Hillary Clinton and the Cybersitter genre

[Paul Hower]

At 09:19 AM 2/28/97 -0800, Nick Arnett wrote:

>Now to be very controversial (I hope).  I support strong identification on
>the net, so that it would become extremely difficult to pretend to be anyone
>other than who you are.  In the case of parental control, this would go a
>long way.  For libraries, schools and other public access, it probably rules
>out anonymous access.  How can we have an atmosphere of trust when we often
>have no idea who's really there?  This is not to rule out anonymity and
>pseudonymity; it is to say that these should be clearly identified.  

Suppose the client device (browser, terminal, appliance, etc.) had a sign-in
mechanism to identify who is using it. Suppose that ID was associated with a
bonafide legal, demographic and psychographic profile of that user. Suppose
that user had a simple interface to regulate which parts of that profile
would be revealled to a messaged or visited party on the net. Suppose those
parties had a similar feature, allowing messages and visits from anyone who
revealled the minimum disclosure specifications for access. Now suppose
parents set the limits of disclosure for their children.

What's wrong with this picture?


Paul Hower

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