Libel 'threat' to web anonymity

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota
20 October 2011 Last updated at 07:22 GMT By Emma Griffiths Political reporter, BBC News Users often post comments under different names Websites should have protection from defamation cases if they act quickly to remove anonymous postings which prompt a complaint, a report says.

A joint parliamentary committee says it wants a "cultural shift" so that posts under pseudonyms are not considered "true, reliable or trustworthy".

It says websites which identify authors and publish complaints alongside comments should get legal protection.

But Mumsnet said the proposal could have a "chilling effect" on websites.

The report by the joint committee of MPs and peers who examined the draft defamation bill covers a wide range of defamation issues.

Its recommendations - including more protection for scientists and academics writing in peer-reviewed journals and more work on reducing "unacceptably" high costs of libel cases by encouraging more to be resolved through mediation - have been welcomed by the Libel Reform Campaign.

'Entirely legitimate'

The committee also proposes a new "notice and takedown procedure" for defamatory online comments - aimed at providing a quick remedy for those who are defamed and to give websites which use the procedure more legal protection.

Under the current law, websites are liable for defamatory statements made by their users. If they fail to take down a post when they receive a complaint, they risk being treated as the "primary publisher" of the statement.

The report says many "entirely legitimate" comments may be removed by websites who are keen to avoid legal liability.

It recommends that where complaints are made about comments from identified authors - the website should promptly publish a notice of the complaint alongside it.

The complainant can then apply to a court for a "takedown" order - which if granted, should result in the comment being removed, if the website is to avoid the risk of a defamation claim.

But where potentially defamatory comments are anonymous, the website should immediately remove them on receipt of a complaint, unless the author agrees to identify themselves, the report says.

'Mischievous and malicious'

The author of the comment can then be sued for defamation but if a website refuses to take down an anonymous remark it "should be treated as its publisher and face the risk of libel proceedings".

The report also says a website could apply to a court for a "leave-up" order - if it considers the anonymous comment to be on a matter of "significant" public interest.

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If you think all anonymity is bad you could end up with unintended consequences of removing peer-to-peer support, in particular around sensitive issues”

End Quote Mumsnet spokeswoman The committee criticises comments made anonymously, which it says "may encourage free speech but it also discourages responsibility" and sets out moves it hopes will lead to a "cultural shift towards a general recognition that unidentified postings are not to be treated as true, reliable or trustworthy".

It says the aim of its proposal is to reduce damage "inflicted by the mischievous and the malicious".

But Mumsnet, a parenting website, says many of its members rely on the ability to ask questions or post comments anonymously.

Many of the women posting messages do so under a "user name", rather than their real name - and the site is worried the proposal will mean more people demanding messages be taken down.

Its co-founder, Justine Roberts, said while it was right to stop people from "assassinating the character of others from behind the cloak of anonymity" the report did not recognise how useful anonymous postings were "in allowing people to speak honestly about difficult real-life situations".

"The recommendations could have a chilling effect on sites like Mumsnet where many thousands of people use anonymity to confidentially seek and give advice about sensitive real-life situations."

In 2007, the website settled a libel case with Gina Ford, author of the Contented Little Babies book, over comments posted about her by its users.

A spokeswoman said they received about 10 complaints a month about comments on the site - and "two or three big ones a year" - often from small companies who had been reviewed by its members. It often agrees to take comments down.

But she said anonymous posts were important to the site - for example in its campaign for better care for women who have miscarried, where they have had a midwife and doctor making anonymous contributions.

"What we're really keen to do is to say there is some value in it [anonymous posts] and that is very different to being an anonymous troll and waging war on someone.

"If you think all anonymity is bad you could end up with unintended consequences of removing peer-to-peer support, in particular around sensitive issues."

Technology

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TECHNOLOGY, Which VPN Anonymity Providers Keep Secrets

Though ridiculing as "scrubs" critics claiming all the LulzSec'ers used the same thin and ineffective anonymity screen as the accused "Recursion," who the FBI arrested yesterday for one in a long line of data breaches at Sony, one of the few surviving LulzSec'ers is calling for a boycott and ultimately the destruction of the VPN service whose records the FBI used to identify Cory Kretsinger as Recursion.

All users of HMA should close their accounts immediately as they do not respect privacy concerns of users using their VPN.– AnonymousSabu, Fri. Sept. 23.

Hidemyass.com, which Kretsinger allegedly used as a proxy service to hide his IP address, but which turned its server logs over to the FBI after receiving a subpoena, "cooperates with law enforcement agencies fully and admit it. They claimed they did not log, but apparently log everything," AnonymousSabu tweeted earlier today.
Though its privacy and terms-of-service statements might have been stronger when Recursion signed up, for at least the past few months HMA has been clear that it does save data on what customers do online and will turn it over to police with the proper warrants or subpoenas.
Server activity is "logged for a maximum of 30 days, these are logs generated by the Apache web server which include your IP address and date/time of all files and websites accessed through our web proxy…We reserve the right to cooperate with law enforcement agencies who are investigating criminal activities from abusive web proxy users."
The rest of the terms of service are irrelevant. If you're doing something illegal, your beard just promised to out you – with all the details of what you were up to – if anyone with a badge should ask.
Whom Can You Trust with Your Secrets
In its own post about the "Lulzsec fiasco," Hidemyass.com execs admitted learning their service was one being used by LulzSec members after IRC chat logs were released by other hackers.
They did nothing about it because they had no way to identify the accounts LulzSec'ers were using and no hard evidence of wrongdoing.
They weren't surprised with a court order for information about specific accounts, however, and they didn't sweat much over the decision.

_Our VPN service and VPN services in general are not designed to be used to commit illegal activity. It is very naive to think that by paying a subscription fee to a VPN service you are free to break the law without any consequences. This includes certain hardcore privacy services which claim you will never be identified, these types of services that do not cooperate are more likely to have their entire VPN network monitored and tapped by law enforcement, thus affecting all legitimate customers. – Hidemyass.com, "The LulzSec Fiasco," Sept. 23, 2011. _

That doesn't mollify Sabu, who view cooperating with law enforcement in any way violation of a sacred compact, despite depending on "rooted servers or busybox routers" as anonymity screens, rather than commercial services.
"No," Sabu replied (profanely) at a "scrub"who said it's hard to "expose" HMA if the real problem was Recursion's use of one login in many places. "I am exposing HMA for going against their own anti-logging policy. Keep up. I know it's hard."

"@HideMyAssCom You will cease to exist." – AnonymousSabu, Sept. 23, 2011

Turning records over to the FBI, then going public with it in a post that defends the practice undermines the credibility of all VPN proxy services and smears those who are more aggressive about protecting the data and activity of their customers, accordingto a counter-argument posted by rival VPN service AirVPN.
HMA's claim that all VPN providers keep logs and have to turn them over to police when required is wrong on legal and technical grounds, makes VPNs less credible in the eyes of customers and erodes their legal status as "mere conduits" of information that shouldn't be required to track the activity of their customers or reveal it to the law, the AirVPN editorial said.
AirVPN is based in Europe, so it doesn't recognize U.S. jurisdictions and is required by EU law to keep the names of its customers much more private than U.S. companies anyway.
AirVPN's service is designed "so that you don't need to have "faith" in what we say (for example, when we say "we don't keep logs"), but to be inherently secure, regardless of what you think of us and regardless of which pressures we might receive from enforcement or criminal entities."
AirVPN allows customers to sign up and pay for the service using digital Bitcoin reseller networks and to use the TOR VPN network when buying an account at Bitcoin, to keep from leaving a trail of IP addresses to the point at which you paid.
It offers secure email accounts "that cannot be used to reveal your identity," and encourages customers to use its service in conjunction with TOR or others "for extremely critical data transfers" for whistleblowers, those providing information on organized crime or those in politically oppressed countries who risk arrest or death for reading certain sites or posting certain information.
"The key is that we must NOT know who you are."
Not Every Secret Proxy is Quite so Noble
Other services such as Privax offer a series of free proxy servers users can link through to hide their tracks, each of which has different terms of service.
More commercial services such asCryptoCloud, provide a "100% anonymous procedure" for payment and service, accepting cashier's checks or other anonymous payment, and promise that "we do not store logs of your network activity. We don't have a privacy policy regarding those records because we don't keep those records…We cannot be compelled to provide what we do not have."
CryptoCloud got good reviewsfrom some users and was fairly well regarded as a BitTorrent screen and VPN service.
That confidence might have been shaken by the second major arrest, last April, of CryptoCloud owner Douglas Spinks – who spent three years in prison after a 1995 traffic stop in which he was found to have 372 pounds of cocaine in his SUV, but was sentenced to only three years after testifying against the smuggling ring he worked for.
This time the arrest was for allegedly running a farm raising animals for sex tourists interested in bestiality – which led to some distasteful revelations about his fondness for German Shepherds.
CryptoCloud is still around, though, offering a VPN tunneling service that "wraps everything in an outside wrapper indistinguishable from plain, old-fashioned HTTPS traffic. So, while you might be playing WoW and talking on a VoIP connection, your router and network sees only traffic similar to visiting an online banking site."
Levels of nobility and respectability seem to vary a bit in this industry.
As Recursion and at least one set of Cocaine smugglers found out – it's always best to double check how reliable someone is who you plan to trust with your most sensitive secrets.
Well, second most sensitive, if you count the dogs.

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