(The idea for the following post came during the South Asia Meeting on the Freedom of Expression and the Internet in Kathmandu, 2-4 November. Anonymity was discussed during a session on first day along with surveillance, security and data protection. The following post, however, is only my thoughts, not the summary of what was discussed during the meeting.)
Before jumping into my views, let define anonymity clearly. Anonymity is derived from the Greek word meaning “without a name” or “namelessness”, according to Wikipedia. In colloquial use, anonymity typically refers to the state of an individual’s personal identity, or personally identifiable information, being publicly unknown.
It’s important to distinguish anonymity from privacy, which means individuals’ ability to seclude them by revealing only selective information. Normally, anonymity is hiding oneself completely while privacy is hiding selective information about oneself.
Two aspects of anonymity online
When it comes to Internet, anonymity refers to two aspects. First, it’s the ability to surf internet and/or use services provided by internet without leaving a trace that what any individual has accessed during his time on the Internet. Second, anonymity is also applied while writing to express oneself on Internet based services.
The first aspect of anonymity is not only desirable but should also be promoted as a part of rights to privacy because it basically deals with the habits of users, which an individual can decide to keep private in real life too.
I may sound radical but I feel that promoting second aspect of anonymity (that is writing on Internet anonymously) will do more damage than good to Internet freedom and freedom of expression. This however applies more to countries where freedom of expression is guaranteed than in countries where it’s restricted.
Good aspects of anonymous writing
Take example of autocratic regimes, such as Syria or Iran or North Korea, where freedom of expression is defined on their own ways, it’s really difficult for citizens to express what they think because for something they write or speak can land them into the jail.
In 2005, when the then King Gyanendra Shah of Nepal dismissed the government, became head of the executive and sent army officers to media houses who directly censored media content. At that time, two blogs – United We Blog! which I co-founded and Radio Free Nepal, which I contributed to anonymously, spread out news from Nepal advocating for peace and democracy.
At that time, UWB! approach was cautious. While we did add the tag ‘for peace and democracy’ and wrote information that mainstream media could not publish, we were always under danger of being arrested and the whole site becoming defunct. RFN served better as it was anonymous, more vocal to criticize the King and advocating democracy and criticizing government. It felt safe; and I could write freely. This example proves that at the time of crisis, especially political crisis, anonymous writing could be a great help.
Anonymity could lead to more problems
However, anonymous writing could lead to more problems because it creates more freedom of expression but at the same time leads towards less accountability.
Anonymous writing can be sometime without any accountability at all thus the writer can not only post good information but also hate speech, profanity and false information.
An example: when popular writer Taslima Nasreen could not fly to Kathmandu from Delhi for a literary festival. She tweeted: My Nepali friends, I missed my flight to go to Kathmandu today. I forgot to bring my passport as I didn’t consider Nepal a foreign country!
Her tweets attracted angry reactions from Nepali tweeples, who criticized her for not knowing about Nepal, some in harsh language. But one tweet that really stood out (because she referred to it to cancel her trip) was the one that contained profanity (click for the tweet, remember it contains profanity). A lot of us, who have been unhappy with her for her tweet, didn’t like the tweet that was posted by someone who is anonymous, for s/he only used pseudonym, and signed into a new Twitter account to post it.
This was one tweet; but people could use anonymity to spread profanity, even hate speech, provocative writings to promote illegal activities and violence – and that’s not going to help anyway. Hate speech is any communication that disparages a person or a group on the basis of some characteristic such as race, color, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, nationality and religion.
Even autocratic government can use a lot of anonymous accounts to spread information that could confuse truth with doctored information. It’s hard to spread false information, but it’s not very hard to confuse truth with doctored information.
Final words
Anonymity online is tricky issue so should be handled carefully while advocating freedom of expression and Internet freedom. As UN Special Rapporteur for Promotion of Freedom of Opinion and Expression Frank La Rue pointed out during the session: it’s good but should not be promoted as pre-condition to freedom of expression.
