In 1997 NASA's Cassini mission to Saturn and its moons led to heated controversies, because it was fueled by plutonium, a substance that could cause serious environmental and health problems if it were released into the atmosphere.
Still no major U.S. news outlet in broadcasting or print reported in depth on the risks of the Cassini mission. Westinghouse-owned media like CBS and NBC (also partly owned by General Electric) for example had only reported that children were invited to sign a plaque inside Cassini. Not surprisingly Westinghouse and General Electric are two of the largest corporations with defense contracts and nuclear interests.
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"Freedom of anonymous speech is an essential component of free speech."
Ian Goldberg/David Wagner,
Someone wants to hide one's identity, to remain anonymous, if s/he fears to be holding accountable for something, say, a publication, that is considered to be prohibited. Anonymous publishing has a long tradition in European history. Writers of erotic literature or pamphlets, e. g., preferred to use pseudonyms or publish anonymously. During the Enlightenment books as d'Alembert's and Diderot's famous Encyclopaedia were printed and distributed secretly. Today
The original design of the Net, as far as it is preserved, offers a relatively high degree of privacy, because due to the client-server model all what is known about you is a report of the machine from which information was, respectively is requested. But this design of the Net interferes with the wish of corporations to know you, even to know more about you than you want them to know. What is euphemistically called customer relationship management systems means the collection, compilation and analysis of personal information about you by others.
In 1997 America Online member Timothy McVeigh, a Navy employee, made his homosexuality publicly known in a short autobiographical sketch. Another Navy employee reading this sketch informed the Navy. America Online revealed McVeigh's identity to the Navy, who discharged McVeigh. As the consequence of a court ruling on that case, Timothy McVeigh was allowed to return to the Navy. Sometimes anonymity really matters.
On the Net you still have several possibilities to remain anonymous. You may visit web sites via an
In Germany, in 1515, printers had to swear not to print or distribute any publication bypassing the councilmen. Today repressive regimes, such as
Anonymity might be used for abuses, that is true, but "the burden of proof rests with those who would seek to limit it. (Rob Kling, Ya-ching Lee, Al Teich, Mark S. Frankel, Assessing Anonymous Communication on the Internet: Policy Deliberations, in: The Information Society, 1999).
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b. June 19, 1623, Clermont-Ferrand, France
d. August 19, 1662, Paris, France
French mathematician, physicist, religious philosopher, and master of prose. He laid the foundation for the modern theory of probabilities, formulated what came to be known as Pascal's law of pressure, and propagated a religious doctrine that taught the experience of God through the heart rather than through reason. The establishment of his principle of intuitionism had an impact on such later philosophers as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Henri Bergson and also on the Existentialists.
DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) is the independent research branch of the U.S. Department of Defense that, among its other accomplishments, funded a project that in time was to lead to the creation of the Internet. Originally called ARPA (the "D" was added to its name later), DARPA came into being in 1958 as a reaction to the success of Sputnik, Russia's first manned satellite. DARPA's explicit mission was (and still is) to think independently of the rest of the military and to respond quickly and innovatively to national defense challenges.
In the late 1960s, DARPA provided funds and oversight for a project aimed at interconnecting computers at four university research sites. By 1972, this initial network, now called the
http://www.darpa.mil