Naming Names on the Internet

[didymus]

NY Times:

Naming Names on the Internet

PARIS — Three years ago, after the suicide of a popular actress who had been bullied via the Internet, South Korea introduced a radical policy aimed at stamping out online hate. It required contributors to Web portals and other popular sites to use their real names, rather than pseudonyms.
Last month, after a huge security breach, the government said it would abandon the system. Hackers stole 35 million Internet users’ national identification numbers, which they had been required to supply when registering on Web sites to verify their identities.

The South Korean experience shows that “real name” policies are a lousy idea, and privacy threats are only one reason. Online anonymity is essential for political dissidents, whose role has been highlighted in the uprisings in the Arab world, and for corporate whistle-blowers. In the United States, the Supreme Court has found a constitutional basis for protecting anonymity.

Why, then, are the calls for restrictions on Internet anonymity growing?
Last month, Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich of Germany said bloggers should disclose their true identities, citing the case of the Norwegian terrorist suspect Anders Behring Breivik, who had blogged under the pseudonym “Fjordman.”
“Normally people use their names when they take a position,” Mr. Friedrich told Der Spiegel. “Why shouldn’t this be something that is also self-evident on the Internet?”
His words were echoed by Eric E. Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google, who said during a media conference in Edinburgh last month: “The Internet would be better if we had an accurate notion that you were a real person as opposed to a dog, or a fake person, or a spammer.”

 

[goldangel]

I understand the frustration, but if people use their real names employers can google them easily and find out their views on many different topics. For example if someone doesn’t like what someone says on CAF, the person does not get hired. I think it would be the end of internet forums and some other places. A lot of people use the Net to shop and part of that is browsing; if you review what you buy then people would have access to it. Some people chose to make themselves identifiable to some degree, but this would make it mandatory. I think for legal and other reasons forums like this could close down. The risk of lawsuits if posters had negative consequences from being googled are too great.

Also how would people verify that someone’s real name is actually their real name? If you provide a social security number? how can you prove that’s yours? in the same way that people can pick a screen name, they could pick a real name at random and use whatever it takes to verify that name, such as address or whatever. If having a social security number is required to post on the net, that is an invasion of privacy and also, there is nothing to stop other people from using someone else’s number.

There are disadvantages with anonymous posting but requiring real names would present problems, including that it would be difficult to verify that it’s their name.