Yeah, you can change pretty much everything regarding character appearance
also, have you read http://www.fragworld.org/frag/community-blogs/brink-info-pt-3-weapons-and-customization.html? that should answer your question
True, but one remark: You can choose from an array of colors when choosing your gear, but they are preset and not all colors are available for each side iirc. I thought they wanted to keep the green,blue more for security, while giving orange, brown, red to the resistance. Or atleast up to a certain level.