Dan Geer’s keynote speech at the Blackhat security conference earlier this month (video, transcript) included an important discussion of the often-misunderstood “right to be forgotten” and the larger context of why it matters: the threat posed by compelled identification, and how we can defend ourselves against that threat:

Privacy used to be proportional to that which it is impossible to observe or that which can be observed but not identified.  No more — what is today observable and identifiable kills both privacy as impossible-to-observe and privacy as impossible-to-identify, so what might be an alternative?  If you are an optimist or an apparatchik, then your answer will tend toward rules of data procedure administered by a government you trust or control.  If you are a pessimist or a hacker/maker, then your answer will tend towards the operational, and your definition of a state of privacy will be my definition: the effective capacity to misrepresent yourself…

The Obama administration’s issuance of a National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace [NSTIC] is a case in point; it “calls for the development of interoperable technology standards and policies — an ‘Identity Ecosystem’ — where individuals, organizations, and underlying infrastructure — such as routers and servers — can be authoritatively authenticated.”  If you can trust a digital identity, that is because it can’t be faked…. Is having a non-fake-able digital identity for government services worth the registration of your remaining secrets with that government?  Is there any real difference between a system that permits easy, secure, identity-based services and a surveillance system? Do you trust those who hold surveillance data on you over the long haul, by which I mean the indefinite retention of transactional data between government services and you, the individual required to proffer a non-fake-able identity to engage in those transactions?  Assuming this spreads well beyond the public sector, which is its designers’ intent, do you want this everywhere?…

I conclude that a unitary, unfakeable digital identity is no bargain and that I don’t want one.  I want to choose whether to misrepresent myself.  I may rarely use that, but it is my right to do so.  If that right vanishes into the panopticon, I have lost something and, in my view, gained next to nothing. In that regard, and acknowledging that it is a baby step, I conclude that the EU’s “Right to be Forgotten” is both appropriate and advantageous though it does not go far enough.  Being forgotten is consistent with moving to a new town to start over, to changing your name, to a definition of privacy that turns on whether you do or do not retain the effective capacity to misrepresent yourself…. A right to be forgotten is the only check on the tidal wave of observability that a ubiquitous sensor fabric is birthing now, observability that changes the very quality of what “in public” means….

There’s more: video, transcript.

Mr. Geer’s comments help answer one of the questions we are most frequently asked: What’s Wrong With Showing ID?

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