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Running Head: ANONYMITY 2.0

Anonymity 2.0:

Anonymity in Computer-Mediated Communication

John Weis

University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill

INLS 490

Professor Stutzman

29 April 2008
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Anonymity 2.0: Anonymity in Computer-Mediated Communication

Abstract

This paper takes a look at the concept of anonymity and its importance in American
society. It then discusses legal, social, and technological issues that privacy and the state
of anonymity face with the advent of new information technologies. By analyzing the
trends along these three axes, the author aims to provide a holistic forecast of the future
of anonymity in the Internet Age.
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Anonymity, defined succinctly as the state of being non-identifiable (Marx,

1999), is an old concept that is transforming in light of new information technologies.

Much like other aspects of privacy, the ability to engage in certain activities without

revealing one‟s identity is requiring a more conscious effort to pursue effectively. With

trends of exponential technological change, will digital anonymity, or anonymity in

computer-mediated communication (CMC), endure for much longer? By examining the

concept of anonymity, its benefits and drawbacks, and its role in American society, we

can better understand its importance and the incentives we have in preserving it. Then,

we will look at social, legal, and technological influences on anonymity in the context of

CMC, from which we can extrapolate trends and issue a prognosis about the future of

digital anonymity. Despite the many impediments to the preservation of anonymity in

online communication, it will not be an obsolete idea for at least a few more generations.

A Definition of Anonymity

Before delving into the forces shaping the future of anonymity in CMC, we need

to define the concept and how it is to be understood specifically within a digital context.

According to Gary Marx (1999), “anonymity is one polar value of a broad dimension of

identifiability versus nonidentifiability.” It is being untraceable by any of Marx‟s

dimensions of identity knowledge, including legal name, location, distinctive behavioral

patterns, demographic categorization, pseudonymity, or certification (ibid). In CMC

environments, these markers of identity knowledge are embodied in e-mail addresses, IP

addresses, browsing histories, screen names, and even in the writing styles of forum

posts. What makes these examples more than mere concrete instances of Marx‟s typology

are the nuances that information and communication technologies (ICTs) bring to the
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creation and monitoring of these identifiers. The novelty of many ICTs means that

Americans are still in the process of revising social and legal norms with respect to the

new technologies. We are in a pivotal moment in the history of privacy and anonymity,

where understanding the role of anonymity in society will be essential in making suitable

judgments regarding the future of digital anonymity, decisions being made every day in

legislatures, companies, and courtrooms.

The importance of anonymity can be seen in the many benefits it affords us. Marx

(1999) lists some fifteen rationales for anonymity. These rationales can be placed into

two broader categories: protection or facilitation. Anonymity protects the reputation,

economic assets, and personhood of the actor. Corporate and governmental

whistleblowing protect the interests of the public at large, but without the protection of

anonymity few informants would be willing to expose the injustices and inefficiencies

practiced in such organizations.

Anonymity also facilitates the communication of information. People are more

inclined to contribute personal information to research when they know their responses

are anonymized. Journalists rely on anonymous sources to help provide the most

thorough account of a story. Anonymity focuses attention on the content of the message

rather than the character of the messenger, meaning it can circumvent audience biases.

This is very important in cases involving gender; women are much more likely to assume

a pseudonym of the opposite sex in order to communicate their message. Anonymity can

also add a dramatic effect, a mystique to the message that may help in its distribution.

Publishing anonymously aided the discourse of the myriad ideas regarding the

future of the nascent American nation:

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Between 1789 and 1809, six presidents, fifteen cabinet members, twenty senators,
and thirty-four congressmen published anonymous political writings or used pen
names…Indeed, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay published the
Federal Papers under the pseudonym Publius. Their opponents, the Anti-
Federalists, also used pseudonyms. (Solove, 139-140, 2008)

While anonymity has many benefits, its main drawback is significant: there is no

accountability for the actions of the anonymous. Anonymity can help in the

dissemination of truth about an organization‟s actions, but it may also enable libelous

charges, ruining a company‟s or individual‟s reputation without any possibility of

retribution against the libeler. The media have publicized countless instances of destroyed

lives because of postings on a gossip site. Spam, fraud, and other e-crimes are perpetrated

under anonymous conditions, with little recourse for the victim seeking justice as the

perpetrator is unidentifiable.

Anonymity also impedes the assignation of social capital. Robert Putnam (2001)

observes:

Anonymity and fluidity in the virtual world encourage „easy in, easy out,‟ „drive-
by‟ relationships. The very casualness is the appeal of computer-mediated
communication for some denizens of cyberspace, but it discourages the creation
of social capital. If entry and exit are too easy, commitment, trustworthiness, and
reciprocity will not develop (cited from Solove 2008).

These are caveats worth considering when deciding policies that affect digital

anonymity, but the utility of anonymity seems to outweigh these objections to the tool.

Let us now look at the social, legal, and technological axes that currently influence the

state of anonymity in CMC.

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The Social Influences of Anonymity

The social dimension of anonymity is undeniable; why be anonymous unless

there is someone from whom one must hide one‟s identity? There are many pressures to

concede identity information in digital contexts, from peer pressure in online social

networks (OSN) to the more macroscopic trend of “soft surveillance.” It will not be

technical measures that will reverse these trends, but a rewriting of social norms to

accommodate for anonymity in an age of growing transparency.

There are substantial social pressures to disclose information in OSN. “The signals

that can be included in user profiles help reduce the cost of finding the common referents

that lead to increased understanding between participants (Lampe et al., 2007).”

However, total non-participation in these identity-disclosing networks carries significant

social costs in the younger population of our society. As one teenage daughter remarked

to her mother, “If you‟re not on MySpace, you don‟t exist (Sierra, 2006).”

Marx (2006) is concerned that there is a culture of acquiescence emerging as

more and more behavior of American society is put under “soft” surveillance. Data

collection tactics are veiled as technologies make monitoring less invasive. Citizens are

being presented with false choices in conceding to surveillance, “converting privacy to a

commodity in which the seller receives something in return to compensate for the

invasion.” Especially in the wake of the September 11 attacks, the presumption of

innocence and assumption of privacy have been overturned in favor of “a tyranny of the

common good” which is only exacerbated by sensationalist mass media. Marx argues we

may “drift into a society where you have to provide ever more personal information in

order to prove that you are the kind of person who does not merit even more intensive
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scrutiny.” One source of this trouble is our politeness when inappropriately asked for

personal information. The other source is the belief that once a technology is widely

adopted, the onus shifts to the individual to protect oneself from privacy invasions caused

by the technology. “In failing to act in response to changed technical circumstances

beyond his or her control, the individual is seen to be making a choice and in a sense

again volunteers to be searched and to accept whatever risks may be involved.”

The Legal Influences of Anonymity

Lawrence Lessig (1999) argues in Code and the Laws of Cyberspace that America

must reconcile its “East Coast code” (federal legislation) and its “West Coast code”

(Silicon Valley software) in order to preserve the American values of privacy, intellectual

property and free speech. Interstate and international jurisdiction needs to be renegotiated

in cyberspace, as current legal precedence is setting contradicting standards in this new

frontier.

In 2001, it was discovered that Jeffrey Ziegler, director of operations at the

Frontline transaction processing firm, was accessing child pornography on a work-

provided computer. Frontline executive officers authorized FBI agents to copy Ziegler‟s

hard drive for use as evidence in the prosecution. Ziegler appealed to have the evidence

suppressed based on the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and

seizure. The case Macusi v. Deforte (1968) recognized that employees in private

employership retain some expectation of privacy in their office. However, Mancusi also

concluded that employers could grant the government permission in searching company

property, despite any private affects the employee may have added to the property. This
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analogy was extended to Ziegler‟s computer and, as a result, the court overturned the

defendant‟s appeal.

The case New Jersey v. Reid (2006) reveals idiosyncrasies in state interpretations

of internet privacy. Shirley Reid was accused of changing shipping addresses and account

passwords for her employer‟s computer supply system. Her employer sought a subpoena

to pressure its internet service provider (ISP) for information on the suspect, and the ISP

ceded the information that identified Reid as the culprit. Reid appealed for suppression of

the evidence obtained by the subpoena. In their opinion, the judges recognized that

federal courts “have held that internet subscribers have no right of privacy under the

Fourth Amendment with respect to identifying information on file with their internet

service providers,” and that “a person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in

information he voluntarily turns over to third parties.” Nevertheless, the judges ruled in

favor of Reid, citing the state‟s charter and legal precedents which established a more

extensive protection of privacy than the Fourth Amendment and the federal government

afford.

These cases are examples of the legal decisions being made by judges unfamiliar

with the technology under dispute. The properties of identifiability in internet

communications must be solidly understood, lest efforts to adjudicate these complicated

technology cases unintentionally undermine the cause for internet privacy and digital

anonymity.

The Technological Influences of Anonymity

Computer code is defining the battleground for the struggle between privacy and

transparency in the digital landscape. The digitization of identity is reducing facets of

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individuality into quantifiable, indexed data. “The point is that access to improved speed

of handling and richer sources of information about individuals and populations is

believed to be the best way to check and monitor behavior, to influence persons and

populations, and to anticipate and pre-empt risks (Lyon, 2001).” Firewalls and packet

sniffers monitor internet traffic in governments and organizations. Cookies provide a

convenient, client-side means of authentication. Moreover, many sites fail to function

unless these trackers are enabled in the user‟s browser. Servers log all of their

transactions, including some information that makes it possible to identify a client. “Most

communications on the internet – including e-mail, web browsing, messaging, and

discussion forums – easily reveal the IP address, and thus the likely physical location, of

the user (Stieglitz, 2007).”

As bleak as this picture may seem, the internet also abounds in ways to preserve

anonymity. Encryption obscures the contents of communication, though the source and

destination of the packets are still traceable. The next step in anonymity on the web lies

in the proxy server. The requester sends information to a trusted proxy server, which then

fetches the data without revealing the identity of the requester. This system is still

vulnerable if the proxy server were compromised so services like Tor and I2P take this

concept further to ensure the privacy of its users. Through a process known as “onion

routing,” Tor provides a system of encrypted proxy servers in a peer-to-peer network. To

add another layer of protection to the decentralized network, these proxy chains are

periodically refreshed to prevent the chain from being identified and compromised.

Technical ways of undermining this smokescreen have yet to be found; the flaws in these

systems are found in the behavior of the users instead. The user interfaces for programs
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like Tor and Freenet require more technical expertise than typical browsers, and

performance issues due to all the routing and encryption make real-time communication

almost impossible. This tradeoff between convenience and privacy makes the average

user favor the former more.

danah boyd (2008) has written about four properties of mediating technologies

that fundamentally change interaction in networked publics. Persistence means that a

record of interaction is retained instead of disappearing as is wont in ephemeral, non-

mediated interaction. These expressions not only endure time, they are searchable, able to

be recalled on a whim. The interactions are replicable, preserving all of the content when

the expressions are copied from one place to another. Finally, the invisible audience of

the communication cannot be spatially or temporally located. This results in a loss of

context over the conversation, and it also signals a shift in control over one‟s information

once it has been put into an OSN, moving the responsibility to the company that is

hosting the information to use it fairly. This loss of agency in identity information use,

combined with the other properties that make the identity information easier to find and

verify, puts digital anonymity in a precarious situation in the context of an OSN. A

pseudonymous account can, in a matter of time, reveal a lot about the identity of the

person behind the persona because of these properties of CMC.

Even when a person takes the technical precautions to maintain anonymity in their

communications, they may give off signals that reveal their identity. The likelihood of

identity leak is higher in small groups and groups with prior history, as these

characteristics “foster a greater ability to decode text-based cues and associate them with

specific authors (Hayne, Pollard, Rice, 2003).” These clues include diction, grammatical
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style, comment length, or addressing themes that a reader knows the author holds. Hayne

et al. (2003) found that in a technically anonymous system, participants were still able to

correctly attribute comments to their sources at a rate greater than chance guessing would

provide. Given the aforementioned searchability and permanence of networked

communication, the process of collating and examining evidence to identify someone is

much easier with the advent of networked ICTs.

The Future of Anonymity

Despite the many impediments to it at this time, digital anonymity will prevail,

surviving its opposition in the social-legal-technological trifecta. Granted, there will be a

decline in the number of truly anonymous participants in the online society, but situations

will arise where internet users can assume temporary anonymity through technically

adept intermediaries. There have always been ways to subvert a system of control, and

though we have already seen how ICTs can change the nature of these systems, we have

also seen the countermeasures that have been enabled by ICTs and skilled users. The

social norms for self-disclosure will abate somewhat, though those who have publicized

much of their private life will have to live with the irrevocable nature of CMC. Mores

will be refined to be more forgiving about publicized mistakes, and a more complete

system of jurisprudence will enforce these norms of digital anonymity. In order for these

predictions to come true, however, the American public needs to acquire a conscious

appreciation for the state of anonymity.

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References

boyd, d. (2007) “Why youth (heart) social network sites: The role of networked

publics in teenage social life.” MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital

Learning – Youth, Identity, and Digital Media Volume (ed. David Buckingham).

Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Hayne, S. C., Pollard, C. E., & Rice, R. E. (2003). Identification of comment authorship

in anonymous group support systems. Journal of Management Information

Systems, 20(1), 301-329.

Lampe, C; Ellison, N.; Steinfield, C. (2007) “A familiar Face(book): Profile

elements as signals in an online social network.” CHI 2007 Proceedings. San

Jose, CA.

Lessig, L. (1999) Code and other laws of cyberspace. New York, NY: Basic Books

Lyon, D. (2003) „Surveillance as social sorting.‟ Surveillance as social sorting. New

York: Routledge. 14-26

Marx, G. T. (1999) 'What's in a name? Some reflections on

the sociology of anonymity.‟ The Information Society, 15:2, 99 – 112

Marx, G. T. (2006). Soft Surveillance: The Growth of Mandatory Volunteerism in

Collecting Personal Information. Retrieved Mar. 25, 2008, from

http://web.mit.edu/gtmarx/www/softsurveillance.html

Putnam, Robert. (2000) Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community.

New York: Touchstone

Sierra, K. Retrieved Apr. 18, 2008

http://headrush.typepad.com/creating passionate users/2006/03/ultrafast relea.html

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State v. Reid, A-3425-05 (NJ App. Ct. 2007)

Stieglitz, E. J. (2006). Anonymity on the internet: How does it work, who needs it, and

what are its policy implications? Cardozo Arts & Entertainment, 24, 1394-1417.

United States v. Ziegler, 456 F.3d 1138 (9th Cir. 2006)