Generally speaking-- yes. Although achieving a state of enhanced anonymity occasionally involves a low-risk rolling of the legal dice, broaching "criminal" territory generally requires intent to harm somebody or commit fraud.
Let's say you dream up nine random digits and scribble them down in the space provided for a Social Security number on some rental application. So far, so good. You've committed no crime. But if the apartment ends up being used for criminal activities, your made-up number could lead to a federal charge (Misuse of a Social Security Number, 42 U.S.C.S. §408).
But short of using anonymity strategies to facilitate a crime, legal exposure tends to be of the low-end, civil infraction variety. Minor atrocities along the lines of tearing the tag off your mattresses or using Bittorrent to download a movie. Will you go to jail if the city were to discover you're running an unlicensed business out of your apartment? Extremely unlikely-- unless you physically assault some code-enforcement bureaucrat. At worst, you might get a fine.
Everything else falls into a squishy ethical/legal limbo. For example, you're required to provide the DMV with a home address. But does that "home" address have to be where you actually reside? Where you spend at least four nights a week? Where you can be found the majority of the time? Of course not.
There are many, many possible paths to achieving personal privacy. I believe mine is the most practical for the greatest number of people. You may disagree. If so, reply! I do not envision this blog as one man preaching to the masses from the mountaintop. Rather, I’d like to see it develop into a one-stop repository for all things privacy-related, ever growing, constantly evolving with changes in technology, law, and procedures.
To finish laying the groundwork for this blog, we’ll touch on my “Seven Principles of Privacy”. This is the program- in a nutshell. The specific “how to” of each principle will be exhaustively laid out in subsequent posts.
