While smartphones have been heralded as the coming of the next generation of communication and collaboration, they are a step backwards when it comes to personal security, anonymity and privacy.

The Guardian Project aims to create easy to use apps, open-source firmware MODs, and customized, commercial mobile phones that can be used and deployed around the world, by any person looking to protect their communications from unjust intrusion.

In other words, perhaps it's time for a Revealed Identity, as opposed to a Public or Dependent Identity. [...]

I think it's worth defining a portion of the web as a place where one can visit and be part of a conversation without the data created by that conversation being presumptively sucked into a sophisticated response platform - whether that platform is Google, Blue Kai, Doubleclick, Twitter, or any other scaled web service. Now, I'm all for engaging with that platform, to be sure, but I'm also interested in the parts of society where one can wander about free of identity presumption, a place where one can chose to engage knowing that you are in control of how your identity is presented, and when it is revealed.

One thing I’m certain of: Who I am according to Google, or Facebook, or any number of other scaled Dependent Web services, is not necessarily who I want to be as I wander this new digital world. I want more instrumentation, more nauance, and more rights.

Calculating "bits" gets complex, as some facts about a person are more valuable—and thus have more "bits"—than others. ZIP codes and birthdates, for instance, are extremely valuable when zeroing in on individuals.

Bottom line: Mr. Eckersley determined Mr. Burney's location (the small town of Avon, Colo.) and his Nielsen demographic segment ("God's Country") together offered about 26.5 bits of information that could be used to identify Mr. Burney individually.

That's enough to narrow him down to one of just 64 or so people world-wide.

When a person comments anonymously, we’re told, they're putting a mask on. But the more time I spend online the more I'm convinced that this analogy gets it backward.

The self that we show in anonymous comments, the fantasy self, the self we see in the mirror when we fantasize about being tough and strong and feared, the face we would present to the world if there were no such thing as consequences: That’s the real us.

The civil self is the mask.

While news organizations debate scrapping anonymity, the ground may be shifting beneath them. With all of our identifying information getting sliced, diced, and sold, by everyone from credit card companies to Facebook, is there really such a thing as the anonymous Web anymore? Consider this demonstration from the late ’90s by Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor Latanya Sweeney. She took three commonly available data points: sex (male), ZIP code (02138), and date of birth (July 31, 1945). Those seemingly anonymous attributes could have described lots of people, right? Actually, no. She proved they could belong to just one person: former governor William Weld. She tells me that 87 percent of Americans can now be identified with just these three data points.

Maybe the best approach to getting people to behave better online is just reminding them how easy it is to figure out who they really are.

Nonviolent resistance movements are typically driven by students, i.e., young people, who are increasingly born digital natives. With expanding access to mobile phones, social networking software and online platforms for user-generated content such as blogs, the immediate financial cost of speaking out against repressive regimes is virtually nil. So resistance movements are likely to make even more use of new communication technology and digital media in the future. In fact, they already are.

At the same time, however, the likelihood and consequences of getting caught are high, especially for those political activists without any background or training in digital security. Indeed, recent research by Digital Democracy research suggests that organizational hierarchies are being broken down as youth adopt new technologies. While this empowers them they are also put at risk since they don’t tend to be as consequence-conscious as their adult counterparts.

"The structure of the network around you is so rich, and there are so many different possibilities, that even though you have millions of people participating in the network, we all end up with different networks around us," says Shmatikov. "Once you deal with sufficiently sophisticated human behavior, whether you're talking about purchases people make or movies they view or--in this case--friends they make and how they behave socially, people tend to be fairly unique. Every person does a few quirky, individual things which end up being strongly identifying."

"[...] When it came time to actually choose a pen name, I was driven by a need to have it feel connected to me. I amazed myself with how complicated I made the process. I rearranged the letters of my first, middle and last names. The results all sounded like strippers. Next I combined my initials with those of my parents'. Those names all sounded like they belonged to 18th-century poets. Then I tried variations with my confirmation name, but since I didn't like that one even when I chose it, the results held no appeal.

"Finally, running out of time, I opted for a name that was not obviously linked to me, yet one that felt familiar. I settled on Kate Brennan, a name as clean and simple as my own.

"Now that I'm attached to it, I can only ask that no one rob me of the protection it affords."

"Should I smile?" I ask.

"Just try and look natural," the young woman says, her finger moving toward the camera's shutter button. "Relax. This is going to be fun."

My face breaks into a smile. This is going to be fun.

The camera clicks and whirrs — capturing a moment in time that will never come again.

Man, I hope I don't look constipated.

“It’s what we call implicit egotism. We’ve shown time and time again that people are attracted to people, places and things that resemble their names, without a doubt.”

"I'd love to see a some kind of widget which allows coworkers to gripe about work online, perhaps with some anonymization to prevent recriminations at work."

"We want our words to stand on our own, and with anonymity, the only way someone can judge us is by what we write. If we send an e-mail to an elected official, the odds are we won't get a response."

"The graffitist’s impulse is akin to a blogger’s: write some stuff, quickly, which people may or may not read. Both mediums demand wit and nimbleness."

"Any time you can distinguish yourself with a distinctive name or a distinctive characteristic that sticks out in people's minds, that's going to be the best solution."

"[Y]ou can split arousal into two categories: danger arousal, which is a call to arms or to action, and sexual arousal, which is a call to reproduce. They’re two sides of the same coin, but the brain doesn’t always know the difference [...]"

"I have forgotten my language. I don't know how to say 'to make love' in Arabic without it sounding chauvinistic, aggressive and alien to the experience."

"I've decided to start a new meme. This is primarily for women, but men are welcome to participate, of course."

"[...] Wikipedia's veracity problems are not a result of anonymous authors adding fabrications to entries. They're an inherent property of an information system with distributed accountability. People think of Wikipedia as an encyclopedia, but it's not."