[ExI] Untraceable nastiness

[Eugen Leitl]

On Fri, Apr 05, 2013 at 09:44:49AM +0100, Anders Sandberg wrote:

> Ubiquitous surveillance likely makes on-line anonymity impossible, since  

Why would you allow spies in your living room?  

> the gnatbots can read your passwords as you type them (or more  
> sophisticated evil maid surveillance attacks on your hardware).

If your hardware can't guard itself, you should probably invest
in a better one. Sure, it's an arms race, but the advantage is
on the side of the space owner.

> In the surveillance world you can likely always figure out at least  

In the surveillance world, 99.9% of us are serfs, so let's try not
to reach that local pessimum.

> 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,  

If you have MNT, then the concept of the physical world goes out of
the window. There are certainly no bipedal primates around, at least
not for long.

> 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.

That by itself is rarely fatal.

> 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.

Why, it encourages people to invest into more permanent nyms by
accuring expensive reputation, simply because trolls and dicks have
dragged down anonyms into a massive liability in interactions.