In recent online-facilitated political struggles in the Middle East, freedom and life itself have depended on the ability to assume pseudonyms.

Madrigal says if he were to shout slogans against the government in the street of his more democratic nation, few people would identify him.

He's presumably imagining a large US city; it would be less true if I were to do it in Wellington. But the point is well made.

People in "real life" do not always need your name to note and form an opinion on what you say.

Hardly any of us consider ourselves to be the same person we were 20 years ago. We are free to change our identity in all but the narrowest philosophical sense. Even the law will, after seven years, forget many offences we have committed.