AN EVANGELIST FOR ANONYMITY: Lance Cottrell of Anonymizer, Inc.

At the WebDC Washington DC Internet Conference last week, alongside programmers and website designers were a selection of individuals who had found themselves on the cutting edge of the conflict between the new economy and older legal constraints. They faced not only the risk of their programs crashing or their servers going down, but the possibility of jail time. They were the online privacy pioneers.

Among the presenters was Perl guru Randal Schwartz, convicted by an Oregon court of hacking into an Intel computer network -- a felony in that state --while working for the firm as a contractor (his conviction is on appeal).

Also in attendance, as keynote speaker for "Global Warnings: Are You Protected In Cyberspace?" and panel moderator to discuss the question "Whose Privacy Is It, Anyway?", was Philip Zimmerman, the pioneer of encryption technology who successfully fought prosecution by the federal government for three years over his release of Pretty Good Privacy software in 1991 (he had been accused of violating national security export restrictions). His perspective was clear, that private cryptographers were ahead of the government, and should stay that way in order to safeguard individual rights.

The panel discussion included Internet policy wonks Ari Schwartz from the Center for Democracy and Technology, Dana Rosenfeld of the Consumer Protection Bureau of the Federal Trade Commission. They wrestled with a number of regulatory and legal dilemmas facing the World Wide Web. The FTC wanted to regulate the internet even more, while the policy wonks questioned the wisdom of expanding the federal role and suggested that self-regulation might be one way to go, with the added suggestion that something needed to be done to oversee potential government abuses of privacy from rapidly expanding and easily accessible databases. Zimmerman even suggesting establishing a Federal Privacy Commission, with authority to examine the entire range of privacy issues.

In that vein, a question from the audience raised the frightening spectre -- at least to an audience of Webheads and Nerds -- that the United State Postal Service might be planning to take over the delivery of e-mail, with a plan to give every U.S. resident a Postal e-mail account. The fear surfaced that the federal government might eventually require all official business to be transacted through a Postal e-mail service (which led one wag in the audience to suggest that official delivery time for priority Postal e-mail in that case might be two to three days).

But perhaps the most provocative of the panelists was a mild-mannered Californian executive named Lance Cottrell, president of Anonymizer, Inc. His presentation suggested that the best way for one to maintain privacy on the internet was not to rely on government regulation, self-policing by the industry, nor the possibility of the U.S. Postal Service taking over, but instead through anonymity -- using the potential of new technology to disguise one's identity from potential internet snooping.

His company provides anonymity services to individuals, government agencies, and companies around the world. ( Click here for an online guide to anonymity on the internet.)

The basic business model is simple: no permanent individual records are maintained on the Anonymizer server, so in the case of a civil lawsuit or a criminal investigation, there is nothing to turn over other than the fact that the person involved might have an account. Anonymizer, unlike other ISP's, does not log the sites visited by customers using its pseudoynms or virtual identities.

"The information just isn't there," explains Cottrell. "If you check the log file, it just says 'Anonymizer.'"

Today a staff of 16 provides a free service, supported by banner ads, that has some 80,000 users who view 50 million web pages a month. Anonymizer also counts approximately 10,000 paying subscribers who are charged from $5 to $20 per month for advanced services including surfing protection, safe cookies, URL encryption, anonymous downloads, secure connections, anonymous e-mail addresses, newsgroup access, web publishing, secure tunnelling, dial-up access, and web-hosting.

Anonymizer's website is emblazoned with the company motto: "Privacy is your right." The mission statement quotes from the United Nations' Universal Declaration of human rights that the right to privacy is fundamental to freedom, and that it undergirds the right to freedom of expression because it encourages. For Lance Cottrell and Anonymizer, privacy is more than just a business, it is a calling.

Cottrell became a privacy evangelist by chance. In 1992, while working on a Ph.D. in Astrophysics at the University of California, San Diego, he joined the "cypherpunks" e-mail list of cyrptographers to fight against a government proposal for a "clipper chip" that could be used to read the mail of any internet user. He also became involved in the movement to defend Zimmerman and Pretty Good Privacy against federal prosecution. He believed, as he told The Idler, "you need true anonymity to effectively protect privacy online." In 1993, Cottrell developed the Mixmaster program to do just that. He set up a private ISP service called Infonex and soon was in business as a web entrepreneur.

By 1997, with the Web growing by leaps and bounds, he decided to focus his business as an anonymous e-mail provider, and founded Anonymizer, Inc. He said he was bothered bly the idea that he was being profiled every time he visited a site on the World Wide Web, and thought that others must feel the same way.

Anonymizer's foreign customers from countries like China are often motivated by fear of government spying. "I assume intelligence agencies do tracking," says Cottrell, who points out that 50% of his customers are international in origin. Other major sources of customers are Japan, "where saving face is important" and Europe, "mostly Enlgnad, Germany, and the Netherlands."

The reason international customers would prefer to go through an American website? Simple, says Cottrell: "Other countries don't have the same free speech protections as the United States. The U.S. has First Amendment protections. Other countries do not." To Cotrell, the First Amendment is not only good in itself, it is good for the Internet business. "Anonymity, privacy, and security are all interrelated and almost impossible to disentangle," he says. "The general public wants to be safe."

And when customers use Anonymizer, they are safe from prying eyes. He readily points out that in Nazi Germany, existing government records were used for very different purposes from those who collected the information in the Weimar Republic had intended.

Yet, rather than being motivated by fear of the government, Americans seem to share Cottrell's preference against being watched while they surf the net. Sometimes, it is simply a matter of not having the boss know what sites an employee has visited from a company workstation.

And in addition, Cottrell believes the success of companies like DoubleClick and 24/7in tracking web traffic means more demand for the services Anonymizer has to offer for consumers who don't want to become part of a corporate database. "The average person is more concerned about profiling than being spammed. If data is going to be in a database for 20-50 years, we have no idea how it will be used in the future."

And privacy is not only an issue in relation to Big Business. "Typing someone's name in to AltaVista can be very enlightening," says Cottrell. "And public records that once were difficult to obtain are now only a mouse click away on the internet. Previously, there was a barrier to entry with public records. They were public, but not convenient." But technology has changed all that, he maintains, "Now they are conveniently public. You don't have to go down to the courthouse and look in a file cabinet to find out information about people."

Such personal information has potential for abuse by individuals as well as corporations, and government, he believes. "With wireless systems, PDA's and GPS will be able to pass along your exact location when you access a service, and track your movements. What Anonymizer offers is the equivalent of a virtual phone booth, with the risks and advantages of phone booths."

What about the charge that the cloak of anonymity encourages crime and fraud? "Anonymous communications have been around since the invention of writing," says Cottrell. "There have always been poison-pen letters and anonymous phone calls. But don't forget that the Federalist Papers, which led to the ratification of the American Constitution, were also written anonymously!"

He says that Anonymizer takes the dangers of anonymity seriously, and immediately responds to any complaints about harrassing, threatening, or offensive emails by blocking the addresses of anyone who complains to the company. Cottrell says that the rate of "flames is not much higher than that at other ISPs, because in most cases being identifiable is not the issue. Most of the most heinous flames come from non-anonymous people."

He says the company has no interest in promoting activities that would abuse the service, and that Anonymizer continually strives to prevent misuse of the system.

For example, although a system like Anonymizer might certainly be used by individuals who seek to get around the law, as well as political dissidents, it has also been used by detectives, police agencies, and even the U.S. Department of Justice.

"Any new service is subject to abuse," says Cottrell, "but as time goes on it becomes less of a novelty, less of a 'gee-whiz,' less of a toy, and more of a tool." And in his view, the guarantee of personal anonymity is a tool which can only enhance the freedom of expression, and sharing of information, which are central to the knowledge economy of the World Wide Web.