Should using the internet Anonymously be a thing of the past? That’s what police in Denmark are hoping. They are currently recommending that identities be verified before someone is able to log on to the internet. But is it one thing to hope that internet anonymity be abolished and quite another to make it happen?
Note: This is an article I wrote that was published elsewhere first. It has been republished here for archival purposes
There’s some interesting developments being pointed out by original) is suggesting that police in Denmark are hoping that internet anonymity be a thing of the past. How exactly do they propose to do that? From the translated article:
How people should make themselves known to the as yet open, anonymous connections are still unclear.
Working with the Ministry of Justice mentions various possibilities such as Social Security numbers, electronic signature or SMS solutions.
The requirement will, however, according to Politiken be that a network user “will not have access to the Internet before the information about the person’s identity is registered and verified.”
If this truly is the way the police in Denmark hopes to end internet anonymity in their country, then it won’t work. What’s to stop someone from accessing TOR? If someone accesses a website via TOR, then the IP address is different and it’s extremely difficult to trace that person back to the original IP address. Really, even if the goal is not to end internet anonymity altogether, what exactly does this accomplish practically speaking. If someone wants to cover their tracks and they know what they are doing, they will. Also, you never want to mess around with things like social insurance numbers. If a social insurance number is used to verify someone’s identities and it is used in such a way that allows third parties to trace the numbers, identity thieves are a big step closer to stealing people’s identities.
This could be an additional strain on the system, it could cost a lot of money to implement, and, at the end of the day, I fail to see how a proposal like that would end internet Anonymity if the report is anything to go by.
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Google+.
