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Thinking about this some more. Anonymity is required for democracy to work properly. Citizens of a society need to be able to speak candidly without fear of reprisal. That's just the way it is because power attracts the corrupt and the corrupt will use their power to silence dissent. Egypt could not figure out all of who was posting things against the government, so they just shut down the whole internet to try to stop anonymous speech. In the US there seems to be more control of networks and Palintir is a defense contractor that sells software to figure out who is talking to who and what their real identity is. I am sure Palintir will be making lots of sales to governments right now that don't want to see the middle east revolutions that are occurring right now happen in their own tyrannical dictatorships and corporatocracies.

The HBGary scandal involves multiple companies, not just the token one (HBGary) which has been "thrown under the bus" as a sacrifice and distraction. This is going on right now in other companies as well, so punishing HBGary doesn't slay the dragon.

Corporations and governments are gaming the anonymous free speech system by astroturfing, persona management, sock puppetry etc. There are armies of people posting fake opinions in an effort to manipulate public opinion and steer it towards agendas which are not sincerely held by the people posting them. They are posting only because it is their job and they are being paid. This activity is very destructive to democracy because it alters things from being the true will of the people. It is tantamount to election tampering.

It is critical that the public develop a response to this in the form of tools for identifying this activity.

One excellent tool is Anonymous's randomly discovering and the publishing incriminating emails. This activity is beneficial to democracy. However, its success is highly dependent on random chance and luck. It is also very illegal. Right now law enforcement is doing everything they can to track down the people who uncovered the wide spread and insidious wrongdoing. Punish the whistleblower is probably not going away.

The public also needs tools which are legal to use.

There are efforts right now to "build a new internet" that preserves anonymity and thus free speech. That is good but more is necessary.

Another thing which is needed is for Palintir-like systems which can peek behind the scenes, uncover connections between posts, patterns of posting and patterns of speech, to be written and open sourced. These systems can be used to identify sock puppets. They can also be used as a weapon to unmask the anonymous and attack free speech, but they are already being done to do that. We need these tools on both sides now to level the playing field.

Another thing which is needed is for Palintir-like systems which can peek behind the scenes, uncover connections between posts, patterns of posting and patterns of speech, to be written and open sourced.

How about translation tools that convert writing by one person into the style of another? I suppose it would just be another escalation in the arms race...

>Thinking about this some more. Anonymity is required for democracy to work properly.

There was a thread on hacker news about this recently. I can't find it but here is the article it linked to.

http://open.salon.com/blog/kent_pitman/2011/02/12/using_real...

Prosionist groups have been making this in Europe, blogs and comenting in newspapers every time they think there are anti Israel news or comments. And it's the same as you say , it's easy to identify them when they try to defend some thing impossible to defend. And sometimes is sad because even when they have a point the things they say discredit what they are defending, they do more harm to Israel than help. That began if i can recall after the operation Cast Lead in Gaza.

It would also be pretty easy to dismiss zealous advocates as PR ops as an attack strategy against advocates. Maybe that will eventually mean sincere advocates will end up having to blog more with their real name and photo to be taken seriously.

Anonymous is basically a nebulously distributed, decentralized, persona ops group. They manage to be taken seriously without revealing real identities because they can successfully prosecute actions against high media value targets.

EDIT: They also continually try to convince the Internet at large that they shouldn't be taken seriously.

"Maybe that will eventually mean sincere advocates will end up having to blog more with their real name and photo to be taken seriously."

Isn't this exactly what "they" are after? Once that happens, there won't be any need for such armies. The end of anonymity means the end of free speech.

We should probably ask Jeff Gannon how that turned out.

I don’t think that’s true at all. Anonymity has something to do with free speech but far from everything.

If you live in a nation with rule of law and wide ranging protections of freedom of speech like the US there is no need to be anonymous in the vast majority of cases.

Anonymity should obviously still be possible but the decreased trustworthiness of anonymous statements is just something that inevitably comes with anonymity.

(Who are “they”?)

"If you live in a nation with rule of law and wide ranging protections of freedom of speech like the US there is no need to be anonymous in the vast majority of cases."

Sorry, but my irony detector is broken apparently. Do you truly believe this? Care to expand? Not trolling FYI.

As for "they", well, no one really knows who they are. But "they" are the pillars of every good conspiracy. (Slightly tongue-in-cheek).

You can’t be thrown into prison or fined for saying the wrong thing in the US. That’s what I mean. You might argue that this is not true for some things but it is true for the vast majority of things you could say. Being anonymous matters a great deal more when freedom of speech is not protected.

The problem with freedom of speech is that it just guarantees a legal right to say something. It doesn't free you from the consequences of saying it. When you want to speak out against an majority belief, without anonymity you risk repercussions that aren't necessarily related to legal implications. Anonymity protects free speech participants from the opposing majority mob.

What it is not, though, is the beginning and end of free speech. That is my only objection to the comment.

Constitutional protection of the freedom of speech is all fine and dandy in theory. You might not end up in jail, but you can find yourself in court, which, for most, is an excellent deterrent of voicing their opinion. Aside that, once people, real people, know who you are, your controversial opinions might very well give rise to real threats. Remember the whole Jyllands-Posten fiasco?

I agree with your last sentence 100%, but, at least for me, complete anonymity is a necessity. You can relate (f.i.) to my online persona, which is consistent and available for discussion. There is no need to know my real name.

Hey, I’m commenting anonymous on HN, too. I have obviously nothing against anonymity. All I’m saying is that to imply that free speech is somehow meaningless without anonymity sounds very wrong to me.

It's not meaningless - just a lot more fragile. Clearly anonymous speech isn't as trusted as non-anonymous speech, but there is a tradeoff that leaves anonymity very valuable in many situations.

"You can’t be thrown into prison or fined for saying the wrong thing in the US."

I'm not so sure that's true.

First, many people have found themselves at the receiving end of lawsuits and harassment because they wrote a bad review of a restaurant or said that someone was a skank. This is civil not criminal, but the results are the same, you can lose your house, your money and have years taken up in courts assuming you have the money to finance a defense.

On the criminal side you can get tossed in jail. How that works is you point out on your blog that the local police chief is taking bribes from drug dealers. Then, if you are not anonymous, the police raid your house and find rubber gloves, plastic sandwich bags, carburetor cleaner, ammonia, fish tank tubing, cold tablets, and aluminum foil. You say "What's the big deal I have all those things in my house." That's right, we all do. They are also proof you are a meth manufacturer and possession of them is proof your are guilty, the possession itself of "precursors" is criminal. Since everyone has these things, anyone can be legitimately convicted of running a meth lab, which is a useful tool for silencing dissent.

Or let's talk Julian Assange for example. His identity is known as is who those he critiques. He is up for "rape by surprise" charges and leaders in the US have called for the death penalty against him. This is free speech?

> If you live in a nation with rule of law and wide ranging protections of freedom of speech like the US there is no need to be anonymous in the vast majority of cases.

I think you overestimate the practical value of these constitutional protections. Yes, US law allows US citizens to criticize their government in a way that would be unimaginable in China. But not everyone who prefers anonymity is trying to hide from an oppressive government. Most people are understandably reluctant to offend their employer, neighbors, friends and family, etc. even if they have a legitimate concern. These personal concerns are much more pressing for the majority of citizens than the possibility of FBI agents knocking on your door.

If you work for BP, You don't want to be caught arguing that offshore drilling should be heavily regulated, especially if you work in a state with at-will employment. Similarly, you don't want that city official to take revenge on you for blogging about his unprofessional treatment of you. You don't want your mom to find out that you run a blog about your life as a lesbian. You don't want your neighbor to find out that you complained on Reddit about his annoying behavior.

Little things like these add up and serve to discourage free speech even in mostly-free societies. Constitutional protections are not enough. Custom can be just as oppressing as evil communist regimes. You need to turn the goddamn society upside down before you can expect most people to blog with their real names, and that's not likely to happen anytime soon.

Well, all I’m pointing out is the basic truism that non-anonymous speech can and will in general be more trusted and that in many cases anonymity is not necessary for free speech.

Anonymity is sometimes necessary or desired but what it is definitely not is the beginning and end of free speech as was implied in the comment I was responding to.

Your first point is fair enough.

As for "anonymity is not the beginning and end of free speech", I don't think the comment you were responding to said anything to that effect. It only said that taking away anonymity would also take away free speech. By admitting that "anonymity is sometimes necessary", you're basically agreeing with that comment. Anonymity surely isn't all there is to free speech, but without it, free speech would be severely hampered.

Anonymity seemed to work pretty well for the founding fathers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_Papers

I'm pretty sure they used their real names when signing the Declaration of Independence, but it's been a few years since my last history class.

Ideally anonymity should not be required for free speech but I know currently in the real world it often does. I want to push for this to be fixed though. For example, I once thought of collecting things like Reddit AMAs and turning them into an Acid test that see if an organization can tolerate it when made non-anonymous.

>If you live in a nation with rule of law and wide ranging protections of freedom of speech like the US there is no need to be anonymous in the vast majority of cases.

Tell that To Glen Greenwald, a journalist, who is finding that Bank of American is actively "scheming" to discredit her because of her support of WikiLeaks.

Tell that to Helen Thomas, a former White House correspondent, who criticized America's Pro-Israel stance and how it impacts on peace in the middle east.

The larger point that I'm trying to make is there are certain debates in this country that are one-sided. By that, I mean one-side controls the debate. It is not interested in honest discourse and the free exchange of ideas. It is interested in the status quo. It has found out that it is easier to discredit its critics (AIPAC has labeled most of its critics as 'anti-semetic', even if they are of Jewish Heritage.) than engage them.

In these instances, it might be easier to lay out the facts in sourced, cited, verifiable articles while remaining anonymous.

I’m not arguing against anonymity.

Glenn Greenwald is a "him":)

Yeah it's kind of a different topic, I probably shouldn't have been extemporanializing (sp?) at the end of my comment and kept it more focused.

I agree with that about anonymity. People will be more tempered in what they say. Only today there is a story that a blog (http://natalieshandbasket.blogspot.com/) I had been following by a teacher was "outted". The teacher was suspended and is going to be fired because she told the truth about her students, who she didn't name. (http://www.phillyburbs.com/news/news_details/article/28/2011...) The students have since commented that although everything she said was true, she shouldn't have been allowed to say it and they want her to be fired as punishment, and that looks like it will happen. The blog was extremely useful because it showed what is really going on in schools. She had thought only her friends knew about it though and that obviously wasn't true since I had no idea who she really was until today, but I knew about her secret blog since it had been linked to from some site previously, and then I bookmarked and followed it. No doubt a lot of other people did this as well. Her mistake was to even let her friends know who she was because one of them outted her. Also she had a small thumbnail of herself sitting in the distance, which may have confirmed to someone who she was.

Without this anonymity, there is absolutely no doubt whatsoever that she would not have been able to say the things she did. We can see exactly what happened as soon as her identity was known.

A persona such as an anonymous blog can have as much credibility as someone whose birth certificate you have seen and held. The key is that it's an established and consistent persona with a personality. So some are sincere and promote free speech and honesty, others are manipulative lies paid for by governments and corporations. Which is which you can tell (I sure hope) by looking at their history of posting. One may post unpopular ideas and be worth listening to and you know they are real because there is a human je ne sais quois (sp?) that identifies them as real, something that is not present in 50 cent army posts.

There has never been a guarantee of no repercussions from utilizing free speech, anon or not. Many pay a high price for speaking their mind. And not just from government. The first front that keeps people in line is their peers, community, and jobs. Its sad, but that's how things have always been, China and U.S.

The fact that free speech has always carried risks doesn't mean that it always should.

By reducing the risks and increasing anonymity, people will be able to say things that would've been too risky before. In some cases that's a bad thing, but in general I expect it to be beneficial to democracy and society.

IMO what is wrong was that the student was able to fire a teacher for complaining against the student when the teacher is the boss. Yes of course some students will try, but it should not be allowed to actually happen.

What I find the weirdest is that schools can strip search students without a warrant or consulting the parents (if I remember the SC decision correctly), but will give in to pressure like this. I'd rather have the reverse be true.

Kind of true - and kind of not. She swore, tore down the students, and generally ranted.

There were constructive ways to say what she said. I know, she has the right, but they also have the right to fire her.

Wait, but they weren't identified, right? (I don't know of the blog, so I'm just going on what bugsy says above.) How should they have the right to fire her?

She's an employee.

Oh, well, sure, then by definition they have the right to fire her for wearing the wrong color shirt or something - and I'm not sure how that answers the question of how they're justified in firing her for exposing ... nothing at all about her students.

She exposed her disdain. Imagine Monday morning in her classroom - students all knowing what she thinks.

Now imagine it - students all knowing that it doesn't freaking matter that they don't amount to squat; they'll never have to face it.

But my point is a lot weaker than I thought it was - I had the impression (not having read the freaking original blog) that her blog was also anonymous. If it was plain who she was and where she taught, then yeah, that's a serious problem that requires disciplinary action.

Do you have any evidence of this? [not a suck puppet]

Just google the term I used.

It's hard to believe in any conspiracy theory that uses as evidence things that would be expected even if the theory were false (e.g. foreign nationals speaking out in favor of their native system when they feel it's unfairly represented).

I do find your account credible. I just don't actually care enough about whether it's true to evaluate the evidence in depth.

However, as you imply, these sockpuppets are easy to recognize and are not taken seriously, because they don't make sense. Sheer volume can't make up for that. In other words: I don't believe they are capable of succesfully pulling it off. Responding sensibly in a conversation requires skills far above those of Watson, Deep Blue and the latest and greatest incarnation of Elisa.

You must not leave news.yc very often. ;)

99% of the time, there are few/no conversations on the internet, only shouting matches and circle-jerks.

Examples: YouTube, any random news site, most blogs, deviantArt

Real life tends to be this way. I have avoided a number of political discussions lately because it's obvious the people around me have no clue what they are talking about but they completely sure that they are right and that anyone that disagrees is wrong.

"[...] it's obvious the people around me have no clue what they are talking about [...]"

Sounds to me like you're completely sure of your own correctness and of their wrongness. ;) Just saying.

> Sounds to me like you're completely sure of your own correctness and of their wrongness.

Yeah, it's kind of heard to make claims like that without sounding like a hypocrite. I love logic and philosophy and a good debate or political discussion. This issue I have is a number of people I run across consistently refuse make more than emotional statements or parroting phrases from their selected media source.

If you can't have a logical debate it's pointless to bother talking.

> If you can't have a logical debate it's pointless to bother talking.

Well, there's a huge gap between conversations and debates, and you can have one without the other. Even on the internet.

And, much as it goes against your love of logic, if you ever wish to change someone's mind or beliefs, conversing with them is the way to go -- not debating.