ENUM: Your IP address is your street address

  

It once was said that "On the internet, nobody knows you’re really a dog." That’s not quite as true now as it once was.

As readily available as IP addresses are at present, it’s not terribly hard to track down the physical location of any particular person sending an email, commenting a blog or browsing the web. All you need is the knowledge to access to some fairly common network tracing commands like PING, TRACERT & WHOIS. A little applied deduction can reveal the search target’s physical location to within 5-10km, but not generally much closer than that. However, if you can show just cause to a judge that someone at a particular IP has caused you harm (i.e. defamation), you can get a court order to force the ISP which operates the block of IP addresses containing your search target to give you the name and address of the person who was online using that IP at any given time.

However, the benefit of anonymous expression is that it permits information to be circulated without the author being an issue. Many small minded debaters find great delight in the ad hominem fallacy, where the author, instead of his information, is attacked as the crux of discussion. Anonymity forces discussion to focus on the issue and not the speaker.

If you mind your stealth, real anonymity is still possible, if a bit fiddly. Internet is unique in human history in that it is possible, with some effort, to publish widely while remaining completely anonymous. A person can indeed still post messages, browse web pages and send emails without any of them being traced back to that person.

Roger Clarke has written a paper called "ENUM – A Case Study in Social Irresponsibility" which describes a system of interlinking IP addresses and regular copper-wire telephone numbers and why it is a privacy hazard. The ENUM proposal is almost unknown outside of ISPs and those people drafting the standards for the next incarnation of Internet. Standards are being driven not by the massive hordes of internet users for their benefit, but rather by governments and big corporate marketing concerns. Clarke gives a concise histroy of privacy models and how they are being bent to fit the needs of law enforcement and salesmen. ENUM would be a boon to government, law enforcement and marketers as it would reveal one’s location to within a few metres. The default mode of ENUM is opt-out, not opt-in. Critics and whistleblowers would be much easier to find- to sue… or arrest.

Given the widespread use of the ‘SLAPP‘ lawsuit in the USA by governments and businesses with deep pockets for legal fees, it’s completely possible to suppress bad business practises or corrupt government with a well-placed writ. It’s even easier in Australia to shut people up with SLAPP type lawsuits as there are no laws in present existence protecting people against them.

Protect your right to howl at the moon and bark in the night. Keep a watchful eye on telecommunications privacy issues as legislation is proposed.

-weez

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