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(March 2009) Anonymity, 'anonymous', is derived from the word ἀνωνυμία, anonymia, meaning 'without a ' or 'namelessness'. In colloquial use, 'anonymous' is used to describe situations where the acting person's name is unknown.
Some writers have argued that namelessness, though technically correct, does not capture what is more centrally at stake in contexts of anonymity. The important idea here is that a person be non-identifiable, unreachable, or untrackable. Anonymity is seen as a technique, or a way of realizing, a certain other values, such as privacy, or liberty.
An important example for anonymity being not only protected, but enforced by law is probably the vote in. In many other situations (like conversation between strangers, buying some product or service in a shop), anonymity is traditionally accepted as natural. There are also various situations in which a person might choose to withhold their identity. Acts of have been performed anonymously when benefactors do not wish to be acknowledged. A person who feels threatened might attempt to mitigate that threat through anonymity. A witness to a crime might seek to avoid retribution, for example, by anonymously calling a crime tipline. Criminals might proceed anonymously to conceal their participation in a crime.
Anonymity may also be created unintentionally, through the loss of identifying information due to the passage of time or a destructive event. In a certain situations, however, it may be illegal to remain anonymous. In the, 24 have that require persons detained to self-identify when requested by a law enforcement officer.
In, people have to indicate their names at the door of their homes. The term 'anonymous message' typically refers to a message that does not reveal its sender. In many countries, anonymous letters are protected by law and must be delivered as regular letters.
In, in reference to an arbitrary element (e.g., a human, an object, a ), within a well-defined (called the 'anonymity set'), 'anonymity' of that element refers to the property of that element of not being identifiable within this set. If it is not identifiable, then the element is said to be 'anonymous.' Contents. Pseudonymity Sometimes it is desired that a person can establish a long-term relationship (such as a reputation) with some other entity, without necessarily disclosing to that entity. In this case, it may be useful for the person to establish a unique identifier, called a, with the other entity.
Examples of pseudonyms are, student numbers, numbers, etc. A pseudonym enables the other entity to link different messages from the same person and, thereby, to establish a long-term relationship. Pseudonyms are widely used in and other virtual communication, although recently some important service providers like Google try to discourage pseudonymity. Someone using a pseudonym would be strictly considered to be using 'pseudonymity' not 'anonymity', but sometimes the latter is used to refer to both (in general, a situation where the legal identity of the person is disguised) Psychological effects Anonymity may reduce the accountability one perceives to have for their actions, and removes the impact these actions might otherwise have on their reputation. This can have dramatic effects, both useful and harmful to various parties or entities involved, relatively.
Thus, it may be used for psychological tactics involving any respective party to purport or support or discredit any sort of activity or belief. In conversational settings, anonymity may allow people to reveal personal history and feelings without fear of later embarrassment. Electronic conversational media can provide physical isolation, in addition to anonymity.
This prevents physical retaliation for remarks, and prevents negative or behavior or discussion from tarnishing the reputation of the speaker. This can be beneficial when discussing very private matters, or taboo subjects or expressing views or revealing facts that may put someone in physical, financial, or legal danger (such as activity, or unpopular, or outlawed political views).
In work settings, the three most common forms of anonymous communication are traditional suggestion boxes, written feedback, and blocking. Additionally, the appropriateness of anonymous organizational communication varies depending on the use, with organizational surveys or assessments typically perceived as highly appropriate and firing perceived as highly inappropriate. Anonymity use and appropriateness have also been found to be significantly related to the quality of relationships with key others at work. Further information: and Most commentary on the Internet is essentially done anonymously, using unidentifiable pseudonyms. While these usernames can take on an identity of their own, they are frequently separated and anonymous from the actual author.
According to the University of Stockholm this is creating more freedom of expression, and less accountability. Is collaboratively written mostly by authors using either unidentifiable pseudonyms or identifiers, although a few have used identified pseudonyms or their real names.
However, the Internet was not designed for anonymity: serve as virtual mailing addresses, which means that any time any resource on the Internet is accessed, it is accessed from a particular IP address. This address can be mapped to a particular (ISP), and this ISP can then provide information about what customer that IP address was leased to.
This does not necessarily implicate a specific individual (because other people could be using that customer's connection, especially if the customer is a public resource, such as a library), but it provides regional information and serves as powerful circumstantial evidence. Anonymizing services such as and address the issue of IP tracking. In short, they work by encrypting packets within multiple layers of encryption.
The packet follows a predetermined route through the anonymizing network. Each router sees the immediate previous router as the origin and the immediate next router as the destination. Thus, no router ever knows both the true origin and destination of the packet. This makes these services more secure than centralized anonymizing services (where a central point of knowledge exists).
Sites such as, and (which pair up random users for a conversation) capitalized on a fascination with anonymity. Apps like, and let people share things anonymously or quasi-anonymously whereas lets the user to explore the web anonymously. Other sites, however, including and, ask users to sign in with their legal names. In the case of Google+, this requirement led to a controversy known as the. The prevalence of is often attributed to relative Internet anonymity, due to the fact that potential offenders are able to mask their identities and prevent themselves from being caught.
A principal in a high school stated that comments made on these anonymous site are 'especially vicious and hurtful since there is no way to trace their source and it can be disseminated widely. 'Cyberbullying, as opposed to general bullying, is still a widely-debated area of in several states.
Michael Froomkin says: ' The regulation of anonymous and pseudonymous communications promises to be one of the most important and contentious Internet-related issues of the next decade'. Is called the Godfathers of anonymity and he has a claim to be one of the great visionaries of contemporary science. In the early 1980s, while a computer scientist at Berkeley, Chaum predicted the world in which computer networks would make mass surveillance a possibility. As Dr Wright explains: 'David Chaum was very ahead of his time. He predicted in the early 1980s concerns that would arise on the internet 15 or 20 years later.' There are some people though that consider anonymity in internet being a danger for our society as a whole.
David Davenport, an assistant professor in the Computer Engineering Department of Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey, considers that by allowing anonymous Net communication, the fabric of our society is at risk. 'A ccountability requires those responsible for any misconduct be identified and brought to justice. However, if people remain anonymous, by definition, they cannot be identified, making it impossible to hold them accountable.' Is Anonymity Good or Bad? Anonymity and pseudonymity can be used for good and bad purposes. And anonymity can in many cases be desirable for one person and not desirable for another person. A company may, for example, not like an employee to divulge information about improper practices within the company, but society as a whole may find it important that such improper practices are publicly exposed.
Good purposes of anonymity and pseudonymity:. People dependent on an organization, or afraid of revenge, may divulge serious misuse, which should be revealed.
Anonymous tips can be used as an information source by newspapers, as well as by police departments, soliciting tips aimed at catching criminals. Not everyone will regard such anonymous communication as good. For example, message boards established outside companies, but for employees of such companies to vent their opinions on their employer, have sometimes been used in ways that at least the companies themselves were not happy about Abelson 2001. Police use of anonymity is a complex issue, since the police often will want to know the identity of the tipper in order to get more information, evaluate the reliability or get the tipper as a witness.
Is it ethical for police to identify the tipper if it has opened up an anonymous tipping hotline?. People in a country with a repressive political regime may use anonymity (for example Internet-based anonymity servers in other countries) to avoid persecution for their political opinions. Note that even in democratic countries, some people claim, rightly or wrongly, that certain political opinions are persecuted.
Wallace 1999 gives an overview of uses of anonymity to protect political speech. Every country has a limit on which political opinions are allowed, and there are always people who want to express forbidden opinions, like racial agitation in most democratic countries. People may openly discuss personal stuff which would be embarrassing to tell many people about, such as sexual problems. Research shows that anonymous participants disclose significantly more information about themselves Joinson 2001. People may get more objective evaluation of their messages, by not showing their real name. People are more equal in anonymous discussions, factors like status, gender, etc., will not influence the evaluation of what they say. Pseudonymity can be used to experiment with role playing, for example a man posing as a woman in order to understand the feelings of people of different gender.
Pseudonymity can be a tool for timid people to dare establish contacts which can be of value for them and others, e.g. Through contact advertisements. There has always, however, also been a dark side of anonymity:. Anonymity can be used to protect a criminal performing many different crimes, for example slander, distribution of child pornography, illegal threats, racial agitation, fraud, intentional damage such as distribution of computer viruses, etc. The exact set of illegal acts varies from country to country, but most countries have many laws forbidding certain 'informational' acts, everything from high treason to instigation of rebellion, etc., to swindling. Anonymity can be used to seek contacts for performing illegal acts, like a pedophile searching for children to abuse or a swindler searching for people to rip off.
Even when the act is not illegal, anonymity can be used for offensive or disruptive communication. For example, some people use anonymity in order to say nasty things about other people. The border between illegal and legal but offensive use is not very sharp, and varies depending on the law in each country. Anonymous (group). Anonymous (used as a mass noun) is a loosely associated international network of activist and hacktivist entities. A website nominally associated with the group describes it as 'an internet gathering' with 'a very loose and decentralized command structure that operates on ideas rather than directives'.
The group became known for a series of well-publicized publicity stunts and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on government, religious, and corporate websites. An image commonly associated with Anonymous is the 'man without a head' represents leaderless organization and anonymity. Legal protection of anonymity Anonymity is perceived as a right by many, especially the anonymity in the internet communications. The partial right for anonymity is legally protected to various degrees in different jurisdictions. United States The tradition of anonymous speech is older than the United States.
Founders Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay wrote under the pseudonym 'Publius' and 'the Federal Farmer' spoke up in rebuttal. The US Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized rights to speak anonymously derived from the. The right for anonymous political campaigning was established in the decision in (1995) case: 'Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority.It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the, and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation—and their ideas from suppression—at the hand of an intolerant society'.
The Supreme court explained that protecting anonymous political speech receives the highest protection however, this priority takes on new dimensions in the digital age. The right of individuals for 'anonymous communication' was established by the decision in case Columbia Insurance Company v.
Seescandy.com, et al. (1999) of the: 'People are permitted to interact pseudonymously and anonymously with each other so long as those acts are not in violation of the law'. The right of individuals for 'anonymous reading' was established in the U.S. Supreme Court decision in United States v. Rumely (1953): 'Once the government can demand of a publisher the names of the purchasers of his publications, the free press as we know it disappears. Then the spectre of a government agent will look over the shoulder of everyone who reads'.
The pressure on anonymous communication has grown substantially after the 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the subsequent new political climate. Although it is still difficult to oversee their exact implications, measures such as the US Patriot Act, the European Cybercrime Convention and the European Union rules on data retention are only few of the signs that the exercise of the right to the anonymous exchange of information is under substantial pressure. An above-mentioned 1995 Supreme Court ruling in McIntyre v.
Ohio Elections Commission reads: '(.) protections for anonymous speech are vital to democratic discourse. Allowing dissenters to shield their identities frees them to express critical minority views. Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority. It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation. At the hand of an intolerant society.'
However, anonymous online speech is not without limits. It is clearly demonstrated in a case from 2008, one in which the defendant stated on a law-school discussion board that two women should be raped, an anonymous poster’s comments may extend beyond free speech protections.
In the case, a Connecticut federal court must apply a standard to decide whether the poster’s identity should be revealed. There are several tests, however, that the court could apply when considering this issue. European Union The right to internet anonymity is also covered by European legislation that recognizes the fundamental right to data protection, freedom of expression, freedom of impression. The European Union Charter of Fundamental Rights recognizes in Article. 8 (Title II: “Freedoms”) the right of everyone to protection of personal data concerning him.
The right to privacy is now essentially the individual’s right to have and to maintain control over information about him. International legislation One of the most controversial international legal acts, regarding this subject is. As of February 2015, the treaty was signed -but not all ratified- by 31 states as well as the European Union.
Japan was on 4 October 2012 the first to ratify the treaty. It creates an international regime for imposing civil and criminal penalties on Internet counterfeiting and copyright infringement. Although ACTA is intentionally vague, leaving signatories to draw precise rules themselves, critics say it could mean innocent travellers having their laptops searched for unlicensed music, or being jailed for carrying a generic drug. Infringers could be liable for the total loss of potential sales (implying that everyone who buys a counterfeit product would have bought the real thing). It applies to unintentional use of copyright material.
It puts the onus on website owners to ensure they comply with laws across several territories. It has been negotiated secretively and outside established international trade bodies, despite EU criticisms. Anonymity and politics. Wallace, Kathleen A (1999). Ethics and Information Technology. 1: 23–35.; Nissenbaum, Helen (1999).
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