Thread by @stilgherrian

Starting momentarily is a separate event, a Digital Rights Watch and Twitter panel, “Online Anonymity and Pseudonymity: Why it Matters”. This is for us alleged journalists so I may well be reporting on this. I will tweet little bits on this thread.

It’s bouncing off this paper, “PROTECTING THE
OPEN INTERNET: Regulatory principles for policy makers” cdn.cms-twdigitalassets.com/content/dam/ab… (PDF)

Kara Hinesley is introducing this by saying, as I suspected, that this session was prompted by recent news in Australia about the government’s plan to ID social media users.

Me on this recently: “Calls to ID social media users is just another Morrison government rush job” (12 Oct) zdnet.com/article/calls-…

David Kaye is framing all this in terms of the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, particularly articles 18 and 19, which he sees as even stronger protection than the US First Amendment. ohchr.org/en/professiona…

Kara Hinesley is citing this case, which I mentioned in that ZDNet article. The links there go to many more details.

Speaking about online abuse, she says that there’s no clear evidence that anonymity enables the abuse, and there isn’t a technological solution to what is a social problem.

Peter Greste now saying that since 9/11 there’s been all manner of laws eroding the ability of journalists to protect their sources, all in the name of national security. Cites the Witness K thing and the pressure on ABC News over the war crimes thing.

Even journalists’ identities may need protecting, he says, giving recent events in Afghanistan as a prime example.

Greste notes that Australian agencies accessed stored telco metadata more than 300,000 times in one 12-month period. (Is that right? I’ll have to check.) And of course the TOLA Act gets a mention.

The Identify & Disrupt Act gets a shout-out too.

“Australia's ‘hacking’ Bill passes the Senate after House made 60 amendments” (25 Aug) zdnet.com/article/austra…

And finally, Greste points out that Australia does not have anything like a Bill of Rights, the only major democracy not to have one.

Lucie Krahulcova (“Lucie Kay”) of DRW up now, describing her own experience of the importance of anonymity when moving from Prague to Kuwait.

She worries that the approach the Australian government is taking is “reckless”. Not to say that everyone feels safe, particularly various minorities, but real people are harmed by these identify-people policies.

Now it’s Adrian Murdoch from Minus18, on the importance of anonymity and pseudonymity for young LGBTQI+ folks

(It’s weird. I think this stuff is obvious. But then maybe I overestimate people’s social knowledge.)

This was touched upon briefly. It’s complicated.

https://twitter.com/potrzebieggm/status/1456407656508186628

Emily van der Nagel now. “My PhD thesis, ‘Social Media Pseudonymity: Affordances, Practices, Disruptions’, argues for a more nuanced look at people who are anonymous online.” emvdn.net/writing/

There’s going to be a bunch here about pseudonymity in relation to identity. This is good material to explore, because I haven’t read much about this since Sherry Turkle’s seminal “Life on the Screen” from... gulp! 1995. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherry_Tu…

We’re into the Q&A now. I’m asking whether it’s clear yet whether what we're seeing from govt properly differentiates pseudonymity and anonymity to the other user versus anonymity from the platform? But David Kaye is answering my first question first...

Kaye says AU’s proposals go beyond what other democracies are doing in this regard.

Peter Greste picks up that point and is pointing to Australia’s massive legislative agenda since 9/11 a d lack of underpinning rights framework that puts it in a “much much more serious position” than other democracies

Lucie Kay puts it more bluntly: This legislation is happening because white men are upset by things people are saying online.

During the Q&A there’s been some comments on the lack of nuanced understanding of all this by the lawmakers. Maybe the polite way of saying this is that senior politicians don’t use social platforms in the same way as actual humans.

Mr @joshgnosis asked a good question about whether the eSafety Commissioner being given all these new roles means the platforms have basically failed in their role. Not sure I understood the answer but I had a brainfade moment.

And we’re done. That was a solid discussion and I’ll be writing... something.