I finally got around to listening to Remarks on Internet Freedom made by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. This is powerful stuff and if history has a decent memory this should become a fairly prominent moment. In my mind, it is the first substantial framing of access to information via the internet as a universal human right. My only complaint is that her ideals fall flat on what I would consider to be an additional human right — anonymity. This is an excerpt about anonymity from her speech (emphasis is mine):
Now, all societies recognize that free expression has its limits. We do not tolerate those who incite others to violence, such as the agents of al-Qaida who are, at this moment, using the internet to promote the mass murder of innocent people across the world. And hate speech that targets individuals on the basis of their race, religion, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation is reprehensible. It is an unfortunate fact that these issues are both growing challenges that the international community must confront together. And we must also grapple with the issue of anonymous speech. Those who use the internet to recruit terrorists or distribute stolen intellectual property cannot divorce their online actions from their real world identities. But these challenges must not become an excuse for governments to systematically violate the rights and privacy of those who use the internet for peaceful political purposes.>
While I appreciate her restraint, I disagree with the spirit of her statement here. The sentiment that people who speak or share information must be identifiable is coming from a position of fear. It is the corner of the despot that knows that their ideas can not rule on their own merit. It is the corner of indoctrinators who know that certain information and material is pervasive and will mutate the vision they are trying to put forth. This is the position of a democratic society where free speech is glorified while thought control is still a pillar of the institution therefore requiring some form of leverage even if it is mechanical and superficial.
Right now, the filtering technologies created by American companies which is intended to be used modestly by parents to keep their children innocent or companies to keep their employees productive are the same technologies, in many instances, that are being used to silence and oppress in other countries. If I am correct in reading the implication here that anonymity should be met without respect or protection because it can be used for bad, then we’re in a lot of trouble. That attitude will only lead to less user-centric and user-driven identity technologies.
As someone who works with OpenID, a technology meant to provide universal user-centric identity on the web, I take this very seriously. As identity technologies become more magnetic and the ability to correlate seemingly splintered identity attributes becomes easier, the value of anonymity will increase. It should be this generations responsibility to embed our collective moral attitude with the protection of anonymity. Laws and social norms should point to technology that communicates, transparently, the level of known information at any given time, including any correlated information, so that the user is empowered to make the choices they feel comfortable with. This also means communicating who has access to your identity whether that’s a person, an affiliate company, or another service coming through an open API. All current implementations of distributed identity, including OpenID and Facebook Connect, currently fail tremendously to communicate this information transparently and prominently.
So what about pirates and thieves and thugs? What about predators and terrorists? These labels are applied to people following ideas and feelings. Piracy persists because people feel they have a right to material. Maybe they are wrong or maybe they are right. Somewhere along the line, they failed to be convinced of the opposing point of view. Take this as a challenge to reinforce your perspective and push it deeper into our collective moral view. The same principle applies to dangerous people. Centuries ago, it may have been possible to jail or kill people who were following a dangerous idea. While we should still follow some traditional patterns of peace-making, in a world with a global information network where people have a universal human right to access information, the flow of dangerous ideas will still persist and we must be more creative. Identifying the people who spread dangerous ideas is highly desirable but ultimately ineffective when the dissemination of material is rapid and far reaching. The real challenge is to identify why certain ideas are adopted and what truth can be used to counter it. Truth stands on its own merits. It does not need to be protected from questions, regardless of how offensive the questions may seem, and it is not scared of being shown in the light of day.
Maybe I’m wrong about this. I’ll admit, it’s a complicated subject and I’ve not totally committed myself to anything. In the end, Hillary Clinton was asked a more pointed question about anonymity and she expressed uncertainty as well. If you have any thoughts, I welcome you to share it.