Larry Lessig on ending anonymity through "identity escrow"

[Ian Grigg]

It seems as if Larry Lessig has figured out the fatal
flaw in anonymous or untraceable systems - that they
are not economically sustainable.

In the face of that argument, he does not propose that
they be banned, as Declan suspects:

> [Why do I get the feeling that Larry Lessig doesn't like "absolute"
> anonymity much at all?

What Larray proposes is that they be permitted, but
he also suggests - quite rightly - that psuedonymous
systems will have more "traction."  This is simply
because psuedonymous systems overcome the fatal
objection to totally anonymous/untraceable systems,
whilst providing some economic privacy that is
currently unobtainable.

In practice, most successful systems have been identity
based in some form or other, with psuedonymous features
at the edge.  E.g., a hotmail account is a psuedonym
that points to an IP number.  Systems that preserve
total anonymity or untraceability have not as yet
achieved any success that qualifies as survivability
(notwithstanding many brave efforts).

( To drag this back to the crypto context, psuedonymous
systems are easily modelled as each client generating
a private/public key pair and using it as an identity.
In that sense, they are a core and useful result of
crypto systems. )

iang

PS: disclosure - my company builds psuedonymous systems.

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