Pseudonyms By Another Name: Identity Management in a Time of Surveillance

Abstract

This book chapter argues that we need ways to hide our transactions, reading habits, and movements from those who would profile us. Allowing people to create multiple identities that could go online, and could buy things both online and off, would be one way to prevent the creation of giant all-encompassing digital dossiers. Even if law enforcement was given the power to link those alternate identities to us for good cause, we'd still have more day-to-day privacy than otherwise seems likely.