Chinese news site dispense with user anonymity. Includes an updated list of sites China actively blocks, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International (?!? - both links work only outside of China). prev
posted by allkindsoftime on Sep 9, 2009 - 40 comments

Internet Anonymity: A Right of the Past? | North Carolina Journal of Law and Technology

A newly designed Internet Protocol, restricting communication source autonomy, is being quietly drafted with detailed technical standards that “define methods of tracing the original source of Internet communications and potentially curbing the ability of users to remain anonymous” by a United Nations agency. The “IP Traceback” drafting group, which has declined to release key documents or allow their meetings to be open to the public, includes, among others, the United States National Security Agency.

[more inside]
posted by shetterly on Jun 25, 2009 - 52 comments

In what has been described as "a major blow to online free speech in Canada", an Ontario court has ordered the owners of FreeDominion.ca to disclose all personal information on eight anonymous posters to the chat site - including email and IP addresses. [more inside]
posted by Joe Beese on Mar 25, 2009 - 34 comments

Kentucky Lawmaker Wants to Ban Anonymous Internet Posting. This bill is pretty much a nonstarter, but should online defamation be criminalized? [pdf]
posted by desjardins on Mar 10, 2008 - 20 comments

The Anonymity Experiment. Is it possible to hide in plain sight? Privacy-minded people have long warned of a world in which an individual’s every action leaves a trace, in which corporations and governments can peer at will into your life with a few keystrokes on a computer. Now one of the people in charge of information-gathering for the U.S. government says, essentially, that such a world has arrived.
posted by amyms on Feb 16, 2008 - 44 comments

The authors of the sportswriting-mocking blog Fire Joe Morgan have dropped their previous anonymity. Among the blog's contributors was the late Robert Altman. [more inside]
posted by RogerB on Feb 6, 2008 - 26 comments

anonymity is often a sure route to notoriety. An article on anonymous authors from The Guardian.
posted by zingzangzung on Jan 12, 2008 - 10 comments

This is an ironic tale of the consequences of inept application of cryptographic tools. Or is it? Dan Egerstad, a Swedish hacker, gained access to hundreds of computer network accounts around the world, belonging to various embassies, corporations and other organizations. How did he do it? Very easily: by sniffing exit traffic on his Tor nodes. [more inside]
posted by Anything on Dec 4, 2007 - 27 comments

The Capitolist - Web 2.0 meets Capitol Hill The Capitolist is an anonymous BBS for Capitol Hill staffers to post to, and the rest of us to read. Anyone coming from a Hill IP can post anything they want: weird, banal, frustrated, or the occasional full-blown cry in the wilderness. There's even LOLcats here. How long will it last? How far will it go? Hit refresh & find out!
posted by scalefree on Jul 13, 2007 - 31 comments

You cannot guarantee freedom of speech and enforce copyright law. Freenet is a decentralized censorship resistant p2p distributed network which aims to provide freedom of speech through strong anonymity. By pooling bandwidth and hard drive space (similar to Seti@home), users are able to anonymously publish and retrieve any kind of file.
posted by localhuman on Dec 22, 2006 - 158 comments

A concerned reader in St. Louis just might be Dave Eggers. A weekend glitch on Amazon Canada allowed people to see the true secret identities behind reviews on the site. [NYT Link]
posted by drezdn on Feb 17, 2004 - 30 comments

A person who cannot be named for legal reasons has secretly denied participating in an alleged act that cannot be described for legal reasons. But you know who we mean.
Do you?
posted by magullo on Nov 13, 2003 - 68 comments

The No Logs Network is encouraging web hosts and system admins to refrain from keeping site access logs, saying their storage can constitute a threat to free speech. It sounds like a good idea, but considering how paranoid many system admins tend to be, one has to wonder whether it could ever really take off as a movement.
posted by mrbula on May 26, 2003 - 24 comments

Are you David Still? If not, well, you can be. David Still has given up his personality to the masses, so you can write to people as him, and better still, reply to people who have sent e-mails back to the enigmatic Mr Still. Potential for confusion: I'd say fair to middling...
posted by creeky on May 31, 2002 - 2 comments

In a small Ohio town, a fight over the right to knock on doors You are a Supreme Court Justice. How would you rule on this case?
posted by Postroad on Feb 26, 2002 - 36 comments

SafeWeb not so safe? It was pitched as a "web anonymizer." It was supposedly even "CIA proof." Now some holes have been found.
posted by yesster on Feb 12, 2002 - 13 comments

PrintCafe sues idiot. Literally. They are suing several individuals who posted anonymous comments on F---edCompany's message boards. So far, all they have are the aliases the comments were posted under, namely "Ex-DLJ", "sucky-me", and "idiot!". Apparently that's all they're going to get, since Pud says here, "FC servers contain no logs ". Also of note is item number 4 on this page of the letter Pud received.
posted by Potsy on Nov 28, 2001 - 8 comments

Safeweb has turned off their free privacy service. Company spokeswoman Sandra Song said "Consumer privacy is more of an idealistic vision..." Is anonymous use of the Internet dying?
posted by tranquileye on Nov 20, 2001 - 11 comments

Zero-Knowledge's Freedom Network to shut down. The network provided Internet and email anonymity. I always found it very slow and cumbersome, and stopped using it in favour of SafeWeb many months ago.
posted by tranquileye on Oct 4, 2001 - 5 comments

'Like, what? Some 12-year-old kid is going to give me legal advice?" On the internet, no one knows that you're a 15-year old legal whiz without a license to practice law. Long story, but well worth it. Any MeFi lawyers care to comment on the UPL aspect?
posted by davidmsc on Jul 16, 2001 - 11 comments

Be careful what you say online. At least if you're in the UK, where an anonymous poster to 2 message boards now faces charges of defamation after the courts ordered the disclosure of their identity. ISP Totalise used existing law to force Motley Fool to disclose the details of an anonymous poster to their message boards alleged to have made defamatory comments. Landmark case or storm in a teacup?
posted by Markb on Mar 23, 2001 - 3 comments

Blair and Bush agree that all internet users should be clearly identified. Which brings up an interesting question: Is anonymity a constitutionally protected right? (In the US or anywhere else?)
posted by Steven Den Beste on Feb 25, 2001 - 18 comments

We'll forget it for you wholesale. Privacy portal company Safe Web sells powerful anonymizing software to the CIA. Which can then use it to spy on ? As well as for protecting their agents, of course . . . ;]
posted by aflakete on Feb 12, 2001 - 1 comment

This has been showing up in my referrer log. The site enables you to surf anonymously. It also blocks stats on systems, screen resolution and browser type. It might prove useful to some here. As a designer though, I have concerns about being able to track user statistics.
posted by centrs on Jul 27, 2000 - 8 comments

This new "FreeNet" sounds like a perfect utopia, where all information is free like beer, and not just free like speech. Some of the provisions for the network, like not being able to remove a file, remaining anonymous, and not even being able to track down where the files are really coming from make it sound like a anarchist's paradise. I'm wondering though, will it be a place to exchange banned books, or will it be clogged with porn, warez, and mp3s? Will it be populated with idealists against censorship, or AOLers wanting free stuff? Do things always go to the lowest common denominator right away, or does it take time?
posted by mathowie on Apr 26, 2000 - 5 comments