Back in December, Germany’s data protection office Unabhaengiges Landeszentrum fuer Datenschutz (ULD) issued a ruling against Facebook’s real names policy, claiming that it infringed upon citizen’s rights to free speech and anonymity online. Facebook said that they would fight the ruling, which they have done – successfully.

On Thursday, an administrative court in Germany approved Facebook’s request to suspend the ruling that said Facebook’s real names policy violated German and EU law. The reason they gave was that Facebook was only beholden to Irish data protection laws, since their European offices are located there. Irish date law is much less severe than that of Germany.

Facebook’s real names policy state that:

Facebook users provide their real names and information, and we need your help to keep it that way. Here are some commitments you make to us relating to registering and maintaining the security of your account: You will not provide any false personal information on Facebook, or create an account for anyone other than yourself without permission, [and] you will not create more than one personal account.

It goes on to say that any account can be removed due to “use of a fake name” or “impersonation of a person or entity, or other misrepresentation of identity.”

Facebook has always claimed that its real names policy protects users and makes the network a much safer, better-functioning place. Germany isn’t the only place where we’ve seen the effects of this policy, but it is one of the few places who have fought against it, fervently, in court.

”We are pleased with the decision of the Administrative Court of Appeals of Schleswig-Holstein. We believe this is a step into the right direction. We hope that our critics will understand that it is the role of individual services to determine their own policies about anonymity within the governing law – for Facebook Ireland, European data protection and Irish law. We therefore feel affirmed that the orders are without merit,” said a Facebook spokesperson.

The ULD isn’t giving up, however. In a statement, the group said that they have plans to appeal the decision to a higher court.

[AP via TechCrunch]

Facebook has been sending out survey questions to people asking whether or not their friends are who they say they are.

“Please help us understand how people are using Facebook,” Facebook says in a dialogue box. “Your response is anonymous and won’t affect your friends’s account. Is this your friend’s real name?”

A Twitter user tweeted out the following screenshot, which was picked up by Talking Points Memo (via TNW):

In case there’s any question about the legitimacy of the screenshot, TPM says Facebook has confirmed that it has been surveying users about their friends’ names for the past several months. The publication shares this from a Facebook spokesperson:

“This system has been in a few different incarnations over the past couple months. It changes depending on what’s being asked.”

“Facebook is a community where people connect and share using their real identities,” the company says in its name policy. “When everyone uses their real first and last names, people can know who they’re connecting with. This helps keep our community safe. We take the safety of our community very seriously. That’s why we remove fake accounts from the site as we find them.”

Of course, just because someone is using a fake name does not necessarily mean that the account is fake. Some people simply go by names other than those on their birth certificates. Ask Prince Rogers Nelson or Marshall Bruce Mathers III (who has more likes than anybody on Facebook, granted this is via a Page, not a personal profile).

It’s unclear exactly what Facebook is doing with the information it is collecting.

Today, YouTube announced that they’ve added face blurring to their set of video enhancements.

From the YouTube blog:

Blurring faces on YouTube is simple. Once you’ve chosen the video that you’d like to edit within our Video Enhancements tool, go to Additional Features and click the “Apply” button below Blur All Faces. Before you publish, you will see a preview of what your video will look like with faces blurred. When you save the changes to your video, a new copy is created with the blurred faces. You will then be given the option to delete the original video.

YouTube makes a point to say that this in a new feature that utilizes emerging technology, so you may encounter situations where not all the faces in your video are blurred out. On the tool itself, YouTube reminds users that if this happens, you may want to keep your video private.

We’ve known that YouTube was working on this technology for a while, at the behest of various human rights groups. Now, it’s a reality.

The researchers behind Tor have another great program up their sleeve to help combat Internet censorship directly. It’s called OONI which stands for Open Observatory of Network Interference. It’s a utility that does just as its name sounds. It allows users to look at a network and see what Web sites are blocked and censored by the ISP. Here’s the official description:

OONI is the Open Observatory for Network Interference and its aim is to collect high quality data using open methodologies, using Free and Open Source Software (FL/OSS) to share observations and data about the kind, methods and amount of surveillance and censorship in the world.

This is a human rights observation project for the Internet. OONI seeks to observe levels of surviellance, censorship, and networked discrimination by networked authoritarian power structures.

The end goal of the OONI project is to collect data which shows an accurate representation of network interference on the Filternet we call the internet.

It’s a great tool that’s been needed for a long time. While there are other organizations that detail how free the Web is in various countries, OONI will actually see what kind of content is blocked in these countries. It might even reveal a few surprises regarding countries that claim to be free.

Of course, the next question would be if OONI has already exposed any kind of censorship. Indeed it has and one is pretty close to home. T-Mobile has a filter on their own browser called Web Guard. It’s meant to be a block for adult and other offensive content, because parents understandably don’t want their children to have access to this kind of content. The problem is that the feature is by default turned on for pre-paid accounts and it doesn’t inform users how to opt out of it.

It wouldn’t be a huge problem except that T-Mobile’s Web guard also blocks a pretty large amount of legitimate sites as well. The most humorous being the official Web site of the Tor Project. Other inclusions on the Web Guard block list includes Newgrounds, Cosmopolitan Magazine, a Chinese sports Web site, a 9/11 conspiracy site, a French pop music site and other seemingly unrelated Web sites.

When Tor asked T-Mobile about the blocking, a representative for the company just kept saying they would help him turn off Web Guard, but never provided any details as to why Web site like the torproject.org were censored. To that end, Tor says that T-Mobile is deciding what pre-paid customers, mostly children under 18, are allowed to see.

The other major censorship regime that OONI has spotted was in Palestine. They claim that the that censorship is taking place in Bethlehem and is politically motivated. Out of all the Web sites that OONI analyzed, only eight were found to be blocked. Those eight Web sites that were blocked were all news sites that were found to report critical news about Palestine’s President, Mahmoud Abbas.

This is not a new subject, nor an easy one, and despite Zhuo taking a clear stance on it, she does present both sides of the debate: accountability vs. privacy and freedom of expression.

A lot of blogs are encouraging (or even requiring in some cases) users to log in with their Facebook accounts. There’s no question that Facebook has a vested interest in the decay of anonymity. Facebook wants to own your identity. Facebook has always looked down on anonymity though, even before Facebook Connect existed. That’s why unlike MySpace or Twitter, Facebook requires you to use an actual name (rather than a handle) for your Facebook Profile. 

While there are cases where fake accounts are created, Facebook has even over-enforced this policy in some cases. Remember the woman named Yoda that was blocked because she shared a name with a popular Star Wars character? 

That’s not to say Zhuo doesn’t make a compelling case, citing known examples of when anonymous comment "trolls" have crossed well over the line of human decency. Here’s a sample from the piece:

After Alexis Pilkington, a 17-year-old Long Island girl, committed suicide earlier this year, trolls descended on her online tribute page to post pictures of nooses, references to hangings and other hateful comments. A better-known example involves Nicole Catsouras, an 18-year-old who died in a car crash in California in 2006. Photographs of her badly disfigured body were posted on the Internet, where anonymous trolls set up fake tribute pages and in some cases e-mailed the photos to her parents with subject lines like “Hey, Daddy, I’m still alive.”

Psychological research has proven again and again that anonymity increases unethical behavior. Road rage bubbles up in the relative anonymity of one’s car. And in the online world, which can offer total anonymity, the effect is even more pronounced. People — even ordinary, good people — often change their behavior in radical ways. There’s even a term for it: the online disinhibition effect.

Still you have to think a lot of valuable content would be lost if comments were no longer able to be anonymous. Some people just don’t want to put themselves out there like that, and it’s not always a matter of accountability. Some people just have genuine concerns about privacy. 

I’m sure there are also plenty of people who have valuable things to add to conversations that just don’t feel like taking the extra steps necessary to authenticate their identities (not everyone is a Facebook user, mind you, and not all Facebook users trust Facebook with their privacy).  On the other hand, it would reduce the noise too.

Then there is the fact that enforcing any kind of accountability is just not an easy task, and Zhuo acknowledges this. People can give fake names, email addresses, etc. Although, this may be one of Facebook’s ways of encouraging Facebook email address adoption too.

It’s an interesting problem with no easy solutions. If the web has taught us anything during its existence, it’s that people will always find ways to abuse it.  

Caller ID has been a pretty popular feature for phones though. 

Do you think online anonymity should be erased? Do you think it can be? Share your thoughts.
 

A little history: Port’s blog uses Google’s Blogger software.  Port used her blog to call model Liskula Cohen a skank.  Cohen then sued in order to find out who was behind the insult, and following a legal skirmish, a federal judge forced Google to hand over the relevant information.

That brings us to the $15 million lawsuit-in-the-making.  Port told George Rush, "Without any warning, I was put on a silver platter for the press to attack me.  I would think that a multi-billion dollar conglomerate would protect the rights of all its users."

And according to Port’s lawyer, Salvatore Strazzullo, Google "breached its fiduciary duty to protect her expectation of anonymity."  He also said, "I’m ready to take this all the way to the Supreme Court."

Either a win or a loss could have a significant impact on how anonymous bloggers operate.  We’ll keep an eye on the matter.

The most recent incident involves handing over information to the Jacksonville, Fla. Sheriff’s Dept. to help identify an anonymous blogger critical of the pastor of a local Baptist megachurch. In September of last year, the pastor, John Blount, filed a police report regarding “possible criminal overtones” on the blog FBCJaxWatchdog, hosted on Google’s Blogspot service.

Once Robert Hinson, the detective assigned to the case, received a subpoena requiring Google “to provide all information, including names, screen names and address, of the anonymous writer,” Google blindly complied. Though Hinson closed the investigation because he found no criminal activity, the church issued a trespass warning to Thomas Rich and his wife, apparently now excommunicated from First Baptist Church. Hanson has investigated two other bloggers as well.

What’s very important to note here is that, despite the Sheriff’s office saying the detective was just doing his job, law enforcement was able to force Google to reveal the identities of a law abiding citizens exercising their right to anonymous free speech based on accusations of possible criminal overtones in written communication, not based on any actual evidence of wrongdoing. In effect, Blount and Hinson, and Google by default, presumed Rich guilty until proven innocent.

The power structure’s desire to strip anonymity from the digital landscape is reaching disturbing levels. It has grown beyond the “three times makes a trend” rule in journalism and becomes a full-blown epidemic—it’s happening all over the country and world. A Kentucky legislator was famously shouted down for introducing a bill that would outlaw anonymous commentary. An Alaskan politician recently outed an anonymous critic for no reason other than he didn’t like anonymous bloggers. German police raided a Wikileaks volunteer because of the anonymous leak and posting of a secret Australian website blacklist.

A bill recently introduced in the US Congress and passed by the House of the Representatives at the end of March is intended to prevent the federal government from compelling a journalist from revealing his or her sources. However, it still contains language defining who is considered a journalist, and by default, who is not. According to the bill’s language, an unpaid, unprofitable blogger would enjoy no such protections.

Quite obviously no branch of the government (apparently anywhere) cares about the First Amendment rights anonymous bloggers or nonprofit, gadfly bloggers. And, as per usual, where the government actively seeks to deny the rights of citizens in the digital realm, the citizens will find no refuge in terms of service agreements of large corporations, nor in surface-level digital democracies.

Like your privacy, your right to anonymity is an illusion.
 

All of this stems from a case where a Dunkin Donuts franchise received some non-complimentary anonymous comments about its bathroom cleanliness on the online forum NewsZap.com run by Independent Newspapers. The store is in Centreville, MD and having never been there I, Frank Reed, have no comment as to the cleanliness of their facilities. I will say though that I have encountered a few Dunkin’ Donut restrooms that could be introduced to some disinfectant and air freshener for sure but I digress.

The franchise owner claims that the anonymous posters on this forum defamed his store. This is where this ruling gets pretty unclear as to whether anonymity is actually being protected. Apparently the plaintiff misidentified the actual posts in his complaint. In other words, this guy screwed up. The appeals court is acting on a technicality of sorts because this franchise owner was sloppy. If he had identified the posts correctly (how in the world did that not happen in the first place?) would this have been overturned?

The court says that it is trying to balance the right of anonymous speech on the Internet with the right for a target of any defamatory remarks to seek protection from those kind of remarks.

A CNET blurb on this subject continues

In a defamation case involving anonymous speakers, the ruling said, courts should first require the plaintiff to try to notify the anonymous posters that they are the subject of a subpoena. That notification could come in the form of a message posted to the online forum in question, and the posters must be given sufficient time to respond.

The plaintiff must then hand over the exact statements in question, so the court can decide whether the comments are obviously defamatory. Finally, the ruling says, the court must weigh the anonymous poster’s right to free speech against the strength of the defamation case and the necessity of disclosing the poster’s identity.

That’s interesting. First, if you have any stones whatsoever don’t post anonymously. It’s just a cowardly act and any thinking Internet user would hopefully discount any type of remark that comes from someone who can’t use their name to take credit for the comments. Second, with a little due diligence this case may have looked a lot different because remember the crux of the ruling was about the misidentification of these anonymous posts. Lastly, I wonder how many people even saw these comments? I know for sure that one of the first things I do when I research which Dunkin’ Donuts I will visit I HAVE to read someone’s opinion.  C’mon, I just need a coffee and couple of donuts then I’m gone.

Expect this kind of story to be more frequent as the economy continues to suffer because the courts may be the new way for people to generate income. Boy oh boy I can’t wait!

Comments

Kentucky State Representative, Tim Couch

In summary, House Bill 775 would require anyone who wants to leave a comment on a Web site to register their real name, address, and e-mail address with the Web site. They would be expected to use their real name whenever they commented. Web site operators who would not abide by the law would be fined $500 for the first offense and $1,000 for any additional violation.

Considering how powerful the issue is, the WebProNews video department tried repeatedly to contact Representative Tim Couch for a video interview. When Mr. Couch returned our calls, he declined the interview saying he was overwhelmed with the feedback this bill has brought.

Mr.Couch says his name has been slashed all over the blogosphere for this bill. I tried to persuade him the interview would give him the opportunity to explain to the blogosphere his original intentions, but he still declined saying:

“I only wanted to make a statement, and I did.”

Mr. Couch told me over the phone that he is being attacked on the Internet. He has received countless e-mails and phone calls not only at his office, but also at his home. His daughter received a call that contained severe “foul language.”

He said, “I am not a Communist,” like he thinks the blogosphere is making him out to be.

On the Lexington Herald-Leader blog, Pol Watchers, John Cheves gives the explanation that Mr. Couch was trying to protect the children in his district.

"Some nasty things have been said about high school kids in my district, usually by other kids. The adults get in on it, too."

Drew Curtis of the famous Fark.com, which is based in Kentucky, wrote, “Kentucky lawmaker wants to r-u-n-n-o-f-t largest website in the state. Drew looking forward to moving Fark to the Cayman Islands.”

Mr. Couch also told WebProNews that he does not think the bill will go anywhere especially after the strong response he’s received. He said he would like the negativity to stop, and he’s very busy at the moment working on the state budget.

Second rule of politics for incumbents: If you go to the trouble to introduce a bill, be prepared to defend it until the bitter end, even if you know in your heart it will never pass, not in a million years, unless futility somehow becomes a desired legislative virtue.

Oh wait. Scratch that futility part. Futility gives the administrative branches of government something to do*.

Ahem. On with the article, right?

Kentucky state representative Tim Couch** (R-Hyden), introduced a bill to the General Assembly that would bar Kentuckians from anonymously commenting on Websites, or via their own blogs. The bill would require anyone leaving a comment to provide their real name, address, and email address to the website on which they wish to comment. Website operators would be required to enforce this policy or face fines.

Yes, their home address, too, which I think is illegal in Michigan.

Does Couch think this legislative measure will pass or even do any good to combat the cowardly drive-by anonymous jibes left on countless websites everyday? Well, no, not really. This bill was just to get your attention, not for real legislative purposes.

John Cheves reports Couch doesn’t think it will go anywhere or that the legislature can do anything about it in reality. Also in reality, Couch is using his legislative powers to bring attention to online bullying, especially when bullying is exacerbated by parents who join in on the anonymous gauntlet, which we can agree is pretty cowardly and rotten.

This quote was the kicker, though: "I think right now (online posting) is pretty much just on its own. It’s a machine that’s going to go its own way," Couch said. "The state can try to pass some rules, but I don’t really think it would do anything."

But he introduced it anyway, House Bill 775, dubbed "Prohibit anonymous blogging," just to show us Kentuckians our money is well-spent. Tip: If you’re going to be introducing symbolic protest bills, better reconsider that whole casino gambling thing so we have a better way to pay for them.

Then again, without the logic to support bills-to-nowhere, we wouldn’t have the logic to support why state lotteries, horse racing, and bingo are okay while casinos, back-room and online poker games, and betting on sports are not. Ahem. But I digress.

I don’t think I need to talk about freedom of speech, the First Amendment, civil liberties, or the necessity for anonymous speech even if it is abused by a few dastardly, yella-bellies—I get a few of those comin’ by sometimes myself. Perhaps an anonymous commentator called "rossh" can present that defense for me:

"The erosion of personal liberties continues ever so quietly … The government is here to protect us."

Well said, whoever you are.

And something like that is not something to be taken so lightly that you risk civil liberties just to get attention. God forbid you get enough votes to actually pass it.

The good news: It’s an election year and Couch has 3 Republican opponents signed up to run against in Leslie County, or thereabouts.

*The Third Rule, of course, is: Do not play with the electorate’s inalienable rights endowed by their Creator, yada yada, what Thomas Jefferson said.

*While not the famous rocket-armed quarterback, Rep. Couch shares his name and his home county with Tim Couch. And he kinda looks like him, too. Guessing there’s a relation, then, but just guessing. In a county of 12,400, I suppose it’s possible there are two unrelated Tim Couches who kinda look alike.