[ecrea] "Online anonymity: Right or threat?": a CRCC symposium

*Online anonymity: Right or threat?*

A one-day symposium organized by Centre for Research in Communication 
and Culture (CRCC), Loughborough University

Loughborough University, February 8^th , 2017, 1-6 pm

http://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/crcc/events/eventslist/online-anonymity-right-or-threat.html

Whenever we navigate the Web, we leave a trace of our movements through 
our IP address, which can in turn be used to establish our identity - 
for instance, by cross-checking it with a user’s Internet subscription. 
By using software such as VPN and Tor, however, it is possible to avoid 
leaving such traces, becoming anonymous in the web. A lively debate 
among policy-makers, security professionals, hacker communities, and 
human rights associations has recently ensued regarding the question if 
such anonymity is acceptable and in which form. On the one side, 
advocates of online anonymity point to the right to privacy and the 
potential risks of an ever-reaching surveillance state; on the other 
side, its antagonists emphasize the presence of close links between 
anonymity and criminal activities online.

This half-day symposium aims to encourage dialogue between scholars, 
institutions, stakeholders, and the wider community about an issue of 
web governance that will be of crucial importance in the next years in 
order to build the civic society of the information age.

Convenors: Mark Monaghan, Simone Natale, Thais Sardá and Nikos 
Sotirakopoulos

*Programme*

1:00-1:10 – Welcome
John Downey (director of the Centre for Research in Communication and 
Culture) and symposium convenors

1:10-2:00 - Timandra Harkness (presenter of BBC Radio 4 series, 
FutureProofing), Title to be confirmed

2:00-3:00 - Tim Jordan (University of Sussex), “Anonymity: A Complex Right”

3:00-3:30 - Break

3:30-4:30 - Judith Aldridge (University of Manchester), “Drug-trade and 
anonymity in cryptomarkets: harms and benefits for users and sellers”

4:30-5:50 - Round table with Dave Elder-Vass (Department of Social 
Sciences, Loughborough University), a representative of Open Rights 
Group (https://www.openrightsgroup.org), and Russell Lock (Department of 
Computer Science, Loughborough University)

5:50-6:00 - Conclusions

The event is free and open to the public. It will take place in 
Loughborough University campus (room TBC). Please register here: 
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/online-anonymity-right-or-threat-tickets-30038040588 


For information, please contact Thais Sardá: (t.sarda /at/ lboro.ac.uk)

*Conference abstracts*

*Anonymity: A Complex Right *

Tim Jordan (University of Sussex)

Why should we consider anonymity to be a right? This paper will begin by 
establishing the core arguments about anonymity as a right by following 
the two examples of Snowden and Manning. This will outline the issues 
that arise around anonymity considered as essential to personal security 
(both in terms of creativity and whistle blowing) against the ethic of 
taking responsibility for one’s utterances. This paper will explore this 
understanding of anonymity as a right by focusing on communication and 
anonymity to argue that the kind of communicative practice being assumed 
within the security/creativity versus responsibility debate is one in 
which the physical body is held to be the author of communication. This 
will be based on research into 19th century letters. However, this form 
of communicative practice is only one kind and a different form of 
practice is created online. Here the body is largely absent and the 
identity-markers—such as, email address, knickname, handle, etc.—are 
unstable and changeable. I will present research on online games and 
4Chan to demonstrate that internet based communication functions for 
hearers or receivers to stabilise and authorise communication through 
the style of someone’s communication; meaning that on the internet you 
have to be heard before you can speak. This understanding of 
communication will be used to explore the meaning of anonymity. 
Anonymity is then presented as a complex right. The first rights are 
familiar and complex: security to utter and to be creative versus the 
responsibility to ‘own’ one’s utterances. However, the presumption of 
the body as the basis of identity that is made in this opposition, 
obscures a more fundamental reason anonymity is a right, because the 
nature of anonymity online is consonant with and necessary to the way 
internet communicative practices function. This means anonymity is 
essential to existence online and so forms a second kind of right.

*Drug-trade and anonymity in cryptomarkets: harms and benefits for users 
and sellers *

**Judith Aldridge (University of Manchester)

Cryptomarkets represent an important drug market innovation by bringing 
buyers and sellers of illegal drugs together in a ‘hidden’ yet public 
online marketplace. Policy responses so far are generally based on the 
assumption that their rise will only increase drug harms. But is this a 
valid assumption? This paper examines the effects of drug markets on 
various forms of harm, alongside emerging evidence on the operation of 
cryptomarkets, to assess anticipated harms and benefits. Cryptomarkets 
may increase both the amount and the range of substances that are sold 
by increasing drug quality and reducing price. The effects of these 
anticipated changes for the drug users are complex, with macro-harm at 
the population level likely increasing, but modified by improved access 
to quality and safety information that may be used to reduce harm at the 
individual level. Harm can be understood also in the form of 
transactional risk (e.g. violence), and risk of arrest. How these risks 
differ across drug market types will be assessed, and how cryptomarket 
users seek particularly to reduce the risk of apprehension and arrest 
when effectively operating ‘in plain sight’ of law enforcement will be 
considered. Drug cryptomarkets are characterised as ‘illicit capital’ 
sharing communities that provide expanded and low-cost access to 
information enabling drug market participants to make more accurate 
assessments of the risk of apprehension. The abundance of drug market 
intelligence available to those on both sides of the law may function to 
speed up innovation in illegal drug markets, as well as necessitate and 
facilitate the development of law enforcement strategies.


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