response 73 of 184:

Sep 6 20:48 UTC 2002

Do internet cafes offer an email program that allows you to be anonymous? 
Is Hotmail still anonymous?  Or do you get to browse all you want without
having to login but as soon as you want to actually send mail, or buy
something, or participate in a forum you need to give some identifying
information to the provider, or store, or host?  That's how libraries I've
visited handle it. 

response 75 of 184:

Sep 7 03:30 UTC 2002

Do any of these services offer shell accounts?  

Disk storage?  

Compiler access?

Scripting support?


Yeah, thought so.  What was your point again?

response 77 of 184:

Sep 7 04:06 UTC 2002

Talking about legal requirements to collect ID in this context probably
doesn't accomplish much, since there aren't any.  We are required to keep a
list of names and addresses of our members, but no other non-profit
organization I've joined has asked for any verification of the names and
addresses.  I suspect, therefore, that simply asking for it and recording what
we're given is enough, and the occasional inaccuracy would not be considered
legally our fault.

Grex's ID for Internet use policy is nine years old, and dates from the era
when the Internet was a faily closed academic network, anonymous access was
hard to come by, and various people in the Grex leadership felt a strong
responsibility to protect our academic neighbors from the sorts of Internet
users they might not be acustomed to dealing with.  Today's Internet is rather
different.  Anonymous access is quite easy to come by, from Internet cafes
where cash is required but ID isn't, from public libraries where in many cases
it's possible to just walk in and sit down at a computer, from those of us
who run open wireless networks, and so forth.  No reasonable person connects
their systems to the Internet these days and assumes everybody connecting to
it will have already been authenticated by somebody else.  Law enforcement 
doesn't need ID from us -- if the user was connecting from within the US they 
can look at when the connection came in and from where, and subpoena the 
information from the phone company or other Internet system the user connected
from, and track the person that way.  But that's not to say nobody collects
identifying information before allowing access to the Internet anymore.  ISPs
generally require payment by check or credit card, and store that information
for other reasons.  Employers generally require a lot more information about
people than that, again for other reasons.  The real question for Grex at this
point is how much we want to know about those who are using our system to
connect to the Internet, so that if they're causing a problem we can cut them
off and make sure they don't just come back under a different name.  Again,
we're not legally required to do so, but somebody using Grex to cause problems
elsewhere will cause Grex a big headache, and there's a lot to be said for
being able to get rid of such people easily and for good.

response 79 of 184:

Sep 7 05:49 UTC 2002

Incidentally, *Grex* lets you send email to the entire universe without
requiring some form of ID -- go through newuser and you can do it.

response 81 of 184:

Sep 7 11:57 UTC 2002

Grex is about as close to allowing anonymous access as I think we 
can get.  But I'd love to be proved wrong.

response 83 of 184:

Sep 7 14:07 UTC 2002

Arbornet restricts outbound telnet to members/patrons (or at least we used
to), and asks for the person's real name.  I don't think it's ever asked
for photocopies of drivers' licenses, and it certainly hasn't during the
time I've been involved.  Arbornet has never asked for, or received, credit 
card numbers as far as I know.  It's received a lot of checks, and it's
possible that the treasurers have used those to get addresses, but I'm not
sure Arbornet even requires members/patrons to provide an address, and I'm
sure the address doesn't get verified in any way if it does.

Whatever the original rationale for restricting outbound telnet was, the
main reason Arbornet does it now (based on the discussions I've been in
about it in the past) is that we're interested in people who want to come
and use M-Net, not people who want to use us as a stepping-stone to get
somewhere else.  If you're going to hang out and play, we're happy to give
you free access; if you want outbound telnet, that doesn't enrich the
community in any way, so we'd like you to donate to help keep things
running.  The staff has been happy to avoid the hassles that could come
with completely open outbound telnet, but we've never felt it was
necessary to hold patrons/members' personal information hostage for their
good behavior, or to maintain a database in the event we need to help law
enforcement go after them.  In the 18 years we've been operating, it's
never been necessary.

People who want to go out and do bad things will either crack someone
else's account and stage from there, or use some method far less traceable
than buying an account on M-Net.  If they're using email, they'll just
create a guest account, same as here.  We've been used as a platform for
attacks before, but those have either been email abuse, or cases where
someone's exploited holes to use access they shouldn't have had.

response 85 of 184:

Sep 7 14:16 UTC 2002

They don't require any ID. At least if you pay by PayPal, you just make a
payment and thats it.

response 91 of 184:

Sep 7 20:39 UTC 2002

I've been thinking the same thing as I've been following this
discussion.  Considering the number of times I hand my credit
card to a stranger over the course of any given week, often
to have them take it out of the room for a few minutes, I'd
expect that my risk of identity theft is a lot higher from
that kind of thing than from any of Grex's practices.  So
let's try to keep all this in perspective.  I think what
we're seeing here is a case of much ado about very little.

response 93 of 184:

Sep 7 21:17 UTC 2002

Jamie, quantum physics should tell you that the probability that your brain
will suddenly tunnel out of your head and land on the keyboard in front of
you is greater than zero.  Do you worry about that?

response 95 of 184:

Sep 7 21:52 UTC 2002

Act locally; think globally.

response 97 of 184:

Sep 7 22:06 UTC 2002

resp:94 (because he cares about Grex, and [most] people on Grex are 
        willing to consider such a topic reasonably? a wild concept, I 
        know, but you might look into it.)