Gee golly ... you've transitioned from sarcastic to absurd. When it comes to valuing privacy, the world breaks into two groups -- them that do and them that don't. I do. You don't. Have a nice life Lena.
Pete Gebel pfgebel(deletethis)@crisperiodcom Have the best day possible - all things considered
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I can sort of see Lena's point; there are risks in everything these days, and with the direction our government is going, some of the risks are more severe than others, where possible breaches of our privacy are concerned. But, Lena, there has to be a cut off point; a spot at which we simply quit worrying about it any longer. We attempt to rank the various risks we face, and choose those we consider the most severe (for whatever reason) in our own lives. Someone once said to me, "when I am looking for some good comedy to read, I always choose RISKS Digest." His point was, I think, that over the years, some of the worst-case scenarios presented there are _so_ obscure, _so_ mathematically improbable as to hardly be worth a second thought. I would not have used his exact phraseology or choice of words, but many or most of the incidents described in RISKS have happened to _someone_, who might as well be you or me, but through God's grace have not been my problem or yours, still, they could have been, and the more we press our luck or 'work the margins' the more likely it will happen to us. I have a Google Mail account, but do not use it, except rarely, and then only for the most bland of conversations, for the very reasons Pete mentions, among others. Yet here I sit with a quarter-century of Editor's Notes under my belt stored away on more computers than just massis.lcs.mit.edu to be sure ...I think most all long-time (like ten, fifteen or twenty or more year) netters would die of mortification if every last word they had placed on line since, oh, 1985-1990 or so suddenly popped up on everyone else's screen. I am reminded of William (push the buttons, pull the crank) Burroughs' novel many years ago, 'Naked Lunch', where as he describes it, "everyone knows instantly what is on the fork of everyone else." PAT]