Uncloaking Anonymity

Todays headlines:
UK court to unmask ‘file-sharers’

In this instance, “The accused� are probably guilty of publishing thousands of copyrighted songs and films. They will get a serious slap on the wrist possibly even to the extent of spending a short period of time at Her Majesties pleasure. They might re-enter public life as reformed citizens, or they might come back and carry on where they left off. Who really cares?

I care. The reason I care is that the newspapers each week will have yet another story like this with the headlines shouting “File sharers caughtâ€?, “ISP’s ordered to give up customer recordsâ€? and various other “Big Brother Is Watchingâ€? type of banners. All of these achieve two things; they scare the odd naughty boy into not publishing his music collection. Big deal. Far more importantly, they make Alice and Bob from Wyoming realise that everything they do on the Internet, every mouse click they make and every web page they surf is under a microscope. God knows who is looking through the eyepiece, we will probably never know. The point is that there are tens of thousands of Alice and Bob’s out there who are suddenly interested in protecting their right to anonymity. They aren’t criminals; they don’t download music or pornography, they just believe they have the right to do some things without being spied upon.

Sometime back in 2004 work began on Tor (The Onion Router). Tor is a network of servers whose goal is to offer industrial strength anonymity to the user. It relies on volunteers offering servers and bandwidth in order to create chains of servers that in effect shoulder the responsibility for the anonymous user. Tor needs a lot of bandwidth and a lot of servers. The fact that it is currently operating with in excess of 300 servers and God knows how many users is a tribute to just how many people are suddenly showing their desire for anonymity. Perhaps it hasn’t quite reached every Bob and Alice in the Western world yet, but it’s certainly getting closer by the day.

My life is my own to lead. I should have the right to chose what elements of my legal day-to-day activities I wish to share with other people. Why should my ISP record my every click? Why should they be forced into doing this by a democratic government that was elected by the people it now wishes to spy on? After the London Bombings, the British public staged a defiant minute of silence. A way of saying to the terrorists of the world, “You will not beat us, you will not take away our freedom and you will not defeat our way of life.� People the world over believe in those powerful statements and are stronger for them. So why are our Western governments so determined to take away our freedom and privacy and grant terrorists the satisfaction of knowing that they have changed our lives and our right to enjoy them as we choose?

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