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Anonymous Communications
on the Internet
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CASE ONE
THE CRIMESOLVERS WEB SITE
The Orange County, California, Police Department is planning
to expand its "Crimesolvers" Hotline onto the Internet. The
hotline currently operates through a toll-free telephone number, which
has been a source of valuable tips. The department intends to set up a
web site with forms on which informants can submit information intended
to assist the police in solving crimes and apprehending criminals. It
will also establish and publicize an e-mail address to which such communications
can be sent by those who don’t wish to use the form.
One issue with which designers have to deal in setting up
this site is how to get in touch with those who have provided information
when follow-up is required. Follow-up may be needed, for instance, to
establish the credibility of a source or when the tipster is to receive
a monetary reward. On the telephone, callers are assigned a pseudonym
(usually a case number) to which they refer in follow-up calls and which
they can use to collect reward money from a third party. Online, tipsters
will be instructed to provide their own pseudonyms, either by specifying
one on the web site form or by using a remailer that allows this option.
Although visitors to the site will also be able to give their names if
they wish, it is expected that most will prefer to be anonymous.
Discussion Questions
- From the standpoint of the Police Department, what are the advantages
and disadvantages, compared to the telephone, of this new medium for
receiving tips?
- The team developing the site advocates including an identity demonstration
on the site (similar to that on the Center for Democracy and Technology’s
site; see http://www.13x.com/cgi-bin/cdt/snoop.pl), as well as links
to Anonymizer.com and to several anonymous remailers. The point would
be to inform visitors as to how much information about themselves
they are revealing when they visit the site and to help them conceal
their identities if they wish. Some members of the department oppose
this, arguing that: (1) the demonstration would scare off potential
tipsters, and (2) they’d rather have unsophisticated visitors think
they are anonymous (as many people assume they are on the Internet)
and at the same time convey enough information so that they can be
traced if necessary. Would you favor or oppose putting such links
on the site? Why?
- Should the site facilitate encrypted communication by posting its
public key?
- What factors should the department consider in evaluating the credibility
of information received through the site?
- You have information about someone in your neighborhood whom you
believe is a major distributor of cocaine in Southern California.
The police have been offering a substantial reward for this kind of
information and you decide to try and collect it. You are fairly knowledgeable
about the Internet, anonymity, encryption, etc. Would you use the
Crimesolvers Web Site to report this information? Why or why not?
If not, what medium of communication would you use?
- One week after the site is set up, an anonymous message is received
stating that a nuclear bomb has been hidden someplace in Orange County
and threatening to detonate it unless a ransom of $100 million is
paid. By various means, the message is traced to a domain outside
the U.S. How should the department deal with this message? What can
it do to prevent the site from being used in this manner in the future
(if there is a future!)?
- Several tips are received through an anonymous remailer from a source
who signs the messages "rat49." After two weeks of following
these tips without results, police begin to suspect that rat49 is
using the hotline to distract them, to keep them busy while he commits
major crimes, including an armored car holdup in which a guard was
killed. The heads of the robbery and homicide divisions demand that
the department contact the remailer, access his files, and find out
who rat49 is. The webmaster and the head of the computer crime division
oppose this, saying it will destroy the credibility of the on-line
hotline. Which position do you support? Why?
This case was prepared by staff at the American Association
for the Advancement of Science as part of a project on
"Anonymous Communications on the Internet: Uses and Abuses"
(see http://www.aaas.org/spp/anon), funded by a grant from
the National Science Foundation. This case may be downloaded
and used for educational purposes.
8/98
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