[13332] in Cypherpunks
Re: Anonymous, nobody, lefty and Jimbo
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (John Plocher)
Sat May 7 05:34:18 1994
Date: Sat, 7 May 1994 02:30:13 -0700
From: plocher@attaboy.Eng.Sun.COM (John Plocher)
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
| >I took it upon myself to poke around a bit and this is what I came up with:
| >bounce it back
| >Privacy is, or should be, the right of all
It is obvious that someone is using Jim Nalbandian's account to send
email to this list. This email sports a valid looking signature, and
some investigation reveals a connection to a real person in Tempe.
What we do not know is whether the person sending this email garbage
*is* the actual Jim Nalbandian. What if his account has been
compromised? What if it is a deliberate misrepresentation? Since no
one has authenticated the author as being the real Jim Nalbandian,
directing any non-email retribution at the physical Mr Nalbandian could
end up being a rather futile action.
I tend to agree with Lefty's stance on privacy rights. While it can be
argued that "Jim" has no expectation of email privacy since he
initiated a public dialog with it, flooding him with postal mail, phone
calls, or picketing outside his bedroom window all seem to be an
unjustified intrusion into his privacy.
Cypher-tie-in:
Discussion of ways (software and social) of associating cyberspace
personas with physical identities would be a whole lot more interesting
(IMHO) than keeping *this* thread alive.
With a real person (as opposed to a cyberspace persona) there are
physical processes, traditions, and the like to allow a casual observer
to arrive at some level of belief that your identity is what you say it
is. Things like seeing you in person, matching your face against some
picture (drivers license, passport...), having you consistantly answer
a phone number listed in your name, recognizing your voice on the
phone, etc. None of these are perfect, yet most of us can function
pretty well without having 100% proof because these "identity markers"
all have an existance controlled by a trusted (for some definition of
trust) 3rd party.
By this I mean that phones are installed in physical locations,
listings cost money, licenses have a physical identity-proving process
behind them, etc. The trust comes from the belief that (say) the DMV
won't _help_ you generate a fake ID, and the phone company won't install
a phone unless it feels that it can track you down and make you pay
your bill...
In cyberspace however, none of these mechanisms exist. All we have
(best case) is a digital signature with a swarm of "verified by"
signatures tacked on. Depending on how many (or usually, few)
verifications one has, it may be that you have no way of distinguishing
"me" from an imposter (or even another cyberspace persona of "me") by
any means other than those that *I* supply to you.
It also seems that this desire for identification runs counter to a
trend on this list to use anon remailers to hide identities, but that is
another topic (and hopefully, not a flamefest :-)
John Plocher | The code goes in and the graphics come out - nobody really
Clusters Group| knows how or why, but computers are all like that. -Ann Gordon
