Trust is a crucial part of our society. We trust other drivers on the road not to
crash into our cars, and we trust restaurant workers to not spit in our
food. We do this even though these types
of incidents occur regularly all over the world.[i] We retain our trust in these two situations because
the rate of these negative occurrences is negligible for such mundane, every
day activities. Not only that, but it is
easy for us to believe that most others on the road are reasonably competent
drivers and we trust that they have some sense of self preservation. Similarly, it is safe to assume that any
restaurant manager would quickly punish a worker caught spitting in customers'
food. These are only two simple examples
of every day trust, but without it society cannot function.
What is interesting to consider is the concept of an anonymous
restaurant worker who able to spit in food with impunity, with there being no
effective way for a customer or management to identity or track them down. The onset of the Information Age has allowed
for the conceptual anonymous restaurant worker to come to life, albeit in a
digital world. Today, the Internet is a
playground to hordes of users acting anonymously, doing things they wouldn’t
otherwise do if their identities were known.
They have made things such as illegal hacking, fake news, and
cyberbullying commonplace. This is
because through anonymity, they are not subject to many of what Bruce Schneier,
in his 2012 book Liars & Outliers, calls “societal pressures.”[ii] He explains that there are four types of
societal pressures that build and maintain trust in society: moral pressure, relating
to our innate personal sense of wrong and right; reputational pressure, relating
to how others in society respond to and judge our actions; institutional
pressure, relating to the established rules, laws, norms, and customs of a
given group; and security systems, technical or procedural mechanisms that
prevent unwanted behavior. Of these,
only one is capable of effectively combating the negative impacts of anonymous
internet usage – security systems. If
the Internet is to become fully ingrained and integrated into society, new
security policy and technologies must be put in place to limit anonymous action
online and ensure that the required level of societal trust is maintained.
In terms of trust, it is easy to see how our online and
offline lives are at odds with each other.
Because a high degree of trust is something that is required for society
to function, the Internet in its current form will continue to make a negative
social impact. Outside of the Internet,
anonymity is the exception. In normal
day-to-day life, we are expected to carry identification with us, put license
plates on our cars, and have addresses on our homes. By default, our actions in the world are not
anonymous, unless action is taken to ensure otherwise. A common example of which would be to put on
a ski mask to hide one's identity – an action generally regarded as bad, not
trustworthy, and dissuaded through traditional societal pressures.
Supporters of anonymity online would argue that it provides
a freedom of expression -- freedom to create content on the Internet without burden
of taking responsibility for it.
Further, supporters may argue that a middle ground, pseudo-anonymity, can
provide the best of both words.
Pseudo-anonymity enables this freedom while also maintaining, through
back-end technical means, a link to an actual identity. The purported benefit
is that a user’s identity can be known for possible law enforcement reasons, but
also at the same time creates an illusion of anonymity for the general user
population. At the end of the day,
online anonymity comes at a huge expense to our government[iii],
which is forced to constantly surveil the entire network, capturing and storing
vast amounts of data to try and maintain a system of trust. Despite this huge cost and effort there are remain
relatively easy ways to maintain anonymity online. And a lot of damage has been done to our
society due to the anonymous nature of the Internet. Examples of this include the weaponization of
social media by terrorist organizations[iv],
fake media outlets unreasonably swaying popular decision making[v],
and negatively influencing society's already lackluster appreciation of the
truth[vi]. We would be naive to think that this societal
damage has not been made possible by the anonymity afforded by the Internet.
But what can be done?
After all, from a technological perspective, from its foundation the
network has always catered to those who wish to remain anonymous. The answer is security systems -- the only
one of Schneier's societal pressures that be put in place to help prevent
anonymous activity online. Some
Internet services, a great example of which being Facebook, have done an
admirable job of working to reduce the amount of anonymous user activity. By taking strides to enforce a one-to-one
relationship between a user of the system and an actual person, people are held
accountable for what they say and do online – law enforcement using Facebook to
solve crimes is an almost every day occurrence.[vii] However, the Facebook model is incomplete
because, through allowing linked content from outside services, they have
exposed users to one of the worst aspects of anonymity online and helped to
create a media-fueled divisive culture[viii]. What is instead needed is the inverse of the
current trust paradigm of the Internet: legislation from our leaders that
enforces a one-to-one identification at the network level. What this means is that as soon as a user is
connected to the network, their identity should be known and maintained. Personal identification would be the default
on the Internet, not the other way around.
While this model could also allow for anonymity within certain spheres –
services which allow users to share content pseudo-anonymously -- the
overarching trust of the Internet would be maintained by enabling the other
societal pressures. After all, as
Schneier writes, “We humans are a social species, and more often than not
someone is watching. And that makes an
enormous difference.”
[i]
Over a million people die in road crashes every year (http://asirt.org/initiatives/informing-road-users/road-safety-facts/road-crash-statistics)
[ii] Schneier,
B. (2012). Liars and outliers: enabling the trust that society needs to thrive.
Indianapolis. Wiley.
[iii] http://fortune.com/2015/06/09/surveillance-tech-sector/
[iv] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/11/war-goes-viral/501125/
[v] http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/7090/5653
[vi] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/03/technology/how-the-internet-is-loosening-our-grip-on-the-truth.html?_r=0
[vii] https://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/the-new-inside-source-for-police-forces-social-networks/
[viii]
http://www.alternet.org/culture/digital-divide-american-politics
