Identity: Will the Real Me Please Stand Up?

Yup. Eric Shcmidt, heads up, buddy!  I'm outing myself.

Unless Google changes its hive-mind policy on identity, I'll be moving shortly. Google chairman Eric Schmidt thinks I'm a fraud.  I think he knows better, but he chooses to peddle his snake oil anyway.  He's right about one thing, though:  Google, Google+, Blogspot... these are optional. 

Yesterday in the Guardian there's a good essay on what's wrong with the Google identity policy, and I'm not going to rehash it.  Go read, if you like.  Watch out, though.  It was written by "Cory Doctorow" and I have to wonder about a famous last name like that.  In my youth I sometimes signed unimportant stuff with famous names, just to see if anyone noticed.  (Nobody did.)  Pen names and stage names have been around forever, and I'm not worried about Cory. I don't care what name is on his passport. He wrote a good piece. Mark Twain wrote good pieces, too, but that wasn't the name on his steamboat license.

At least until the Department of Homeland Security came along, there has never been anything illegal about using any name you choose.  Not in the U.S., anyway.  It's done all the time, and has been for centuries. Silence Dogood showed up in 1722 from soon-to-be   notorious bad boy and traitor to his king Ben Franklin.  A pseudonym only becomes an "alias" if you do something illegal.

Okay, as much as I may be a legend in my own mind, especially if drinking heavily, I agree with you.  I'm not Ben Franklin, or even Cory Doctorow.  Not Mark Twain, not Joseph Conrad, not William Shakespeare.  I blog a little bit.  I was in the newspaper business once, long ago.  I could blog under "Wilma Flintstone" and it would make no difference to anyone but me. 

I set this blog up under "Red Sparrow" because I wanted something that sounded vaguely partisan. My mission, after all, and insofar as I have one, is to follow in the footsteps of Jesus by comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable.  I'm much better at the second part. What's a poor girl to do? Answer: Play to your strong suit, even if it's only clubs.

It's not too hard to figure out that my "real" identity is Sparrow Letov.  But hold on.  Don't call 411 just yet. Sparrow Letov was born 13 Novemeber 2007, courtesy of Linden Labs and Second Life. At that time, when you created an SL account, you had to pick a last name from a list of a few dozen options.  I picked "Letov" because it's short, easy to remember, has a good beat and it's easy to dance to, and because Russian writers and poets are so wonderfully tragic and romantic.  Or as we used to say back in the day, they're kozmic. 

"Sparrow" has nothing to do with the moronic pirate movies.  That comes from an excellent novel, Bone Dance, by Emma Bull, now sadly out of print. 

If the DHS or the NSA or the FBI want the name printed on my driver's license, that's easy. Linden Labs has that information, and so does Comcast, my ISP for many years.  A few folks in my Google+ circle have it, though very few and only in cases where (a) there's a reason, and (b) trust is pretty damn total.  Of course, the name on my driver's license isn't the same as the ones on either of my two very valid birth certificates.  And those two documents show different names. My old-old passport shows a different name than my old passport. So all you identity wankers who agree with Eric Schmidt, tell me:  What's my real name?  Must be the one on my credit card, huh?

If you've entrusted a bunch of computer geeks and corporate buccaneers at Google and Facebook with your personal information, or hung it out there in public, I think you're a fool, frankly. You've made yourself part of a target-rich environment for every sociopath and evil-doer on the planet.  Good luck. My friends and my family have my phone number and address.  They're free to use them anytime.  And that works both ways. If I went to high school with you in 1963 and we haven't seen each other since, don't expect me to be very interested in what's gone on in your life.  I'm not.  And I'm not interested in telling you about mine.  You're not an "old friend" I can "reconnect" with, you're merely another stranger in this strange land. That's not a bad thing, it's just the way it is.  The past exists only in our minds, and very imperfectly. 

Safety on in the Internet?  Not likely.  Careful as I try to be, anyone who hacks any one of several databases can clean out my debit account.  They could come knocking on my door anytime. So be it.  I'll take those risks.  At least they won't know who's going to answer the door, and they might be surprised. 

Be safe.  Work for peace. Be careful.  It's dangerous out there.