"Where do you derive this supposed natural right for anonymity on the internet?"
From the natural right to free speech. Anonymity systems rely on people transmitting particular messages in particular ways, whether online or offline. When someone makes an anonymous statement to a newspaper, they do so with the assistance of the reporter who writes the article -- that reporter is repeating what someone else said, and not publishing the person's name. Tor, anonymous remailers, and related systems all operate on the same principle: by running a Tor relay or a remailer, you are agreeing to repeat the contents of a message without its headers.
"Whether we like it or not, governments are ultimately the overseers that permit networking infrastructure comprising the internet to be built"
True, but only on a technicality -- the government also allows us to have computers in the first place. The truth is that we do not need the government to "allow" the Internet; the Internet would be a lot slower without the government allowing fiber and coax to be put along public streets, but we could have built an Internet of point-to-point wireless links without having to ask permission (using only ISM bands, IR, and optical systems, for example). The government could outlaw such things, but that does not mean that the lack of such laws is an allowance, unless you think that all your rights are things the government allows (how dare you breath without thanking the government for allowing it?!).
Hmm, I like where you started with this, particularly in suggesting that a free press requires anonymous sources and authors. It is really interesting to see how the Supreme Court has historically balanced this societal interest against individual rights in cases on e.g. libel, slander, whistleblowers, and so on. The tricky part is in claiming that all of this applies to the extent that you believe to communication specifically on the internet. One could argue, and this is the justification for the earliest wiretapping laws for phone systems, that electronic communications increase convenience but also the potential for abuse, and if people need sacrosanct anonymity there is nothing preventing them from sticking to meatspace communication methods.
This is kind of like the conflict between rights granted for free movement within the U.S. and the security requirements for travelers to show ID before boarding planes, etc. Is plane travel a natural extension of the right to free movement, or can you safely tell such people they need to walk, drive, etc.? It is a tricky call.
> we could have built an Internet of point-to-point wireless links... The government could outlaw such things, but that does not mean that the lack of such laws is an allowance, unless you think that all your rights are things the government allows
Also an interesting point, but within a certain context, isn't it hard to separate what I'm allowed to do from the government's protection of my doing so? This is the problem that less-government people face when waving their hands and claiming that everything could still work. It is hard to comprehend how much the collective safety and regulation of common goods provided by the current system affects what we currently do. For instance, if everybody started making microwave dishes that burned each other's pets and gave people cancer, I think we would begin to regulate those ISM bands more tightly. When I breath, am I not breathing clean air because the government won't let the factory down the street burn rubber tires out in the open and my neighbors from building or buying cars that spew fumes? I'm getting kind of hyperbolic here, but I guess my point is that the Internet that would exist with ZERO government support, and that includes eliminating all the transactions of currency for goods that keep those net-meshed wireless routers and computers running, creates a very different picture of the Internet from the one that exists now, if it would even function at all.
From the natural right to free speech. Anonymity systems rely on people transmitting particular messages in particular ways, whether online or offline. When someone makes an anonymous statement to a newspaper, they do so with the assistance of the reporter who writes the article -- that reporter is repeating what someone else said, and not publishing the person's name. Tor, anonymous remailers, and related systems all operate on the same principle: by running a Tor relay or a remailer, you are agreeing to repeat the contents of a message without its headers.
"Whether we like it or not, governments are ultimately the overseers that permit networking infrastructure comprising the internet to be built"
True, but only on a technicality -- the government also allows us to have computers in the first place. The truth is that we do not need the government to "allow" the Internet; the Internet would be a lot slower without the government allowing fiber and coax to be put along public streets, but we could have built an Internet of point-to-point wireless links without having to ask permission (using only ISM bands, IR, and optical systems, for example). The government could outlaw such things, but that does not mean that the lack of such laws is an allowance, unless you think that all your rights are things the government allows (how dare you breath without thanking the government for allowing it?!).