Ben Laurie on Anonymity

Ben Laurie makes a great point about anonymity and identity in response to an article by Kim Cameron:

Kim Cameron’s blog draws my attention to a couple of articles on anonymity. The first argues for anonymity to be the default. The second misses the point and claims that wanting anonymity to be the default makes it a binary thing, whereas identity is a spectrum.
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Unless anonymity is the substrate choice in identity management gets us nowhere. This is why I am not happy with any existing identity management proposal - none of them even attempt to give you anonymity as the substrate.

I'd like to offer one change in what he's saying: we could begin with pseudonymity rather than anonymity. For various reasons--often grouped under the idea of accountability--anonymity is not acceptable in some contexts.

However, either way, Laurie's critique applies. We need to begin with anonymity/pseudonymity as the default, Laurie's "substrate choice." Otherwise, whatever identity system we employ, we'll always be trying to get the cat back in the bag (or the scrambled egg back in the shell). Once our personal information becomes attached to our online identity in a given system, it becomes essentially impossible to unattach it.

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