In Defense of Anonymity

If the anti-privacy lobby had its way, the Federalist Papers would have never been written.  From Yahoo:

In the face of increasing government-led crackdowns on social media, Google Inc should not force Internet users to reveal their real names for some services, including its Google+ social network, said Vint Cerf, a senior Google executive known as a "father of the Internet."

In an interview with Reuters, Cerf acknowledged that the search giant's sweeping push in the past 18 months to institute real-name authentication for Google+ and other services has sparked intense debate within its Mountain View, California, headquarters. But he argued that current name policy, which allows for some users to display pseudonyms, offers adequate "choice" in how users choose to represent themselves. . . .

"Anonymity and pseudonymity are perfectly reasonable under some situations," Cerf said. "But there are cases where in the transactions both parties really need to know who are we talking to. So what I'm looking for is not that we shut down anonymity, but rather that we offer an option when needed that can strongly authenticate who the parties are."

In the past few months Cerf has warned that governments — including democratic ones — are increasingly censoring and filtering the Web, while some regimes are seeking to ban online anonymity in order to control political speech.