Joho the Blog
An Entry from the Archives

Hi Peeps in Brazil,
Go to Yahoo.co.uk and register there for free with a nickname. You don't even have to create a profile. It's the same with MSN (Hotmail).
You'll be able to send emails to everyone... including me... saucydennis01@yahoo.co.uk ...without the authorities knowing who you are.
Good luck.
Dennis in UK.

It's about the same as making it illegal to duplicate an MP3 file without affixing your phone number to the copy you've made. Everyone will start using everyone else's phone number. Duh.

Enabling a person to easily authenticate themselves to a computer terminal AND for the computer terminal to authenticate itself to the person, is slightly more tricky than entering a magic number.

This kind of authentication is generally overkill for anything except very private matters such as banking, voting, and remotely accessing other private assets.

Free speech can survive, as long as readers appreciate the speaker's identity remains assumed rather than authenticated.

For example, how does anyone really know whether everyone that uses the name 'Crosbie Fitch' to post comments on this and other blogs shares the same brain or DNA?

I'd suggest that Brazil instead required every website publisher to establish their identity with the ISP, etc. Then people have a choice between anonymous speech and authentic speech. You could have virtual identities too.

No David, sigh, that isn't happening.

It's the bogosphere THEY'RE COMING TO GET US echo-chamber in action. Because one gets cred by posting uncritical wolf-crying, but not by being skeptical :-(.

The debunking is finally going around now.

The only digital identities that will be viable are those that people actually want to use.

And people will want to use them.

But, they may not always want them overtly tied to their bodies.

Hi Seth - Not many of you meta-blogospherical people around these days, reverberating existentialist cries of WHAT'S THE FRIGGING POINT? around our cosy paranoia chambers. Always good to know there's another Matryoshka doll out there to retreat to. :)