds me a bit of what you see with how some societies approach drug addiction. Providing a safe space with clean needles vs throwing in a prison. There's a lot to think about.
And I think we've seen some of that with the marijuana legalization across the US. The state adoption had strong initial resistance, but public opinion began to shift once it got out of the shroud of stigma and moral enforcement.
Give me a solid reason for why you want corporations and governments to have access to detailed records of everything you do online.
There's value in that data to certain groups of people and we may not like what the future looks like once that value is tapped to its potential.
In a good, free society, maybe anonymity isn’t important.
But in a bad society, one in which collaboration on a cause is punished, but each individual desperately wants to collaborate and change something fundamental...
Anonymity allows the planning of synchronized action.
——
Mass or targeted misinformation also threatens the planning of synchronized action.
There is something of a Catch 22 here I think. A society in which it's difficult or costly to be do something anonymously is essentially a society with total surveillance.
And it seems intuitive that a surveillance state is not good or free.
So there is an argument you can make that good and free societies should allow anonymity even if they are the sort of society where it is least needed.
You are being tracked at the very least as an abstract person. If any of the above fingerprints are linked to a real identity (logging in just once even, or posting your email on a forum) then you are now being tracked even logged out.
If you use Tor and log into services it has no benefits. Tor, the browser and other distributions, will still leave fingerprints but they will no longer be unique and match only you but everyone using tor.
Tor, the protocol, will hide that you are the one receiving or sending packets.
"why Tor would be any better than simply browsing in incognito mode"
Incognito mode does nothing to hide packets or source/destination you are communicating to. Your ISP could literally pull up all non-https sites you visited along with their content, assignable to you, airstrike, as a person. Tor would block this.