MySpace: Here Come the Internet ID Police?

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

________________________________________
From: Lauren Weinstein [lauren () vortex com]
Sent: Monday, January 14, 2008 3:59 PM
To: David Farber
Cc: lauren () vortex com
Subject: MySpace: Here Come the Internet ID Police?

                  MySpace: Here Come the Internet ID Police?

                 http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000358.html


Greetings.  In "Can You Go to Prison for Lying to a Web Site?"
( http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000354.html ), "Strangling the
Internet with ID," ( http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000231.html )
and other essays, I've noted the continuing drumbeat of government
toward forcing all Internet users to be identified at all times, and
what this might mean for free speech and the willingness of persons
to use a vast array of Internet services -- from mainstream "social
networking sites" to search engines to blog comment pages.

I've long been convinced that the "hook" of choice of those who wish
to see the Internet "locked down" will be that same third-rail issue
driving calls for involuntarily implanted ID chips
(back in the news in England, by the way) -- pedophiles and child
abuse.
( http://www.itweek.co.uk/vnunet/news/2207145/government-considers-rfid-tags ).

Deep in today's announcement of MySpace's agreement with states'
Attorneys General regarding new child protection measures is mention
of a new "Internet Safety Technical Task Force" -- to "explore all
new technologies that can help make users more safe and secure
including age verification."
( http://www.broadcastnewsroom.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=277442 )

It's the "age verification" aspect that should immediately raise
eyebrows.  There simply isn't a practical means to verify the age of
an Internet user without verifying their identity.  Use of "third
parties" to isolate sites from identify information is of little
help from a privacy standpoint, since the records of those
third-party operations can easily be subjected to abuse in an array
of ways.

Any promises that such measures would only be applied to social
networking sites will quickly become inoperative, since kids (who
are damned smart when it comes to the Net) will likely migrate to
other sorts of sites for communications if they feel constrained on
the "official" social networking services.

This will then likely lead to calls for the identity requirements to
be extended to any site that allows users to communicate with other
persons or post information, and sites where any "inappropriate"
material might be obtained -- including, I'm willing to bet,
ultimately calls to restrict search engines in the same way.

And even with such a privacy-decimating crackdown, the really nasty
stuff involving children will *still* continue in various
constantly morphing underground forms, heavily encrypted and hidden
in manners that will always have the kids one step ahead of the
adults.

*Reasonable* measures to help protect children are a concept
that we can all applaud -- and some of the specific technical
measures announced by MySpace today do seem reasonable within
limited contexts.

But when I pull out to the critical wide shot, I see immense
privacy, liberty, and financial risks for the Internet and its
legitimate users, sites, and businesses in the long run from
misguided efforts to extend identity shackles broadly across the
Net's infrastructure.

I hope that my crystal ball is wrong about this one. But whenever
we're told that the Internet and the world's information must be
widely constrained to protect children, and that the anonymity of
law-abiding persons must be sacrificed in the process, well, human
history teaches us to be very skeptical indeed of the motives
driving those persons who wish to protect us with iron fists hidden
within velvet gloves.

As always, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

--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

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