WASHINGTON -- Anonymity seems to be following pornography and piracy as the new political battleground.
This week, Rep. Felix Grucci (R-New York) introduced legislation requiring schools and libraries receiving federal funds to block access from their computers to anonymous Web browsing or e-mail services.
That could mean you won't be able to, say, check your Hotmail account at your community library. But Grucci says it's necessary to thwart the usual suspects, terrorists and child molesters.
Grucci, incidentally, is one of the handful of congressional critters who has no website. His site is one solitary page labeled: "Under construction -- We're building our new website for our constituents."
You can bet that librarians will be up in arms about Grucci's plan, but this is the usual outcome when special interest groups such as the American Library Association (ALA) lobby the feds for billions of dollars a year in Internet funding.
Congress has a long and dubious history of slapping restrictions on money it doles out, from highway dollars and the 55 mph limit to student aid and dubious Title IX restrictions. Adding more restrictions on "e-rate" cash in the name of protecting children was inevitable. The ALA is already suing over filtering mandates.
Anonymity award: On the other coast, anonymity got a mild boost this week when a Los Angeles judge awarded attorney fees to anonymous posters.
In what's become a recurring pattern, a company -- in this case, Global Telemedia -- sued some anonymous critics for trash talk on Internet discussion boards.
The difference is that this time, U.S. District Judge David Carter ruled that the lawsuit was designed to intimidate critics, and said that Global Telemedia has to pay some $55,000 in attorney's fees under state law.
"Plaintiffs need to realize that there is a significant downside to filing a frivolous lawsuit aimed at chilling protected speech," said Megan Gray of Baker and Hostetler, an attorney for the defendants who can now be assured of getting paid.
No anonymity in Mumbai: Meanwhile, in India, police are banning anonymity by requiring visitors to Internet cafes to provide IDs.
Internet cafes are a big deal in Mumbai, with some 2,000 such businesses currently in existence. And under the local government's new rules, the proprietors will be in charge of issuing the cards and enforcing their use.
One Internet cafe owner complained to an Indian newspaper: "This will be an extra burden on us and users. We don’t have the right to invade the privacy of our customers; they can do what they want to in the time they pay us for."
GOP porn: Last week we wrote about the embarrassment that occurred when conservative Sen. Robert Bennett (R-Utah) -- the current chairman of a GOP working group on "cyber safety and critical infrastructure protection" -- got hit by a porn worm.
Now the "homepage" worm -- which randomly opens hardcore sex sites using Internet Explorer -- seems to be spreading. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported this week that state assemblyman Dennis Nolan, a Republican, was also infected.
"Nolan opened a porn virus, which shut down the legislature's e-mail Wednesday and Thursday. He opened the e-mail, thinking it was from an engineering associate, but it was a virus that sent X-rated pictures to all the people on his address book -- including fellow lawmakers," the paper said.
Doonesbury does caribou: Remember Ian Thomas? He's the scientist who said he got fired by the incoming Bush administration because his Web maps of caribou in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge proved politically unpalatable.
This week, Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury comic strip highlighted Thomas' plight.
An excerpt from Monday's cartoon: "He made a map of Alaskan caribou calving sites that happen to be where the Bushes want to drill. His superiors apparently thought it was political. The caribou are Democrats? I'd have said independents, but I'm no expert."
The only problem is that Trudeau doesn't seem to have investigated the story.
In a widely distributed e-mail message in March, Thomas depicted himself as a sober researcher: "One of the biggest collections of maps online ... certainly the biggest collection showing maps of biodiversity ... a high-level political decision to set an example to other Federal scientists ... I made no statement about what the maps might mean with regard to oil development of the refuge."
But by April, Thomas began to show what appears to be his true colors: He's an activist more interested in taking on the Bush administration than conducting sober research.
His latest e-mail appeal to supporters says: "I promise to make very good use of any maps you send in the fight to save the refuge ... make people more aware of the threat that oil drilling poses ... also to support the Gwich'in Nation in their fight against oil drilling in the refuge."
