privacy, anonymity, safety, deportability

1984. I feel, the overall situation might be different than some of us anticipate and many don't. I realized, the main difference between net world and outer reality is not the outer reality is physical but society is different here and there:

In the real world, there are pedestrian precincts. Passers-by experience a reality in common, in society. One may give another one a sudden glance and may see something or may not. A glance given from anonymity. Those people don't know each other, nevertheless they share something. Their slice of reality.

In net world, that is not the case. There is no thing as a society in the net world. No reality to experience in society, no society to share, not any sudden random glance that may see anything special or may not. At best, in the net world one might have an illusion of society. But everything one really has is a set of rules to follow or don't.
 

If one person shouts out in a pedestrian area, it'll catch several people's attention. They get alarmed at once -- and in common. The single shouter addresses all the people next to them, in at once and, more importantly, in common. If people form a demonstration, all the participants form a temporary society, share a piece of reality rather similar to all of them and to every single participant too.

In the net, they don't. They don't even can.

In the net, each time a single person addresses another single person. And each time it's a single person who gets addressed. A single person who has to decide what to do. To interact, to answer, to communicate. But still -- a single person, in contact with only one other single person.

Anonymity is what net life and "real life" share. Or "mass life", since most often it is a gathering -- or a "mass" -- of people; and -- pun/also -- a world where physical masses matter.

Now, some people get rather nervous the moment, law folks/politicians want to take away that anonymity -- equally whether from the net or from the mass world.

Why?

Because anonymity saves us from the risk to become controlled, get our own moves and decisions manipulated by people who know too much about ourselves and our lives. Also, as longs as there's anonymity around us, being implicit part of our lives and some unknown institution knowing much about us, it becomes quite easy to let someone disappear: Noone might wonder, because that institution probably was allowed to collect us from our homes. Noone might ask, because noone ever knew about us. Who really knew us the day before we "got lost"? Who of them has the chance to figure out what happend to us? Who's willing to really do this, against any advantages one could have by skipping that step? Who'd be willing to take any such effort, really?

So, anonymity is what mass and net world share. Now, what if anonymity is what makes us that vulnerable we actually are? To any shadows in charge? Far away, irrelated institutions which supposedly are allowed to deport us, for any any reason?
 

I wonder whether securing anonymity might help those dark forces gaining power over our lives? The more we're protected we protect us against the knowledges of our next ones about ourselves, the more we might support those hidden institutions who gain power over us: The less our next one knows about us, the fewer next ones actually know us, the easier the chance that institution can do anything with our lives it wants to do. Who'd take the efforts to save us from it?

Hence, I become curiously whether or not we're experience an evolution that sheds net scatteredness over the mass world, singles out every single real life being -- removes any protection it once had. Once collective anonymity was what protected the individual. As that anonymity gets removed, the individual looses that protection. What remains might be an individual anonymity -- a situation where single individuals -- maybe even a growing number of individuals -- get singled out, loose their protection from the anonymity of the crowds. And becomes accessibly to the authorities. Like an unlocked drawer. So privacy activists might unknowingly been supporting that defense-ripping anonymity. What about a chance, someone foresaw the reactions of the privacy activists and included their re-action into their plans?
 

I wonder whether we need to actually give up a bit of anonymity, privacy to reprotect ourselves against any unexpected sudden deportation, decided by any unknown official in charge, such as one of the work exchange authorities in Germany?