Trust in Adherence to a Predefined Role – EIC 2013

On 16 May 2013, at the invitation of Jörg Resch and after my lecture in 2010, I was once again guest at the European Identity Conference to talk about the Venetian model of anonymity.

This time it was mainly about finding out why the Venetian anonymity model worked well and did not produce an excessively high crime rate. My basic thesis was – as mentioned in earlier contributions to this blog – that the role-playing element already discussed by Ignatio Toscani had a stabilizing effect:

– Bauta and Tabarro are historically rooted in the traditional carnival and in the role-playing games of the Commedia dell’Arte. The Venetians knew both and were used to them.

– Using the mask as a means of anonymization meant a thoughtful act: one had to “disguise” oneself skilfully, which cost a little effort and time. Wearing the mask meant playing hide and seek and attracting attention at the same time.

– Taking on the role of the “ideal Venetian citizen” also meant accepting the behaviour of a gentleman.

– Venetians who communicated with a bearer of the Bauta could trust that he or she accepted his special political and social role and, in terms of behavior, adhered to the rules of this special kind of game.

– Immediate sanctions were possible in the event of abuse.

– To use the Bauta therefore meant consciously accepting social control and social expectations. It also meant accepting a possible unmasking, a related loss of honour and immediate exclusion from the Venetian community as a sanction for abuse of the privileges offered by the mask and disguise.

– Thus, the mask had a direct and inevitable influence on the behavior of those who used it.

The presentation can be downloaded here.

In the discussion that followed the presentation, the audience was showing interest in the underlying reputation and sanction system of the anonymity model. An ordinary “reward system” does not exist, as the expected behaviour of a masked person was simply “normal” from the point of view of the Venetians. Social pressure, however, did exist as a corrective, and the participants found it interesting that the punishment for misconduct immediately threw the delinquent back into his real, non-anonymous existence and had consequences there.

On the other hand, unmasking a Venetian did not rule out the possibility that the same person later would take part in the anonymous life again, provided he was not sent to prison. Related to anonymous life, a purely behavior-based security existed. This model, the listeners agreed, could be transferred to anonymous platforms on the Internet: Those who behave badly should be simply excluded from those places immediately. If the new registration process is only laborious enough, the pure inconvenience of the sanction could possibly effectively ensure good behaviour.

Note: This blog entry was translated from the German original with the help of artificial intelligence. It’s not perfect, for sure. Please excuse me for any imperfections.

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V for Venice – Guy Fawkes in the lagoon city

It was in April 2013 when I finally had a chance to visit Venice again. My beloved wife and I strolled along the narrow streets, and of course we had a look at the display windows of the mask makers. And there we found: Guy Fawkes!

The Venetians produce the mask in their traditional way, and somehow their version looks friendlier than the well-know plastic masks which are based on the comic “V for Vendetta” and the film version.

Just a joke for the tourists? Maybe.

But it is an intriguing phenomenon: In modern Western civilizations, the Guy Fawkes mask is perhaps the one with the highest impact on culture and political life, and it stands for privacy and the right to act anonymously. And now it has found its way back into a a cultural environment which in the past used probably the most elaborated anonymity concept in daily life and for political purposes.

Presentation in Rome

Joerg Resch, Co-Founder and Managing Director, KuppingerCole, presented the Venetian anonymity concept at a biometric spoofing workshop in Rome on May 11th, 2012. He decribed the Bauta as an example of a trust framework following perfectly the principle of minimal disclosure through anonymity and compared it with modern trust framework models.

Presentation at Siegen University

Prof. Dr. Kesdogan, Head of  Research Group at the Business Informatics Chair at Siegen University, invited me to hold a presentation on the Venetian anonymity concept on Frebruary 23rd, 2012. The presentation took place and perhaps leads to an official research project. Teachers and students were especially interested in how to use elements of the Venetion concept to design models of anonymous participation in organizational and political, perhaps municipal decision making processes.

What comes next?

After rebuilding the blog (it was hacked in 2011) and writing some first new posts, it’s time to define what to do next. I’d like to focus on the following questions:

• How does the Bauta concept of anonymity comply with well-known social and philosophical concepts of public and private life?
• How do anonymity concepts for closed online communities differ from those for the internet on the whole? How does the Bauta concept fit in?
• Is the “internet netiquette” idea something which can be compared to the “gentleman factor” of the use of the Bauta?

Pseudonymity or anonymity?

A pseudonym (literally, “false name”) is a name that a person (or, sometimes, a group) assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym (or “true name”) (Wikipedia).

Anonymity is derived from the Greek word ἀνωνυμία, anonymia, meaning “without a name” or “namelessness”. In colloquial use, anonymity typically refers to the state of an individual’s personal identity, or personally identifiable information, being publicly unknown (Wikipedia).

So what’s the Bauta? An anonymity or pseudonymity device? From my point of views, assuming a predefined and generic role like the one of Signora Maschera means staying anonymous.

New sources: Jillian C. York

Jillian C. York is director of International Freedom of Expression at the US organization Electronic Frontier Foundation. Some of her articles and a lot of the interviews she has given provide excellent insights into chances and problems of anonymity and pseudonymity on the internet and on closed social network platforms. “A case for pseudonyms” for example explains why being able to use a pseudonym sometimes saves one’s life and often is an important factor to guarantee freedom of speech. “Lieber anonym als verfolgt” partly is a German translation published in the weekly newspaper “Die Zeit”.  In “San Francisco Organization Fights For Online Anonymity” by CBS San Francisco Jillian C. York briefly summarizes why she does not like the ban of user pseudonyms by Google+ and Facebook.

Thoughts on Privacy

In his blog www.metaphorous.com, Wilhelm Greiner 2010 wrote down some interesting thoughts on privacy in the social media age. The blog disappeared later, but, as you see, the Internet Archive still has it in its wayback machine. The entry is here. From Wilhelm’s point of view, for a privacy-aware person, there are four possible attitudes towards social media:

1. Lifecasting – me, myself, my life and everything shall be online. Self-marketing is more important than privacy.
2. Total refusal – nothing shall ever be found online about me. Privacy is my top concern.
3. In-depth and detailed control –every bit about me goes through a risk assessment process before I put it on the web.
4. Social media stream designed as a résumé – whenever a future employer finds information about me, he or she should get the right impression.
5. Role play or “alias” mode – I make sure that my online me is not at all congruent with my real life me.

I like these categories, especially when taking into consideration that there are combinations of the attitudes possible. Wilhelm already mentions that attitude 5 can be combined with attitude 3 and 4, but in my opinion it also fits to attitude 2. For example, web-citizens anonymously participating in imageboards like 4chan or krautchan, inhabitants of virtual worlds or players of multi player online games may never show any information about their real identity anywhere on web 2.0 platforms like LinkedIn, Xing or Facebook. This seems a little bit similar to the way the old Venetians lived their real lives. In their small, but vibrating and multicultural town on the seas, dealing with merchants and pirates from everywhere in a still uncharted world, they developed the idea of living an anonymous life besides the public life. Wearing the Bauta, they played a role, but it was a predefined and generic role. It worked very well. Everyone wearing the Bauta disguise was accepted and greeted as “Signora Maschera”. May be that this is the 6th attitude to be thought about. By the way, on krautchan, every user is called “Bernd”. I definitely have to think about that, too.

Questions from EIC 2010

At the European Identity Conference 2010 in Munich I presented some first thoughts resulting from this project . The presentation led to a discussion. Some of the questions posed there by the attendants will be of interest for the ongoing research:

• Venice was a small community. Does an anonymity concept like the one represented by the Bauta disguise only function in a (nearly) closed system like the one of the Venetian society? Is the internet itself a closed system or an open system? Perhaps the Bauta concept may have more in common with the anonymity and pseudonymity concepts of platforms like the internet imageboards than with the internet itself.
• Was it really a good anonymity device? The user of the Bauta could not hide height and weight and voice.
• It was easy to unmask the user of a Bauta If something went wrong. Isn’t it far more difficult to unmask an anonymous internet user?
• To develop a device like the Bauta, the Venetians must have felt the necessity of anonymity. Given that most internet users today still believe that they act more or less anonymously in the internet, may this be the reason that there is not so much interest in anonymity solutions today?
• The Bauta gave its user the identity of a true Venetian citizen without revealing many personal details. Would it be possible use identity devices like the new German digital identity card in a way like that?
• If necessary, the user of the Bauta could reveal a little bit more of his or her identity by abandoning parts of the disguise. How do you transfer this to the internet environment?
• Can the real environment of the Venetian city really be compared the virtual one of the Internet?

A lot of questions to think about, thanks again to all the participants!