As for these two quotes -

“Users are exchanging anonymity for usefulness.”

“Making transactions easier means surrendering privacy.”

- I don’t necessarily agree. I like what Liberty Alliance is doing to try and prevent #1 from happening into perpetuity; I think they (or someone else) will succeed at this.

And #2 isn’t quite right. A buddy of mine just pointed me in the direction of Bank of America’s ShopSafe, which, in a sense, creates a pseudo credit card number for transactions, making the transaction anonymous. I believe we’ll see things like handsets that integrate this feature to allow for data collection at the POS but it will all be done anonymously. These transactions will also get easier.