
UK Government Report Recommends Ending Online Anonymity - cpeterso
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140729/10593428044/uk-government-report-recommends-ending-online-anonymity.shtml
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DanBC
Please read the full report before commenting!

The full report is interesting and much broader than this article makes it
sound. The introduction makes clear that this is interim advice, offered after
a rapid look at the situation, and that the advice might change. (I agree that
forcing people to disclose their real identity to ise a service is a very bad
idea).

They could have wanted a bunch of new laws, but have said clearly that those
laws are not needed. They have pointed out that a few laws refer to
"newspapers" and some small adjustments should be made to include online
sources too.

The report mentions a few cases where companies operate in a country but don't
wish to obey the laws of that country - they mention Twitter in France
refusing to divulge the identity of posters making anti-semitic posts (even
when given validly formed court orders).

> 80\. Those rules can be admirable: Facebook has a real name culture, a set
> of community standards (e.g. regarding nudity), enables people to control
> their own privacy, and enables the reporting of abuse;[32] Twitter have
> rules against threats of violence, targeted harassment and similar issues.
> Other operators are less responsible. Irrespective of the responsibility of
> the website operators, the behaviour with which we are concerned is
> criminal.

Gentle pet peeve here but Facebook is a poor example: You can't show a woman
breast feeding but you can show a woman having her head cut off?

One thing the submitted article doesn't mention is how much time the police
spend dealing with online stuff. Frontline officers may be spending half their
time on online stuff.
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04795tx](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04795tx)

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walterbell
Former FCC chairman wrote a recent essay on privacy and pseudonymity, with
responses from Schneier, Stallman, Pasquale, MacKinnon, Granick, Morozov &
more:

[http://bostonreview.net/forum/reed-hundt-saving-
privacy](http://bostonreview.net/forum/reed-hundt-saving-privacy)

