The solution is a drivers license to use the internet. No more anonymity. Can't create backdoors(that'd be like removing the steering wheels from cars), but the internet is a public space like our highways. You can cause a lot of damage there, so you should have a license or passport.
Controlling speech or disabling crypto is very Orwellian.
obfuscating crypto is trivial. God Kay must either be as dumb as Trump acts or think we are all stupid.
"The solution is a drivers license to use the internet. No more anonymity."
Ten seconds later, someone else is posting under your license and you have no clue how and you're stuck talking to a scripted call centre employee who can't help and a police force that isn't interested.
5 billion people around the world are ignoring a "UK driver's license" for internet communication, particularly including potential terrorists. And domestic terrorists are communicating with a license out to an ordinary seeming server and not tripping any flags.
and how would it even work when you take into account free public wifi and carrier grade NAT? There's no equivalent to a single car with an easily tracked registration plate that each person drives over and over and over.
And the internet is explicitly not a public space, it goes from your computer to (say) Comcast's computers, to intermediate carrier computers, to Facebook's computers. There's absolutely nothing public in the same way that highways are public.
You can cause a lot of damage there
We're talking pictures and text. What damage? Do you also want a license to write on paper or post letters or send SMS or make phonecalls or draw paintings or write news or pamphlets or speak where more than two people can hear you?
License so you don't run an exploit on someone else's computer? That's already illegal.
It works fine for me. I view the pseudo-anonymous nature of the Internet as a feature, not a bug.
I think we agree fundamentally that attempting to ban or restrict math is ridiculous. For the sake of discussion - what specifically about the current structure of the Internet is broken? You allude to accountability, but it's fairly easy for law enforcement to track someone down (in the "not-using-7-proxies" case - and even then, just repeat step 1 below):
* Subpoena a site for IP records
* Subpoena their ISP for subscriber information
Now, whether that person is actually located somewhere actionable is another question - but that's a geopolitical problem, not an Internet problem. The first point - sure, maybe a site doesn't keep IP logs. Are you saying it should be mandatory to track the source of posts? (Should it be mandatory for physical establishments to log the biometrics of visitors? If the answer to these questions is different, why?)
How would your proposal for tying Internet access to physical identity (e.g. drivers' licenses) impact access for those in developing nations? There are already a lot of hoops for them to jump through to get online.
Edit: I didn't downvote, by the way - I do still believe in the HN ethos of only downvoting spam/meme posts. People should have a chance to read both sides of a discussion.
Controlling speech or disabling crypto is very Orwellian.
obfuscating crypto is trivial. God Kay must either be as dumb as Trump acts or think we are all stupid.