I recall her reporting from China for CNN. She’s now a fellow at Harvard, and she participated in the same workshop I went to last week with some very tough (but very important) questions.

Rebecaa blogged the event in quite some detail from her unique background. The most important parts of her comments are her challenge to us, western technologists, to make sure we build identity technology that works for the whole world instead of just under certain political or social circumstances.

I wish they had invited political dissidents from authoritarian countries to provide their perspective on how some technological scenarios would play out in places where free speech is not protected, privacy laws are weak, and where corruption is so serious that criminals can access most user data accessible in-country…

Having any kind of “identity metasystem” that might link into a Tunisian dissident’s anonymous blog (even to that person’s chosen “anonymous identity”), or to a college student’s del.icio.us bookmarks, or a 15-year old’s LiveJournal blog, still strikes me as far too dangerous, with far too many unintended consequences.

For me, her comments were a little bit of a wake-up call, or at least a very important reminder. If we start out building technology to empower individuals, as certainly is my intention, but we end up reducing people’s civil liberties, we did worse than doing nothing. Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen!

Any thoughts anybody how we technologists could best accomplish “the right thing” here, given the technological trajectories we are on?