From: kadie@herodotus.cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie)
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
Subject: [alt.sex.bondage] Re: Anonymity (Was Re: How to do ACS right (was: Software Failure))
Date: 8 Oct 92 21:38:42 GMT
Followup-To: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk,alt.sex.bondage
Organization: University of Illinois, Dept. of Comp. Sci., Urbana, IL

[A repost - Carl]

Newsgroups: alt.sex.bondage
From: paul@uxc.cso.uiuc.edu (Paul Pomes - UofIllinois CSO)
Subject: Re: Anonymity (Was Re: How to do ACS right (was: Software Failure))
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 23:29:33 GMT

wi.5467@n7kbt.rain.com (StarOwl) writes:

>Last spring, e-privacy was a big topic here at UIUC.  The sysadmins on
>uxa, the big free student account UNIX machine, changed the fingername
>policy unannounced.  Overnight, we went from being able to customize
>our fingernames on that machine, to having our full legal names returned
>in a finger query.  The powers that be wanted all news posts and email
>coming out of UIUC to have a real name attatched to them, and all IRCNAMES
>to reflect the RL identity of the account holder.  Their premise was
>that "a user who has to reveal his real name is a responsible user."

I still believe that premise and fifteen years experience in the computer
field has not shown me significant counter-evidence.  I dropped the finger
names because of FERPA.  FERPA does not, however, cover news or irc.

>From my point of view, this premise was utter BS.  There are many 
>precidents in U.S. History regarding using some sort of pseudonym
>under which one could make his or her opinions known without much
>fear of being harassed in hir (I'm sorry, I am going to get tired
>of writing "his or her" and "he and she" over and over again)
>normal everyday life.  The same sort of protection should (IMHO)
>be availible to net.users.

Certainly.  That's what public Internet providers are there for.
Don't ask the University to provide that service since it doesn't
mesh with either academic freedom or our educational mission.

>Obviously this is not the case, for a number of reasons that I won't
>go into here now.  However this sort of "protection" had been
>availible here until that night, when the policy was changed unannounced.
>A good friend of mine received a harrassing/obscene phone call for
>something sie said on IRC, because it became so easy to identify hir.
>I got pissed and started a flamefest on three local newsgroups, threatening
>a lawsuit that I would have lost, but would have been potentially 
>very embarassing for the University.  Besides their premise didn't
>work well -- it was still very easy to send email and news off that
>machine using handles, and to change one's IRCNAME.  Possibly because
>of the stink I and a few other people caused, the policy was changed.

Nope, just FERPA.  Tools to track email connections are already in
place.  Forged email from uxa is quite easy to trace now.  News is
next and in some ways easier because hosts that accept outside posts
are relatively rare and bothersome to use.  The University hasn't a
care in the world what you call yourself in email as long as it
doesn't involve the University in any legal troubles.

/pbp
-- 
"A well-schooled electorate, being necessary to the security of a free State,
the right of the People to keep and read Books shall not be infringed."
	-- J. Neil Schulman
--
Carl Kadie -- kadie@cs.uiuc.edu -- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk