What is Anonymity, Anyway?
posted by:Jason Millar // 09:22 PM // August 04, 2005 // Commentary &/or random thoughts
Within the privacy debate, the archetypical argument for anonymity seems to be that it protects privacy by obscuring the trail of information that points back to a specific individual. It is not surprising that the archetypical argument against anonymity seems to be that, by obscuring that trail, a person reveals his intention to act immorally or illegally—why else would he want to act anonymously if not because he has something to hide? Plato, in his Republic, used the tale of the Ring of Gyges to argue that any person, given the opportunity to act immorally and with impunity, would be a fool to do otherwise. Although Plato’s intent was not to argue against anonymity, his use of anonymity to further the goals of the unjust man points out that the strong correlation between anonymity and injustice is not a new one, created by some recent technical advance like email or the chat room.
Arguing for anonymity in this manner seems to be a defense of privacy as a good in itself, anonymity then plays the role of a privacy enabling technique. Anonymity itself not being the end in mind.
Of course, the argument against anonymity, as stated above, is too simplistic to be taken seriously. Clearly, not everyone wishing to act anonymously has something to hide for criminal reasons. To be fair the more nuanced arguments against anonymity recognize that there is generally a balancing act in play when anonymity is raised as a desirable enabling technique. For instance in the privacy debate anonymity is said to enable stronger privacy, which must be balanced against a resultant threat to security. Opponents to anonymizing techniques might claim a primacy of security over privacy, arguing that the anonymizing techniques are better seen as enablers of crime or that they, at the very least, provide a safe environment in which criminals may flourish thus threatening security.
So the success of arguments for anonymity of this kind seem to rest on the ability to defend anonymity as a legitimate (morally or otherwise) enabling technique of some other good and, of course, demonstrate the primacy of that good (over competing goods) within the context being discussed. This is, in the very least, the tone of the legal debates I have witnessed and read. More often than not I have seen this argument end in a stalemate due to the enormous complexity involved in weighing each outcome against the other in meaningful terms. How much of a threat to security is expected as a result of anonymity? Will anonymity foster a better society, and to what degree or how so? I could go on.
A recent article posted on Australian IT featured an interview with Ian Clarke of the Freenet Project, a group planning to release a piece of software that enables anonymous file sharing over the internet. According to the article, “Mr. Clarke said that Freenet is altruistically advancing technology and defending democratic ideals of unrestrained communication.” Furthermore, Clark is quoted as saying “you cannot have freedom of communication and protect copyright laws…the two are mutually exclusive."
Taken as a classic debate of anonymity/unrestrained communication versus anonymity/illegal file sharing it is difficult to establish a clear favourite. (I will say that I think that Michael Geist has essentially dispelled the various rhetorical claims, put forth by the recording industry, through a detailed analysis of the file sharing debate over the last several years. I would highly recommend a careful reading of his findings. But this is not directly related to the issue of anonymity.)
The technology is framed within the classic anonymity debate by both the designer of the technology and the journalist. How are these debates to be settled?
It seems to me that there are interesting questions that need to be answered (when faced with the classic anonymity debates) along the lines of the following: Is anonymity a good in itself or is it simply an enabling technique for other goods? If it is an enabling technique then can it be valued in itself or should it be evaluated under the rubric of whatever good it enables? If it is a good in itself then do technologies such as the one proposed by Freenet undermine or strengthen it?
Equally interesting are questions regarding the concept of anonymizing technologies themselves. How do anonymizing technologies affect the concept of identity? Given that one cannot be completely anonymous in society, rather than talk of anonymity as a value does it make more sense to talk about anonymity as a technology?
I’ll leave the floor open for comments...
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.blogonnymity.com/powerblog/mt-tb.cgi/113
Comments
Hi Jason. Thanks for the post. I think you're on to a very
interesting line of inquiry here: there's a lot of useful work to be
done when it comes to mapping the conceptual connections between
anonymity and privacy.
In general, I would suggest that anonymity is one kind of privacy.
Thus, at least if we stick with informational privacy, we can think of
privacy as the condition of not having others know one's personal
information. (Bearing in mind the relativity of privacy to individuals
and bits of personal information, in the sense that (a) one can have
privacy relative to one individual and relative to some personal
information, and yet lack it relative to another individual and that
information, and (b) one can have privacy relative to an individual and
relative to some personal information, and yet lack privacy relative to
that individual and some other personal information.) As such, privacy
comes in many sorts, corresponding to the many different sorts of
personal information. Health privacy, for example, could be thought of
as the condition of not having others know certain facts about one's
state of health; financial privacy might be understood as the condition
of not having others know certain facts about one's financial status;
and so on.
Anonymity, it seems to me, is a general kind of privacy that pertains
to one's identity as the agent of certain actions, i.e. as the one who
has performed the actions. To have anonymity is to be in the condition
of not having others know the fact that it was you who performed a
given action. Since such agent-identity facts fall into the realm of
personal facts, anonymity turns out to be one kind of privacy.
If we take this approach to anonymity, what are we to say in response
to that other question you raise, viz. whether anonymity is best
thought of as an intrinsic value -- as something valuable in its own
right -- or as an instrumental value -- as something valued because it
is a useful means, or instrument, to securing something else of value?
I think the answer is that it can be both; we don't have to choose.
There's nothing unreasonable about someone's valuing anonymity in its
own right. Take an anonymous donor to a charitable organization, for
example: she could, conceivably, simply want to have her identity as
the agent of the donation unknown -- not because she's worried about
this knowledge giving others insight into (say) her financial status,
but simply because she doesn't want to be known as the donor. But of
course many might also within the bounds of reason value anonymity as a
means to securing or protecting other things of value, such as other
forms of privacy. Also quite conceivably, the donor in question might
not intrinsically care about whether others know that she made the
donation; she might only want the anonymity in order to prevent other
from getting inferential knowledge about her financial status.
In any case, I think anonymity is best thought of as a condition (a
negative epistemic condition) that may be valued; I don't think it's a
good idea to think of it as a technology. Technologies themselves may
be valued as means of securing the condition of anonymity and other
forms of privacy, but they are surely not to be equated with the latter.
Posted by: David Matheson at August 8, 2005 08:55 AM
