Anonymity: Expectation or Right?

Somewhat recently, a public official was linked to remarks he allegedly posted online while using a pseudonym. The official had done nothing illegal, but his reputation suffered greatly after being linked to the remarks. That got me thinking about people's expectations of being able to express themselves anonymously online.

Let's assume, for the moment, that the official in question really did post remarks that, once linked to him, resulted in public disgrace. Anyone posting online using a pseudonym or posting anonymously likely has some expectation that his or her remarks won't be linked to his/her "real world," offline identity. At the very least, having remarks you made anonymously or pseudonymously is a violation of your expectations. I'd expect it to feel as though your privacy had being violated; anonymity gives you a kind of privacy. In fact, that's how I originally processed the story of the official: as a case in which an individual's privacy was violated. People generally regard privacy (however fuzzily defined) as a right (though people also have a way of justifying such violations if they feel that the uncovered sin is great enough).

On further reflection, I'm not so sure linking someone to comments they made anonymously is analogous to other violations of privacy (i.e., someone installing a camera in your bathroom). Perhaps we've come to conflate anonymity with privacy. When I say things to a friend in a private setting, I expect those things not to be recorded and played back in some other context. This kind of privacy of self-expression in a particular limited context (i.e., secrets) has been a part of many societies for a long time (though I'd stop short of calling it natural and/or a basic human right). But the ability to express one's self to a large number of people anonymously hasn't been around for more than a decade or so. Of course, there have been anonymous sources for a long time, and the protection of witnesses through the assignment of new identities has been a common protocol for a long time. But in terms of the frequency and ease with which the average person can express themselves anonymously on an everyday basis, I think it's a relatively new phenomenon. Additionally, things said in private and things said anonymously differ radically in terms of their impact. Whispering secrets among a small group of friends likely has one impact on the attitudes and beliefs of others while writing something anonymously online likely has another (typically larger) impact.

I can understand a society that wants to enshrine the first kind of privacy (whispering in private, off the record) as a basic right, but to lump anonymous self-expression (a relatively recent widespread phenomenon) in with this strikes me as rash. Certainly, many of us have come to take for granted the ability to say things anonymously that will not be associated with our "real world" identities, and it feels bad when our expectations are violated, and but that doesn't make it a right.

When considering whether or not something should be treated as a right, we tend to look backward, for precedent. I wonder about the limits of this approach. It demands that we make forced analogies that don't really fit. We select the analogy to the past that suits us ("posting anonymously is like publishing controversial political tracts under an assumed name," or, if you're on the other side, "posting anonymously is like the hoods that members of the Ku Klux Klan wore"). Instead, it seems to me to be worthwhile to consider the aggregate effects on society, now and for the foreseeable future, of enshrining something as a right. Would a world in which we had to live in fear of being associated with everything we say and do anonymously online be a better or worse world?

Reasons why anonymity is good: it makes it easier for folks who are seeking help for a stigmatized condition to receive help. It facilitates "whistle-blowing" and ensures confidentiality of sources, making it easier to hold powerful institutions accountable. Anonymity is also a kind of bulwark against surveillance and the permanence of online memory and the ease with which messages are taken out of context, widely disseminated, framed in misleading ways, and used against the speaker. This last one seems like a biggie. The tactic of using one's past words against one's future self was once a technique used by the press on politicians, but now it seems to be used by anyone on anyone. And so we cling to anonymous self-expression as a way to retain some freedom of speech.

Reasons why anonymity is bad: it permits hostility without consequences, on a massive scale and, thus, normalizes hostile thinking and behavior. Hostile people aren't as isolated as they were before; they can easily find one another and, together, justify their hostility as a defense of their rights, freedom, or as an act of justice.

So, if we lose trust in the ability of any communication tool to provide us with true anonymity (as would likely happen if a few more high-profile un-maskings were to occur), we're probably going to lose some good things and some bad things. Any attempt to determine whether anonymity should be defended as a right should consider the weight of those things. I think that gets lost in debates about the merits of, well, a lot of things these days. It isn't enough to link a particular course of action to bad consequences. You must consider all of the consequences as well as all of the consequences of the other plausible courses of action, to the extent that such things are possible, before arriving at a decision.

It could be that younger people who've grown up with the ability to express themselves anonymously may simply dislike the prospect of losing this ability so much that it may not matter whether we officially enshrine anonymous speech as part and parcel of the right to privacy. The demand for it might be so high that economically and politically (rather than ethically), it will be treated as a necessity. Conversely, the decay of true anonymity (and the fear of being "outed") may be an inevitable consequence of a highly networked world in which sufficiently motivated people can unmasked whomever they want, regardless of how badly the majority of folks wish that anonymity were a protect right.