A lot of people, myself included, have been talking about not allowing anonymous commenting--the thought being that a valid e-mail address would give some semblence of personal responsibility. Does this help anything, really?
How do you know if it is me writing this blog post?
I, Frank Carey, am a human being with specific DNA, finger prints, blood type, and other characteristics that make me a unique individual member of the human race.
Dolor Ipsum is a cyberspace representation which is used by a human being to post blog entries, comments, and send e-mail. In some ways it, Dolor, can be looked at as a one-dimensional avatar used to facilitate Web 2.0 communication.
Ideally, I use Dolor to communicate with people on the Web. The big question is: How do you link Dolor back to me, or for that matter, any specific human being? Think about this for a moment.
Dolor is accessed via a Web terminal (PC, Mac, WebTV, or some other Internet appliance.) A human types something on the terminal's keyboard, which then changes the keystrokes into electronic signals. These signals eventually become messages, comments, blog posts, and other types of Web data.
So, we have a path, a chain of custody so to speak, that stretches from the Web communication (post, comment, email) all the way back to the keyboard that generated it. So, how do we tie a specific person to that keyboard and the communication in question? We have to somehow determine who used the keyboard to generate the communication. I don't think we can after the fact, at least not with any certainty, and not with technology commonly in use today.
Now, one could image some type of device that read biometric data--fingerprint, voiceprint, DNA--that could then be used to imprint any communication sent from that terminal. Devices such as this probably do exist, but unless they are put into universal use (along with software that can read the information, then imprint the communications) there will be no way to insure non-anonymity.
Oh, and how long do you think it would take before electronic identity theft became commonplace?
So, until we figure a way to tie someone physically to an electonic message, how do you really know its me writing this blog?
Frank (?)
4 comments:
Frank, (as far as I understand String Theory) even your existence is based on probability instead of certainty! Email Id's for identification may not be perfect, but is PROBABLY good enough for its intended purpose.
Ah, but the intended purpose of non-anonymity is to instill some semblance of personal responsibility for what a commenter posts. The best we can do is tie what is written to the device it is written with. Beyond that it is guesswork and supposition.
I actually know people whose jobs were to track-down people who misused corporate computers. These "trackers" had to observe the miscreants misusing the PC before they could institute disciplinary actions. User IDs, passwords, and computer IDs were considered insufficient evidence for action to be taken, since they could not be unequivocally tied to a specific human being.
Think about it: there is no way for you to know if it is actually me writing this, at least not without observing me type. This may change, though, if biometrics become commonplace.
I think you might enjoy this Identity 2.0 clip by Dick Hardt:
http://www.identity20.com/media/WEB2_2005/ then choose your player preference.
Now, that's what I'm talkin' about! To paraphrase Tolkien: "one ID to rule them all..."
Thanks for the link.
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