Interesting People mailing list archives
Re: VERY TRUE Can You Go to Prison for Lying to a Web Site?
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2008 09:46:57 -0800
________________________________________ From: Lauren Weinstein [lauren () vortex com] Sent: Wednesday, January 09, 2008 12:21 PM To: David Farber Cc: lauren () vortex com Subject: Re: [IP] Re: VERY TRUE Can You Go to Prison for Lying to a Web Site? Dave, When I wrote my original piece on this topic, I knew that some readers would choose to ignore (or might misunderstand) the main point. So please allow me to try sharpen the focus. We're getting into a core area of society's "conflict" with the Net that is very important. It's also rather complicated. First, I agree completely -- the Internet is not a separate world, and I'm on record as looking very skeptically on those who would postulate, for example, vast new "digital democracies" and the like. And I also agree completely that the Internet isn't an excuse for criminal behavior. I've long been concerned with how to achieve the proper balance between anonymity and responsibility on the Net, and trying to make sure that the Net isn't used as an excuse for anonymous behaviors that would not be tolerated in other contexts. I believe my writings over the years have been fairly clear about this. However, there's a flip side to the issues. We also must take care not to allow the Internet -- nothing more than a tool, after all -- to be used as an excuse for invasions of privacy and prosecutorial behavior that would not generally be considered appropriate if the Internet were not involved, nor to require a level of personal identification -- e.g., prohibiting anonymous contacts -- for legal communications that would create uniquely invasive Internet-enabled tracking and similar concerns. In reality, of course, anonymity is not simple to achieve on the Net. Even though vast numbers of persons use false identities to create Internet profiles on various Web sites, mainly to protect themselves from perceived privacy invasions by those sites, IP addresses typically provide the means to track down the individuals involved in most cases, with varying amounts of effort. Various court cases have revolved around when it is appropriate to pierce this veil of pseudo-anonymity to reveal the actual parties involved in, for example, intellectual property disputes. Revealing of true Internet identities is commonplace in serious criminal matters. It would be wrong to ban or criminalize the typical level of "pseudo-anonymous" use of the Net in any sort of general way, given that (a) the risks of fundamental privacy abuses (by private entities or government) and invasive tracking are very high in a forced, openly-identified Internet environment, and (b) true identities can usually be derived when necessary in those cases where criminal activities or civil liabilities are involved. A complex balancing act, to be sure. But the case under discussion, of Internet harassment leading to a suicide, is actually largely orthogonal in key respects to the discussion so far. First, Missouri prosecutors determined that the harassment itself was not a crime under existing law (that is being changed). Secondly, the true identity of the harassing party was quickly revealed despite the false information in the associated profile, and was obviously not an obstacle to authorities. What I object to is not a question of holding people responsible for actions that are actually illegal or inappropriate -- that's right and proper -- but rather I cannot condone allowing what amounts to lynch mob pressures from outraged citizens -- frustrated by the lack of an existing law relating to harassment -- to trigger the inappropriate use of wire fraud statutes in this case, with significant possibilities for promoting widespread dilution of "anonymous" speech rights in the broader context of legal Internet communications. I know of no law that says you must tell the truth to every Web site that you visit, and we know that almost everyone lies to Web sites about personal information at one time or another. I agree that creating a false identity on the Internet with intent to commit a crime is different than a false identity to protect privacy in legal communications. Perhaps a statute dealing with the former case would make sense as a penalty enhancement for an actual crime -- but would still be inappropriate as an excuse to squash anonymity on an a priori basis. And again, it appears that in the current example under discussion, the actual harassment was not a crime under existing law. One respondent suggested to me that this situation was similar to how the government went after Al Capone -- putting him in prison for tax evasion since they couldn't get him for his main criminal activities. But I would assert that Alphonse's case is not comparable. Al was clearly engaged in actual crimes apart from tax evasion. But in the harassment case under discussion, prosecutors declared that no harassment, murder, or manslaughter crime had taken place. And prosecuting Al for tax evasion did not carry broad risks of collateral damage to other people's privacy rights, as attempts to undermine the use of pseudonyms in legal Internet situations would. I'm not claiming that any of this is simple -- exactly the opposite. But I am concerned when I see understandably emotional responses and "we gotta come up with something to satisfy the angry public" reasoning, used to twist laws in ways that could have major negative repercussions for honest citizens. Real crimes should be prosecuted, absolutely. But the Internet should not be used as a feel good excuse to "create" crimes to satisfy calls for vengeance or to relieve frustrations that certain disgraceful actions weren't previously criminalized. --Lauren-- Lauren Weinstein lauren () vortex com or lauren () pfir org Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 http://www.pfir.org/lauren Co-Founder, PFIR - People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org Co-Founder, NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad - http://www.nnsquad.org Founder, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com - - -
________________________________________ From: Frode Hegland [frode () hyperwords net] Sent: Wednesday, January 09, 2008 3:45 AM To: David Farber; acb () acb net Subject: Re: [IP] Re: Can You Go to Prison for Lying to a Web Site? Yes. The sooner we realize that the internet is not some separate, parallel, 'second life' but a communications media part of our 'real' world, the better we will all be. On 9 Jan 2008, at 07:13, David Farber wrote: Harassment and free speech have nothing to do with one another, in person, or on the web. And pretending to be a dog is fraud. Frode Hegland The Hyperwords Company www.hyperwords.net<http://www.hyperwords.net> ------------------------------------------- Archives: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now RSS Feed: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/ Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
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Current thread:
- Re: VERY TRUE Can You Go to Prison for Lying to a Web Site? David Farber (Jan 09)
- <Possible follow-ups>
- Re: VERY TRUE Can You Go to Prison for Lying to a Web Site? David Farber (Jan 09)
- Re: VERY TRUE Can You Go to Prison for Lying to a Web Site? David Farber (Jan 09)
- Re: VERY TRUE Can You Go to Prison for Lying to a Web Site? David Farber (Jan 09)
- Re: VERY TRUE Can You Go to Prison for Lying to a Web Site? David Farber (Jan 10)