Universal Rule

Book Reviews

Sunday, December 29, 2002

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Perspective: Tech's answer to Big Brother: "...if our personal information--some of it extraordinarily sensitive--is archived in corporate or government databases and protected only by the weak shield of the law, it's vulnerable to federal snoops. [...] When a nation is responding to perilous threats, politicians tend to repeal privacy laws in a femtosecond. [...] That's why simply enacting laws and trusting to the government to protect our privacy can be a very dangerous thing. Just ask the Japanese-Americans forced into internment camps during World War II. New research says they were selected using Census Bureau data--data that was handed over to the government in strict confidence. Or ask the people who were robbed by the former chief of detectives for the Chicago Police Department, who pleaded guilty last year to using law enforcement databases to plot crimes." [News Is Free: Popular Items]

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Oliver Weinitschke Blog wrote a posting titled Remember: 'Slashdot has a fairly interesting discussion about human memory. [...] My memory seems to start at around age 3 with just a couple of imprints - cloth texture, a toy - no action, just objects. At around age 5 I remember neighborhood kids teasing me with a rubber spider, and driving my four wheel car. But it wasn't until age 12 or 13 that I managed to form the thought "I am".'

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Personal data on residents of entire town stolen: "Digital tapes recording personal information of all 9,600 residents in the town of Iwashiro, Fukushima Prefecture, have been stolen, police said Saturday. [...] Town officials said the stolen tapes were backups for the controversial national resident registry network and contained six types of information used in the registry - a resident's name, address, date of birth, sex, resident registry code and the record of changes of the information." [Privacy Digest]

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Should Mobile Safety Trump Privacy? "While the safety advantages of being able to pinpoint a mobile user's location are positive, the availability of wireless location tech is bound to result in invasions of consumer privacy." [Privacy Digest]