For protecting human rights, vis a vis repressive governments, anonymity, many of us agree, is key.
I had the fascinating, unsettling experience of working in a country last year in the tumultuous months preceding a coup d'etat. Virtually all media outlets were forcibly closed, journalists were harassed and silenced, and foreign news entities were expelled. People needed to tune in to foreign news agencies to hear reports on their own country. The international communications channel was the Internet. The President disparaged the "Internet politicians" publicly and threatened to shut down the Net, but ultimately could do little to stop the phenomenon. If the Government in this case had had more advanced snooping ability (as, say, China I imagine must have), they could have identified the so-called 'Internet politicians' and silenced them. For this reason I am a believer in highly-encrypted peer-to-peer (P2P) models of collaboration and communications that are emerging. I promote these to counterparts when I get the chance. Encrypted P2P can keep the international channel open and offer greater security of communications. Yes, they can be used by 'bad people' too. Still, if we agree that networks are smarter than individuals, getting the people and trends that we would like to see grow, securely networked, is a good step in my book, and outweighs the potential downsides. ------------ This DOT-COM Discussion is funded by the dot-ORG USAID Cooperative Agreement, and hosted by GKD. http://www.dot-com-alliance.org provides more information. To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd For the GKD database, with past messages: http://www.GKDknowledge.org
