Being blank in bright waters

JA SO N S C H N EI D ER In a world of billions of people, the individual becomes a little more anonymous every day. And every day millions find their online privacy and anonymity being stripped away bit by bit. So why wait until the end of this column to cough up my brutal conclusion: True privacy, like true security, is a myth. The concepts of true privacy and anonymity online were invented to make you and I feel safe and secure in cyberspace, when the environment is really hostile and threatening. I’m tired of my privacy and anonymity being stripped from me at every turn—at the airline ticket counter, at the entrance to any federal building, and even at major amusement parks, where these days you can’t enter without being practically subjected to a full body search. So I suppose the Internet’s various privacy-raping technologies should just be taken in stride, considered just another cog in the machinery of those corporate and government forces allied against the John and Jane Doe’s. After all, Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy reportedly said, “privacy is dead, get over it.” So I suppose that’s it. Game, set, and match. We all lose. Well, not quite. You see, I’m taking extreme