U.N. agency eyes curbs on Internet anonymity | Politics and Law - CNET News
A United Nations agency is quietly drafting technical standards, proposed by the Chinese government, to define methods of tracing the original source of Internet communications and potentially curbing the ability of users to remain anonymous.
The U.S. National Security Agency is also participating in the "IP Traceback" drafting group, named Q6/17, which is meeting next week in Geneva to work on the traceback proposal. Members of Q6/17 have declined to release key documents, and meetings are closed to the public.
Got to love the use policies these people are talking about.
A political opponent to a government publishes articles putting the government in an unfavourable light. The government, having a law against any opposition, tries to identify the source of the negative articles but the articles having been published via a proxy server, is unable to do so protecting the anonymity of the author.
Why is it that whenever there's a large collection of political powers it sets about destroying any possible moral justification for its existence? The main virtue of the internet is its relative anonymity. Still I guess it’s not too surprising the UN is working on trying to screw the common man over, again.
my mind! It's wasting away while i read this!!!!
ok so let me get this straight, they will be taking away the peoples ability to stay anonymous on the internet?
Get all of your death threats in now! CLEARING SALE!
The peaches!!!
Will this affect other countries?:lookaround:
Speer;4580349Will this affect other countries?:lookaround:
Well the UN represents more nations then just China so I'm thinking "yes."
The UN doesn't pass things that are universally binding at times... if that was the case then every nation should be respecting the international human rights agreement. The thing is though as the UN's material tends to get funded by the large nations of the world, there would probably be agencies operating in their member nations helping them out with this and making that a window into the local laws.
What I'm wondering though is whether this is meant to combat cyber-attacks or more fuel to dump on the government encroaching on liberties thing. Issue is that ultimately this can be pushed and abused obviously.
We will see, we will see. This is still a proposal and a ways off from entering into the actual fabric of law. As we see-
It's unclear what happens next. For one thing, the traceback proposal isn't scheduled to be finished until 2009, and one industry source stressed that not all members of Q6/17 are in favor of it.
- 1
- 2