While the Internet is full of magical wonders, its greatest trick is convincing users they’re invisible.
Sitting alone in front of your computer, it’s easy to imagine yourself a virtual voyeur. You can surf the sites, post messages on bulletin boards and chat with others around the world without anyone discovering so much as your first name.
At least, that’s the illusion. And it holds up as long as nobody really wants to find you. But the moment you do anything that merits closer inspection, it becomes clear you’ve been surfing in the emperor’s new clothes: Everyone could see you the whole time.
This won’t surprise anyone who’s paid attention to the ongoing debate over online privacy. But for some reason, it keeps tripping up people who believe they can anonymously badmouth businesses in online chat rooms.
One of those people sued Yahoo earlier this month, accusing the site of violating his privacy by ratting him out. His cause is sympathetic, but the lawsuit is as futile as Web surfers’ hopes for anonymity. For while there’s nothing wrong with trying to hide your identity online, you can’t expect anyone else to help cover your tracks.
The dispute began when someone posted comments on a Yahoo bulletin board criticizing AnswerThink, a publicly traded provider of Web consulting services. The comments were signed Aquacool-2000, suggesting they were made either by a gangsta rapper or, more likely, someone using a false name.
AnswerThink responded with an underhanded tactic used by many companies stung by online criticism: It filed a defamation lawsuit against Aquacool-2000 and a few other pseudonymed posters.
Unhappy employee
While defendants in such suits aren’t liable for significant damages, the companies that file them don’t actually expect to collect. Instead, the lawsuits give plaintiffs the authority to issue subpoenas that uncover their critics’ true identities.
Yahoo, which receives plenty of these subpoenas, turned over Aquacool-2000’s log-on data and other information that allowed AnswerThink attorneys to identify him. It turns out the guy worked for the company and was owed a significant cash payment and a bunch of stock. But once the company identified him, it fired him and withheld those perks.
Aquacool-2000 responded with his own lawsuit against AnswerThink as well as a separate claim against Yahoo, which has attracted support from the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
These groups say Yahoo should ignore frivolous subpoenas and notify users when their data is sought, giving them time to object in court.
Yahoo actually enacted such policies a few weeks before the lawsuit was filed, perhaps in anticipation of a public relations problem. But the site still stands accused of violating Aquacool-2000’s right to remain anonymous.
“The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that anonymity is a constitutional right,” said David Sobel, EPIC’s general counsel. “But practices such as those of Yahoo may make that right illusory online.”
But Sobel’s fears have already come true, and there’s nothing this lawsuit can do to change that.
The Supreme Court ruling he mentions overturned an Ohio law that required people publishing political pamphlets to identify themselves. But while it authorizes publishers themselves to remain anonymous, it doesn’t impose any such duty on companies that publish someone else’s speech.
Publishers’ prerogative
If Yahoo wishes to limit the privacy it provides users, there’s nothing in the Constitution to stop it. The protection applied to anonymous speech is like freedom of the press. Although it belongs to everyone, it applies only to those wealthy enough to own a printing press or, these days, a Web server.
Most Net users aren’t in a position to ensure our anonymity. We can use phony names and employ other tools to disguise our identity, but we’re ultimately at the mercy of Internet service providers and Web sites that publish our words to the world.
We’re certainly entitled to ask these companies to protect our privacy. If we find they give in too quickly to lawyers and direct marketers, we can point our browsers elsewhere.
But it’s safer to assume that anything you say online can be tracked back to you if someone tries hard enough. In a medium made of indelible digital data, anonymity is anything but absolute.
To contact syndicated columnist Joe Jalkowski, you can e-mail him at [email protected] or write to him c/o Tribune Media Services Inc., 435 N. Michigan Ave., Suite 1400, Chicago, Ill., 60611.
