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That disturbing photo was traced to a tech consultant in Arizona, Alan Herrell. In an e-mail to a tech blogger he said the misdeed was the work of a hacker who had broken into his computer. Herrell couldn't be reached for comment. Meanwhile, other posts revealed Sierra's home address in Colorado, information on her ex-husband--even her Social Security number. "It spiraled out of control," she says. "The Web has become a toxic mix of anonymity and public feedback. I was mistaken in thinking it is self-policing." She contacted the FBI but never heard from anyone. She has stopped blogging altogether.
The blogs' vituperative retaliation frightens some victims, such as a corporate recruiter in Malaysia who talked to FORBES but asked to go unnamed in this story. In June she learned that a blog on Google's Blogspot site was masquerading as hers, claiming she likes micromanaging, throwing tantrums and being condescending. "I'm part of a global company where reputation is everything," she says. "This could be up there forever." She says Google hasn't answered her e-mails. "Freedom of speech like this is wrong. This is cowardly character assassination."
David L. Sifry, founder of blog-tracking service hahahahahahahahahaha, counters: "Taking away anonymity would have a chilling effect on the Web. We'd lose important release valves like whistle-blowing." Though he concedes: "Accountability brings civility." But how to impose accountability--and how did we get here?
What grew into the Net began in the late 1960s as a Cold War-era network that could deliver bare text messages even after a nuclear attack. No one worried about a way to authenticate where a message had begun or who had sent it.
"We weren't sure if any of this stuff would work, and that's what we were focused on," says Vinton Cerf, who helped create the Internet protocol schemes still in use today. He regrets not making the Net more traceable, but he wouldn't have banned anonymity. "I would have established mechanisms to authenticate computers and individuals. I wouldn't have made this mandatory, but I would have made it possible." Daniel Lynch, who worked on the network in the 1970s, adds: "We were techies, we weren't trying to solve society's ills. I thought this would figure itself out, but it's taking a lot longer than I imagined."
The role of masked identity grew as the Net spread beyond science talk with the launch in 1979 of Usenet message boards, on which users had "handles" à la CB radio, and even more so in 1986 after some developers splintered off to start alternative-lifestyle forums under the suffix .alt. Topics ran from the mundane to the forbidden--how to be fat and happy, marijuana use, the joys of cross-dressing, pedophilia and thousands more. Soon 70% of all forums were under the dot-alt tag.
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