Loss of Privacy

If you live outside the USA, this link or this link might allow you to watch The Daily Show clips.

You’ll need to skip ahead to about the eleven minute mark to where the hearing gets started. Senator Al Franken’s speech begins at about 30:29.

I agree with Eric Schmidt on one thing, Anonymity online is dangerous. It’s also very important.

He also makes a distinction between anonymity and privacy.

“Privacy is incredibly important,” he said, adding, “Privacy is not the same thing as anonymity. It’s very important that Google and everyone else respects people’s privacy. People have a right to privacy; it’s natural; it’s normal. It’s the right way to do things.”

However, there should be limits, he said: “[I]f you are trying to commit a terrible, evil crime, it’s not obvious that you should be able to do so with complete anonymity. There are no systems in our society which allow you to do that. Judges insist on unmasking who the perpetrator was. So absolute anonymity could lead to some very difficult decisions for our governments and our society as a whole and I don’t think we want that either.”

Yes, judges insist on unmasking who the anonymous culprit was. The fact is you don’t know who the person is without a lot of researching and detective work. That’s how it should be. While I would never advocate performing horrific crimes, you can commit these crimes without knowing who the perpetrator is. Think back to Jack the Ripper. More than a hundred years later and we still don’t know who his identity it.

Advocating a system where no one can have anonymity because of a few bad apples is the wrong way to go. It relies on the belief that everyone is a threat to you and/or your company. This is simply not true. It has never been true and never will be true. It’s like being in kindergarten and Jimmy steals all the crayons so everyone loses recess.

Anonymous speech is protected in the Constitution and the courts uphold this every time it’s brought to them. The only way to change this is to remove the internet from being a public network to making it a private one. This is exactly what could happen should net neutrality fail. If it does, anonymity on the internet will be difficult, if not made outright illegal.

Anonymity and privacy are intertwined and I’m not sure we can, or should, walk the extremely fine line between the two. If you end anonymity, you end free speech. The next can of worms, as a result of this, will be identity theft and fraud. Mr. Schmidt should be careful of what he wishes for.

Senator Franken speaks about the importance in stopping the corporate takeover of the media.

Read my entire article over at The Daily Censored.