Topic: 2013-06-03 The Conversation Does anonymity means criminality? (Read 797 times)
Does anonymity mean criminality? - NO!
Hmmn - a mildly positive piece that tends to skirt around the big issues and focuses instead on expediency and details of compliance.
"The pervasive association between anonymity and crime has permeated arguments about establishing identity on social networks, with governments requiring proof of identity on the Internet and security experts basically stating anonymity is a synonym for crime."
My take is that of course anonymity does NOT mean criminality by any objective measure. However, in any era, "the authorities" want to get rid of anonymity - they perceive it to be their right and their duty to do so. Various people have explained the phenomenon well. Here's one example, with an Internet privacy focus rather than a financial privacy focus:
"Think of the Federalist Papers, written anonymously to encourage ratification of the US Constitution. If anonymous speech is so toxic, how do you explain the Federalist Papers? A logical answer would have to be that anonymity may not be the actual cause of the problem. One of the authors, James Madison, later ended up president of the country, and it's believed that others included Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, so they were not trolls. At the time they wrote anonymously because they wanted folks to focus on the ideas, not where they came from, and because they were talking on a matter then quite controversial. You could speak anonymously back then in print, not just in person. That's a closer comparison to the Internet than standing up in a public place.
Even in person, if you went to a public square and started to speak, people could see you, but they didn't necessarily know who you were if you were in a city -- they didn't know your name, your phone, your home address, your place of employment, your family's makeup and names, where your kids went to school, and they couldn't track where you went day by day via GPS -- all of which can be done today on the Internet with just a name to start with. Nor were there widespread governmental cameras taking your picture, or even smartphones equipped with cameras. Nor were there databases retained for months, even years at a time. And the government wasn't tracking all that speech in such databases. Any policy regarding commenting on the Internet has to factor in that the world has changed to make anonymity very hard, and that once it's gone, there is a treasure trove of information about you available to whoever is interested in doing the research."
http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20120212133227775
I like that quotation (obviously) but I think it still whitewashes the situation. The Federalists, back in the day, were very afraid of the authorities of the era. As Franklin put it "We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately." History labels Franklin and his associates the good guys because they won. Had the other side won, they would have been labeled traitors. Similar games are always in play. The crime, if any, is not anonymity.
"The pervasive association between anonymity and crime has permeated arguments about establishing identity on social networks, with governments requiring proof of identity on the Internet and security experts basically stating anonymity is a synonym for crime."
My take is that of course anonymity does NOT mean criminality by any objective measure. However, in any era, "the authorities" want to get rid of anonymity - they perceive it to be their right and their duty to do so. Various people have explained the phenomenon well. Here's one example, with an Internet privacy focus rather than a financial privacy focus:
"Think of the Federalist Papers, written anonymously to encourage ratification of the US Constitution. If anonymous speech is so toxic, how do you explain the Federalist Papers? A logical answer would have to be that anonymity may not be the actual cause of the problem. One of the authors, James Madison, later ended up president of the country, and it's believed that others included Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, so they were not trolls. At the time they wrote anonymously because they wanted folks to focus on the ideas, not where they came from, and because they were talking on a matter then quite controversial. You could speak anonymously back then in print, not just in person. That's a closer comparison to the Internet than standing up in a public place.
Even in person, if you went to a public square and started to speak, people could see you, but they didn't necessarily know who you were if you were in a city -- they didn't know your name, your phone, your home address, your place of employment, your family's makeup and names, where your kids went to school, and they couldn't track where you went day by day via GPS -- all of which can be done today on the Internet with just a name to start with. Nor were there widespread governmental cameras taking your picture, or even smartphones equipped with cameras. Nor were there databases retained for months, even years at a time. And the government wasn't tracking all that speech in such databases. Any policy regarding commenting on the Internet has to factor in that the world has changed to make anonymity very hard, and that once it's gone, there is a treasure trove of information about you available to whoever is interested in doing the research."
http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20120212133227775
I like that quotation (obviously) but I think it still whitewashes the situation. The Federalists, back in the day, were very afraid of the authorities of the era. As Franklin put it "We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately." History labels Franklin and his associates the good guys because they won. Had the other side won, they would have been labeled traitors. Similar games are always in play. The crime, if any, is not anonymity.
There was no denying that the LR operators did it purely to evade AML regulations without ever once registering as an MSB nor complying with KYC regs. Beyond a reasonable doubt, LR was used to launder money. But Bitcoin, thankfully, is a protocol. If you use it for illegal means, thennnnn you can be criminalized. But, like cash, the legal uses far outnumber the illegal ones, looking at the recent developments in the IT investing sphere. I am pretty sure our regulators have made that their position, and most businesses involved in BTC have fought hard to comply with said regulations. No one with a capital stake wants to be wiped out like LR without some sort of legal precedence.
Regardless, very relevant discourse, especially considering the majority of people upon first hearing of Bitcoin automatically associate it with SR and money laundering.
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