Why should a woman be allowed to accuse a man of rape anonymously?
Why indeed? Women, and all alleged victims of sexual offences, have increasingly been granted anonymity in criminal cases. In the UK, the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act, 1976 granted anonymity for both accuser and accused, but in 1988, defendants were no longer entitled to it.
It’s going to be much harder to view the full web in Russia before the year is out. President Putin has signed a law that, as of November 1st, bans technology which lets you access banned websites, including virtual private networks and proxies. Internet providers will have to block websites hosting these tools. The measure is ostensibly meant to curb extremist content, but that’s just pretext — this is really about preventing Russians from seeing content that might be critical of Putin, not to mention communicating in secret.
The British Internet provider O2 disputed the previous story that they don’t permit people to access tools that give them anonymity protection, like this VPN service. “You only need to show photo ID in one of our stores”, they said, via a link provided. So in order to be an anonymous and protected press source, you need to show a photo ID. You couldn’t make it up if you tried.
The Russian police have arrested Tor node operator Dmitry Bogatov. They charged him with terrorism offense and the reason for this, as they claim, is the connection between his IP address and a series of posts allegedly inciting dissent and disorder.
Hackread: Russian Tor Relay Operator Facing Terrorism Charges »
Pirate Bay founder Peter Sunde has a new privacy-oriented startup. Today he launches the domain registration service Njalla, which offers site owners full anonymity, shielding them from the prying eyes of outsiders. “Think of us as your friendly drunk (but responsibly so) straw person that takes the blame for your expressions.”
The past year, there have been very mixed signals about Bitcoin and virtual currencies from the EU. They range from the opinion that it is too early to regulate, as we cannot tell how they will develop – to demands for mandatory registration of all players and all transactions.
This piece might give you a picture of the current state of the debate: EU Parliament states Virtual Currencies cannot be anonymous »
