Anonymity On the Internet
Christmas time is here,
full of merriment and cheer. There’s a lot to do this holiday season, like
going out to dinner or seeing a show. If you’re a fan of comedy, you might be
going to see “The Interview” on Christmas day. That is, unless you’ve already
seen an illicit version of the film published by the hacker group known as
Guardians of Peace. This group has made it quite clear that cybercrime is a
real threat to our society in the Information Age. Nowadays, it’s incredibly
easy for a person or a group of people to work around the law for their own
nefarious purposes. It can be as complex as a corporate data breach or a simple
as a harassing message over social media. What makes the internet different
from real life is that it’s incredibly difficult to hold people accountable for
their actions. The internet as a whole needs a uniform method of making people
feel responsible for their actions.
When you open up a web browser and sign in to a website,
chances are you are not going to be using your real name anywhere except a
profile page. Upon signing in, you hide all of your defining features under a
screen name. Unlike a face-to-face conversation, the person or people on the
other end can’t immediately tell what race you are, what gender you are, how old
you are, or what you sound like. When this occurs, the “online disinhibition
effect” (conceptualized by John Suler) takes hold in an internet user. This effect states that when a person hides
their identity, they also do away with their usual behavior checks. It becomes
a lot easier to throw out an F-Bomb or a racial slur when the only voices
around to demonize you are faceless screen-names. The fear of embarrassment
that is present in face-to-face interaction is absent in online settings.
Having an
anonymous persona on the web also leaves the door wide open for cybercriminals
like identity thieves and hackers. Even upon going into databases and looking
for attached e-mail accounts or IP addresses, there are ways around these
fail-safes such as IP spoofing and session hijacking. Imagine a version of the Wild
West where the outlaws have cloaking devices and teleportation. The motives
that drive hackers vary greatly from person to person. Some people are
troublemakers who just want to make a scene; others could be disgruntled at a
business or group and want revenge. Others still are compensated for their
work, making “hit-man” a better metaphor than “cowboy”. In her paper titled “Anonymity on the Internet Must be Protected”, Karina Rigby
writes that hackers are attracted by the ease with which they can avoid
responsibility and accountability for their actions.” In a space where
there is no need to worry about the consequences of one’s actions, it is harder
to avoid breaking the law than to follow it.
The
unifying theme of the aforementioned problems is clear: there is no body or
force on the internet that requires people to be held accountable for what they
say and do. This leaves two fundamental questions that are necessary to solve
these problems: how can we make people take responsibility for their actions
online, and how can we enforce the resulting statute(s) on a global scale. The
emphasis on globalization is indispensable because of how accessible the internet
is. World-Wide-Web isn’t just a catchy phrase in URL’s; I’d be willing to bet
that at least a few of us have downloaded something illegally from the Swedish
website Pirate Bay. An obvious solution is to require any internet user to
broadcast their full name for anyone to see, thus creating the sense of
accountability that one would feel in a real-life conversation. However, in
many real-life scenarios, there is nothing that forces you to disclose that
kind of information unwillingly. This tactic is highly invasive, and will
likely be met with immense public backlash. I propose that a universal account
service be created that will require every internet user to have a single
account that functions across all services, giving a people a known persona.
People will be able to judge one’s character based on their previous conduct on
their account, making it easier to make the connection between a person and a
screenname, even though they can’t definitively say who that person is unless
it is intentionally revealed to them. This service will be regulated by a
single organization, such as the United Nation or another affiliated group in
order to make regulation as efficient as possible. Perhaps with a system of
this sort in place, one will think twice before harassing a Twitter user
because of their sexual orientation or trying to steal files from a company’s
database.
Sources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ny4mgc1nlY
Documentary
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