In the latest salvo launched against internet privacy, the state of New York has proposed bills that would ban anonymous online speech. The State Senate bill is titled S.6779 and the Assembly version is A.8688, and they would “amend the civil rights law” in order to “[protect] a person’s right to know who is behind an anonymous internet posting.”

Brilliant. A war against Internet trolls.

The bill states that an administrator could “upon request remove any comments posted on his or her web site by an anonymous poster unless such anonymous poster agrees to attach his or her name to the post and confirms that his or her IP address, legal name, and home address are accurate.”

Of course, the bills quite clearly violate the First Amendment right, which states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

As we have seen with SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, CISPA, H.R. 1981, TPP, H.R. 1981 and CISPA, the government clearly has its own agenda vis-à-vis regulating the Internet and censoring (or chilling) speech, and this agenda must be stopped.

Time to shame New York Assemblyman Dean Murray, the chief sponsor of the legislation.