Comment by ivan_gammel | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ivan_gammel | Hacker News Reader

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What you are talking about is not anonymity, it is identity protection. There are many pre-digital examples of what it could be: witness protection programs, confidentiality of journalist sources etc. They are all established, well regulated and with lots of precedents of analysis of those practices in courts. Full anonymity can and should be banned, but we need to develop some sort of new professional privilege to protect digital identity, where you can speak as Jane Doe, but someone knows who you truly are. Whether it is an independent identity platform, a notary keeping an encryption key, a government agency or anyone else who can be hold accountable, that can be discussed and established not just in a law of a single country, but ideally in an international treaty.

So two points: First you advocate special people should get special protections for being in a special job, I am sure that will work out real well.

Second all of these arguments seem to suggest just letting the government know you identity as some sort of compromise, but what about when it is the government I am trying to avoid, sure someone can dox me, or can tell my employer to fire me, but only the government can arrest me and execute me if they determine I've done something to upset someone powerful enough within the government. Sure the government can eventually track me down with their resources, but anything that makes it harder is better.

I did not say „special people“. The confidentiality privilege applies to the keepers of the information about identity, not to the people who own the identity - that could be anyone. If some government wants to control what you say online, they will make sure you do not have any anonymity at all, like China does with Uigurs by forcing them to use devices with pre-installed tracking software. Many countries do not have technical capabilities to do so, but this also means that main beneficiaries of anonymity there are radical political and criminal groups rather than ordinary people, which may not even have good access to the Internet.

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