Anonymity and the fight for the future of the internet

Jeff Kosseff’s last book turned out to be pretty prescient. He published “The Twenty-Six Words That Created The Internet,” a deep look at the history and future of Section 230, right as those 26 words became central to the regulatory fight over the future of the internet.

With his next book, Kosseff, a professor at the Naval Academy, may have done the same thing. The book is titled “The United States of Anonymous,” and it deals with the centuries-old argument about whether people should be allowed to say things without having to identify themselves. In the U.S., courts have given a lot of leeway and protection to anonymous speakers, but the internet has changed the equation, and companies and governments alike are still figuring out what to do.

Kosseff joined the Source Code podcast to discuss his new book, how technologies like bulletin boards and Tor and facial recognition are changing the way we think about anonymity, and why he thinks that even though anonymity allows bad people to do bad things, he thinks it’s still worth preserving. And even fighting for.

For more on the topics in this episode:

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