Applied Miscellany

It is becoming increasingly difficult to protect one’s personal data these days. The threat, of course, is that the more complete a profile someone has on you, the greater chance that the information can be used against you for everything from unwanted solicitations to identity theft. Computers are very good at combining information [...]

From Risks Digest 24.18 (which obtained the information from Slashdot):

An anonymous reader writes “The New Jersey legislature is considering a bill [link] that would require operators of public forums to collect users’ legal names and addresses, and effectively disallow anonymous speech on online forums. This raises some serious issues, such as to what extent local [...]

In the article, Senate Approves Curbs on Some Patriot Act Powers, The New York Times reports:

If Mr. Feingold spoke for the bill’s critics, Senator Jim Bunning, Republican of Kentucky, offered another perspective in support of the antiterrorism measure: “Civil liberties do not mean much when you are dead.”

Had he been around in 1775, I guess [...]