John Markoff of The New York Times asks of the Internet: "Can privacy be preserved while bringing a semblance of safety and security to a world that seems increasingly lawless?"

His story Sunday identifies efforts under way in the United States and elsewhere to deliver a form of ultra-net, a way of communicating electronically with sufficient visibility to secure trust.

The efforts flow from controversial concerns that anonymity somehow confers a recklessness. In this particular case, though, it also involves technological concerns that insufficient trust among the Internet's engineers lead to breaches in security that undermine the faith in the system necessary for it to operate.

The big question is whether we're moving toward the equivalent of a driver-licence mentality for the Internet in which only those deemed capable are permitted to play in certain quarters. It's true that the efforts have a walled garden effect, even if that isn't the full intent.