Re: VERY TRUE Can You Go to Prison for Lying to a Web Site?

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

________________________________________
From: Lauren Weinstein [lauren () vortex com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 09, 2008 12:21 PM
To: David Farber
Cc: lauren () vortex com
Subject: Re: [IP] Re: VERY TRUE Can You Go to Prison for Lying to a Web Site?

Dave,

When I wrote my original piece on this topic, I knew that some
readers would choose to ignore (or might misunderstand) the main
point.  So please allow me to try sharpen the focus.  We're getting
into a core area of society's "conflict" with the Net that is very
important.  It's also rather complicated.

First, I agree completely -- the Internet is not a separate world,
and I'm on record as looking very skeptically on those who would
postulate, for example, vast new "digital democracies" and the
like.  And I also agree completely that the Internet isn't an excuse
for criminal behavior.  I've long been concerned with how to achieve
the proper balance between anonymity and responsibility on the Net,
and trying to make sure that the Net isn't used as an excuse for
anonymous behaviors that would not be tolerated in other contexts.
I believe my writings over the years have been fairly clear about this.

However, there's a flip side to the issues.  We also must take care
not to allow the Internet -- nothing more than a tool, after all --
to be used as an excuse for invasions of privacy and prosecutorial
behavior that would not generally be considered appropriate if the
Internet were not involved, nor to require a level of personal
identification -- e.g., prohibiting anonymous contacts -- for legal
communications that would create uniquely invasive Internet-enabled
tracking and similar concerns.

In reality, of course, anonymity is not simple to achieve on the Net.
Even though vast numbers of persons use false identities to create
Internet profiles on various Web sites, mainly to protect themselves
from perceived privacy invasions by those sites, IP addresses
typically provide the means to track down the individuals involved
in most cases, with varying amounts of effort.  Various court cases
have revolved around when it is appropriate to pierce this veil of
pseudo-anonymity to reveal the actual parties involved in, for
example, intellectual property disputes.  Revealing of true
Internet identities is commonplace in serious criminal matters.

It would be wrong to ban or criminalize the typical level of
"pseudo-anonymous" use of the Net in any sort of general way, given
that (a) the risks of fundamental privacy abuses (by private
entities or government) and invasive tracking are very high in a
forced, openly-identified Internet environment, and (b) true
identities can usually be derived when necessary in those cases
where criminal activities or civil liabilities are involved.

A complex balancing act, to be sure.

But the case under discussion, of Internet harassment leading to a
suicide, is actually largely orthogonal in key respects to the
discussion so far.  First, Missouri prosecutors determined that the
harassment itself was not a crime under existing law (that is being
changed).  Secondly, the true identity of the harassing party was
quickly revealed despite the false information in the associated
profile, and was obviously not an obstacle to authorities.

What I object to is not a question of holding people responsible for
actions that are actually illegal or inappropriate -- that's right
and proper -- but rather I cannot condone allowing what amounts to
lynch mob pressures from outraged citizens -- frustrated by the lack
of an existing law relating to harassment -- to trigger the
inappropriate use of wire fraud statutes in this case, with
significant possibilities for promoting widespread dilution of
"anonymous" speech rights in the broader context of legal Internet
communications.  I know of no law that says you must tell the truth
to every Web site that you visit, and we know that almost everyone
lies to Web sites about personal information at one time or another.

I agree that creating a false identity on the Internet with intent
to commit a crime is different than a false identity to protect
privacy in legal communications.  Perhaps a statute dealing with the
former case would make sense as a penalty enhancement for an actual
crime -- but would still be inappropriate as an excuse to squash
anonymity on an a priori basis.  And again, it appears that in the
current example under discussion, the actual harassment was not a
crime under existing law.

One respondent suggested to me that this situation was similar to
how the government went after Al Capone -- putting him in prison for
tax evasion since they couldn't get him for his main criminal
activities.  But I would assert that Alphonse's case is not
comparable.  Al was clearly engaged in actual crimes apart from tax
evasion.  But in the harassment case under discussion, prosecutors
declared that no harassment, murder, or manslaughter crime had
taken place.  And prosecuting Al for tax evasion did not carry broad
risks of collateral damage to other people's privacy rights, as
attempts to undermine the use of pseudonyms in legal Internet
situations would.

I'm not claiming that any of this is simple -- exactly the opposite.
But I am concerned when I see understandably emotional responses
and "we gotta come up with something to satisfy the angry public"
reasoning, used to twist laws in ways that could have major negative
repercussions for honest citizens.

Real crimes should be prosecuted, absolutely.  But the Internet
should not be used as a feel good excuse to "create" crimes to
satisfy calls for vengeance or to relieve frustrations that certain
disgraceful actions weren't previously criminalized.

--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren () vortex com or lauren () pfir org
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
http://www.pfir.org/lauren
Co-Founder, PFIR
   - People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
Co-Founder, NNSquad
   - Network Neutrality Squad - http://www.nnsquad.org
Founder, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com

 - - -


> ________________________________________
> From: Frode Hegland [frode () hyperwords net]
> Sent: Wednesday, January 09, 2008 3:45 AM
> To: David Farber; acb () acb net
> Subject: Re: [IP] Re:  Can You Go to Prison for Lying to a Web Site?
>
> Yes.
>
> The sooner we realize that the internet is not some separate, parallel, 'second life' but a communications media part 
> of our 'real' world, the better we will
>  all be.
>
> On 9 Jan 2008, at 07:13, David Farber wrote:
>
> Harassment and free speech have nothing to do with one another, in
> person, or on the web. And pretending to be a dog is fraud.
>
>
> Frode Hegland
> The Hyperwords Company
> www.hyperwords.net<http://www.hyperwords.net>
>
>
>
>
>
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