[ExI] Untraceable nastiness

[Anders Sandberg]

On 05/04/2013 03:38, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:
> ### One the other hand, what technology taketh away with one hand, it 
> bestoweth with the other: Ubiquitous decentralized surveillance of the 
> physical layer would make it easy to detect and destroy whoever 
> undertakes the disapproved-of physical activity, whether spontaneously 
> or prompted by an untraceable payment. You may not be able to know 
> your criminal Nemesis but you might be able to cut off his hands.

Ubiquitous surveillance likely makes on-line anonymity impossible, since 
the gnatbots can read your passwords as you type them (or more 
sophisticated evil maid surveillance attacks on your hardware).

In the surveillance world you can likely always figure out at least 
after the fact who was behind what and hold them accountable; whether 
that power is distributed to everybody or some centres of power depends 
on the setup.

In the perfect anonymity world online anonymity allows remote control of 
actuators like drones, and accountability likely goes out of the window 
except where enforced by cryptographic and material-layer security. I 
have been having some fun discussions about what the limits of material 
security is: it might be possible to build not just "firewalls" but 
capability control into much of our objects using nanotech. Again, 
different setups favor concentrations or distributions of security power.

It is worth recognizing that this is not about the Ring of Gyges: most 
evidence shows that anonymity will not make people immoral, but it does 
allow many more to be dicks, trolls and criminals.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_disinhibition_effect
Reputations are useful, and for many purposes (but not all!) must be 
tied to a physical person rather than a cryptonym.

-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Faculty of Philosophy
Oxford University