For too long, the field of privacy has been becalmed by religious fealty to a concept propounded by two New England aristocrats who were annoyed by paparazzi taking pictures of a party in a home. The ill-considered explosion set off by the NSA in its zeal to prevent all future acts of terror has opened up space for new thinking on the subject. An op-ed in the Washington Post is a good example: This is an anonymity problem: The NSA cannot create a dossier on you from your metadata unless it knows that you made the calls the agency is looking at. The privacy question is all about data-gathering: Should the NSA have access to nationwide metadata? The right answer to that question is yes.
Few years back we had trouble on this blog because of anonymous posts attacking the late Professor V.K Samaranayaka. He complained to our funders and partners. But we held to the principles of allowing anonymous posts and non-moderation. Here is a another discussion about anonymity: Pseudonyms have a noble history.