I had a crazy idea tonight. I've had a lot of these lately that I don't do much with, so I wanted to write about it.
I was walking home, listening to the most recent This American Life , on the politics of the climate change debate. In one of the scenes, the former Congressional Representative Bob Inglis is explaining that there are many Republican politicians who believe in the science of climate change, but simply cannot say a word about it publicly because to do so would be political suicide.
TAL: “Do you know personally Republican members who find the science credible but would never say so publicly?”
Inglis: “Ohhh Yeah.”
TAL: “…Can you, can you name them?”
Inglis: “Ha. No, I better not do that. Hahaha. I can’t out ‘em. But… so, yeah, there are members of congress, Republicans, who know better. But they’re afraid of crossing… what’s become the orthodoxy.”
Not really new, but this struck me as interesting tonight. Putting it into a generalized case: there is a fixed group of people who are being censored at what may be the hindrance of the whole. I think this can be seen in a number of scenarios, but politics is a big one.
So here’s the idea: What if you could give these folks a place to speak, in a situation in which they are both fully anonymous, but also fully verified as a member of that group? What sort of things would they say?
Consider some software that breaks down these walls—some of this is a bit infeasible, but for the purposes of fun thinking, try to suspend your disbelief a little. The idea is called StrongSpeak, as inspired by StrongBox/DeadDrop, and it’s a secure space where verified but anonymous members of a group can speak publicly or privately. Here’s how I’m thinking it could work:
You get your fixed group of people into a room, and after verifying their identity, give them each a randomly generated code that correlates to a single slot on StrongSpeak.
They later log onto StrongSpeak through the Tor network, and enter the token they were originally given into a registration page. Once verified, that token is then thrown away, and the user creates their own secure authentication string they’ll use to login to StrongSpeak.
Their public identity (username/handle) on StrongSpeak then becomes what’s known as a “tripcode”: essentially a secure hash of their authentication string, that is then identifiable as that person, but anonymous otherwise.
They’d then be free to post anonymously, publicly or privately to the group, with this tripcode. They’d have the knowledge that anyone else who can reply is also part of their group, but also be behind a shield of anonymity in regard to their individual identity.
I think this could be exciting, and a bit frightening. Consider the situation where a politician is given full freedom to talk to their peers without fear of censure, or even more interestingly, where a politician is given full freedom to talk to the public without fear of censure. What would they say?
Comments: @chrisdary or on gist.
The GOP sees speaking against the party line as weakening it. They wouldn't do so, even anonymously, because it's speaking against the party.
Also, hard to be a leader if you fear speaking publicly. It's generally the GOP's problem that there is no leadership among its elected officials. They are all in fear of being the target of a ratings-driven rant from the right wing media where the true conservative leaders are.