In early September 2000, a Canadian judge required an ISP to reveal a subscriber's identity after similar claims of defamation. In the best-known case of anonymity being breeched, the world's most famous anonymous remailer, anon.penet.fi , closed down after a Church of Scientology claim of copyright violation led a court to force the administrator to reveal a user's identity. Technological advances continue to strip away anonymity and make it easier for large sites to maintain databases on individuals. An identifier that the Intel Corporation has announced it will put in every chip led to a boycott from privacy organizations. A French online campaign to save Altern drew many supporters, and the French government soon passed a law protecting Internet providers from liability for the sites they host, similar to protections in U.S. law.
Governments encroach almost instinctively on privacy in their attempts to fight crime or dissent.
The Russian government, under a regulation called SORM, are trying to force Internet providers to give the police access to all online material. The British police have been negotiating with Internet providers to reach an agreement whereby the ISPs would furnish any requested material to the police without the safeguards required by law for telephone wiretapping. The standand response by the United States government to public concerns over data privacy is to call for self-regulation rather than protective legislation, although the Federal Trade Commission made a tiny break from that stance in a paper criticizing industry and calling for the protection of children's information. Following the report, a law was passed placing conditions on the collection of information from children 13 years old or younger on the Internet. Although the FTC moves slowly and continually give companies chances to conform to its expectations voluntarily, in May 2000 it asked Congress to pass a law requiring that companies at least describe their policies concerning customer data.