Massachusetts Institute of Technology
6.805/6.806/STS085 Ethics and Law on the Electronic Frontier
Spring Semester, 2001
April 12
The slides from Hal's lecture last week are posted here
as a powerpoint presentation.
Information on the midterm and how it was graded is
available here.
Group presentation: Protecting Privacy Through Anonymity Tools
Topic for today
This week's presentation will be an introduction to the policy and
legal issues surrounding anonymity, a look at some of the
technology for providing anonymity, and an oveview of the anonymity
group's project plans.
Readings to do before class
- A. Michael Froomkin, Flood
Control on the Information Ocean: Living with Anonymity, Digital Cash,
and Distributed Data Bases, U. Pittsburgh J. of Law and
Commerce, vol. 15, no. 395 (1996). An excellent orientation to
anonymity on the Internet and the Constitutional constraints on
regulation of anonymous communication.
-
McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission, 514 U.S. 334 (1995). This Supreme Court
decision may be critical to the legal status of anonymity on the
Internet. In it, the Court affirms the right to conduct anonymous political
leafletting.
- American
Civil Liberties Union of Georgia v. Miller (N.D. Ga. June 20,
1997) In this decision, a federal court in Atlanta granted the ACLU
of Georgia’s motion for a preliminary injunction, voiding a Georgia
statute that criminalized anonymous on-line communications.
- David R. Johnson,
The Unscrupulous Diner's
Dilemma and Anonymity in Cyberspace.
This note by the co-director of the Cyberspace Law Institute
argues that it is necessary to limit anonymous communicationsin order
to achieve a civilized form of cyberspace.
You might also want to browse
the project
resource page
for this topic.