Paper short abstract:

Moving from a STS perspective, the paper displays and analyses the rise of an ‘infrastructure of anonymity’ online, highlighting how this is emerging ‘in the wild’, from a highly differentiated and often conflicting array of networks, technologies, groups, institutions and ‘evil’ practices.

Paper long abstract:

The paper presents an exploratory research on technologies and practices of anonymity online, based on secondary literature, original documentation and online ethnography. Theoretically, it borrows from an STS perspective on infrastructures (Star and Bowker 1999; 2002) and its further elaboration in media studies (Sterne 2012; Parks and Starosielski 2015) to address the unconventional trajectory of emergence of an 'infrastructure of anonymity': a dynamic socio-technical formation of technologies, cultures and institutions, enabling anonymity-based practices over the Internet. The 'evilness' of this network especially lies in the fact that it has mainly co-evolved with an heterogeneous set of illegitimate practices, including espionage, illegal markets, whistleblowing, forbidden political protests and cyberattacks.

Thus, the paper discusses issues of participation, collaboration and maintenance in relation to this evil 'infrastructure of anonymity'. Topics discussed regard: a) the unconventional collaborations supporting TOR, a specific cryptographic network originality developed by the US Army, but today warmly supported by digital rights NGOs such as the EFF; b) the multiple forms of participation and support to this network, which is part of a wider socio-material infrastructure of hardware, software, servers, online platforms as well as cultural representations, social practices and digital politics; c) the controversies over exploitation, maintenance and change of the infrastructure, in which small groups, big corporations, governments and NGO take part in the same time. The paper ends discussing what relationship we can envision between evil practices occurring on this infrastructure and its heterogeneous and relatively unconventional trajectory of development and maintenance.