As I get older I wonder about the primacy of digital anonymity. What was meant to give a voice to the voiceless has silenced people, serving as a tool to bully, criticize and marginalize. The need for anonymity has become conventional wisdom but I am not convinced. First off, we are not anonymous, we just feel like we are. So many past comments have come back to haunt people, rightly or wrongly, that they made without thinking. We all have an online dossier, or dossiers, of information that sticks to us. Even VPNs, which purport to provide total anonymity, have been known to track, use and sell user data (Do VPN Companies Track Your Browsing Data? (howtogeek.com).) Our file is not easy to access but it is there, and it is unavoidable: even if you do everything offline, someone is putting your info online. To me, the debate of our time is: how can we bring accountability to our online lives without bringing surveillance?


“Every time an App or website asks us to create a new digital identity or to easily log on via a big platform, we have no idea what happens to our data in reality. That is why the Commission will propose a secure European e-identity. One that we trust and that any citizen can use anywhere in Europe to do anything from paying your taxes to renting a bicycle. A technology where we can control ourselves what data is used and how.”
Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, in her State of the Union address, 16 September 2020
European Digital Identity – European Commission (europa.eu)

I was surprised to find that some have already implemented a system of digital citizenship in the literal sense. The EU is working on making it easier to identify people across European borders, easing access to services and making it easier to apply for jobs. At least, that is the goal. In a world of data breaches, it seems unlikely that the European Commission would be able to keep that information entirely secure.


How 2023 marked the death of anonymity online in China | MIT Technology Review
Explained: China Social Credit System, Punishments, Rewards – Business Insider
More controversially, the CCP has been tracking online activity and actively punishing anyone who does not conform to government imposed norms. There have been some nods to online civility, with hateful comments being policed. The greater focus, however, seems to be on rigorous censorship (“the great firewall of China.”) The nature of censorship makes it tough to study, but I think it is safe to say that this is the example that people most fear being reproduced in Canada.

7 Countries Implementing Digital ID Systems – Identity
I was most surprised when Canada was listed as being on the leading edge of implementing a legal online citizenship. I do have my online Service Canada ID, I have paid my taxes with it, I have applied for EI with it, I have used my bank account as a sign-in partner, but I never reflected on it as a digital citizenship. Given the lack of online borders, an international social media company accepting a Canadian document seems far-fetched. Also, I would not trust them with it anyways. Can we have digital citizenship without digital borders or digital rules? I don’t know that it would mean anything if we did.

Ending online anonymity won’t make social media less toxic (theconversation.com)
There has also been considerable debate on the subject of online anonymity that I was not aware of. Does ending anonymity end toxicity? Does it slow or stop disinformation from spreading? How much information should the government have? Also…
The ArriveCan scandal: How can we avoid similar problems in the future? (theconversation.com)
How much should it cost and how to we maintain accountability? (ArriveCan went from $80,000 to $59.5 million, per the article.) Can you opt out? And if you do opt out, is there a cost to doing so? You can’t opt out of citizenship rules, and you need to get a passport for international travel.

I don’t know how all of this will play out. When trains were invented it introduced a host of legal questions on legal jurisdiction (if a train leaves France for Germany and an Italian citizen assaults someone while the train is in Belgium, who prosecutes?) All of these legal questions have been settled at this point as a result of much debate, legislation and court cases. Our current students will be the generation that similarly answer all of our current questions about digital citizenship, so we had best give them the opportunity to examine how they want that to look.