From: Johan Helsingius <julf@penet.FI>
Date: Wed, 24 Feb 93 23:28:55 PST
To: Theodore Ts'o <tytso@athena.mit.edu>
Subject: Re: Anonymous flooding
In-Reply-To: <9302250602.AA25287@SOS>
Message-ID: <9302250805.aa15717@penet.penet.FI>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



> We haven't completely finished drafting those policies yet, so I can't
> give you a comprehensive answer.  (If you have suggestions about where
> to draw the line, please send me email!)

If you can come up with hard and fast rules that don't ultimately
reflect your own views and biases, I would *love* to see them! What I'm
claiming is that there can't ever be a clean-cut line, thus I am going
for the policy of *never* releasing someone's true identity. Blocking is
another matter...

> As far as your example goes: What I do now, when someone sends me a
> complaint like that, is I go to the Usenet newsgroup myself, and take a
> look at the flame war in progress.  (Usually both sides are behaving
> like pre-schoolers fighting in a sandbox, but we'll let that pass.)
> Whether or not we would need to impose sanctions on someone because of
> their USENET postings is a very hard-to-define area, which ultimately
> comes down to a judgement call.  Usually, we try not to censor people,
> although we do usually send them a note suggesting that the follow some
> basic Net Etiquette.  So that might not be grounds for digging up the
> real email address.

Censoring is not pretty, but still a long way off from actually exposing
somebody.

> On the other hand, if someone posts a message threatening to kill the
> President, and the Secret Service shows up at your doorstep (and no,
> this is not a Hypothetical Example), I think we would very clearly have
> justification for trying to track down the identity of the person
> posting the message.

I don't think so. This morning there was an article in my local paper
about an estonian poet who was convicted to 10 years of prison for
having written songs threatening Stalin and the Party apparatchniks with
"real revolution". Yes, this was USSR in the 50's, but...

According to your example you would gladly have helped KGB to find out
the real address of the poet, right? And I hope the response isn't "but
the President of the USA is *not* Stalin, and The Secret Service is not
the KGB...".

> Threats of violence in general would probably be
> grounds for tracking the person down and issuing sanctions of some kind.

Ok. So how about the complaint I got today from rec.pets.cats where
somebody had posted something about how he was poisoning and shooting the
cats in the neighbourhood?

> The basic idea is that there are certain uses of a psedonym remailer
> (I'm not using the word anonymous remailer because we wouldn't be
> offering true anonymity) which are obviously legitimate --- for example,
> an anonymous suggestion box, alt.personals, etc.  On the other hand,
> there are certain activities which are clearly out of bounds --- threats
> of violence, harassment, etc.  What to do in the middle ground will
> require some amount of judgement, so perhaps we won't be able to make
> the list completely well-defined.  Although obviously, it would be best
> if that list were as well-defined as possible.

What is legitimate for you might be (and certainly is, in some part of
the world) for somebody else. And vice versa.

And my apologies if I sound a bit harsh. I am still only sipping my
morning coffee....

	Julf