Information Society Watch
A Southern Lens on the Information SocietyU.N. agency eyes curbs on Internet anonymity
September 16, 2008, Declan McCullagh, Cnet News
Unknown to most people, a UN agency is quietly debating whether anonymity on the Internet should be done away with. A new set of technical standards which have been proposed by the Chinese government aims to trace the source of any sort of electronic communication, a move which can potentially make it impossible for anyone to remain anonymous and raises serious questions on privacy. It also means that anonomysing networks like Tor may be affected. While few people doubt the importance of finding out the origin of messages in certain situations, the details and conditions which determine whether such a step in necessary are important and such a move should be an exception rather than the rule. Human rights advocates say that such a measure is very likely to be abused by those who in fact claim that such a measure is required for cyber-security. An Internet technical expert adds that even if the program does manage to trace the source of malicious data, it is very likely that it would be from a hacked computer which defeats the entire purpose.