Name Dropping.

• Author: Sullum, Jacob
• Position: Right to speak without revealing one's identity - Brief Article

To police worried about hackers, con men, and other cyberspace menaces, the ability to conceal one's identity on the Internet is a tool of crime. But to critics and whistleblowers worried about the repercussions of speaking out, online anonymity is a tool of dissent.

In a recent Cato Institute paper (available at www.cato.org/pubs/briefs/bp-054es.html), Jonathan Wallace, an attorney and software executive, notes that anonymous and pseudonymous speech has a rich pedigree. The 1 7th-century British writers John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, whose essays on liberty had a strong influence on the Founders, called themselves "Cato" (the think tank's namesake). Thomas Paine's Common Sense was initially attributed simply to "an Englishman." The Federalists and Anti-Federalists debated each other under names such as "Publius" and "Candidus."

The U.S. Supreme Court has consistently recognized that the First Amendment protects the right to speak without revealing one's identity, most recently in a 1995 decision overturning an Ohio ban on anonymous campaign leaflets. In 1997, a federal judge cited that case in overturning a Georgia law that made it a misdemeanor...