11/30 They could've totally stopped the Midnight Ride

In his article Using Metadata to Find Paul Revere, Duke University sociologist Kieran Healy takes a time machine back to 1776 to show how powerful the collection of impersonal data can be.

( Listen, my children, and you shall hear... )

11a/30 Follow up on the NSA data collection issue

The Atlantic today published a very good short essay on the NSA data collection issue: Why Should We Even Care If the Government Is Collecting Our Data?.

There is a comparison of metaphors: the Orwellian 1984 image of constant surveillance inhibiting behavior, and the Kafkaesque The Trial concept of an inscrutable government doing inscrutable things for hidden reasons. The author argues that the latter is far more appropriate for the current disclosures about the NSA.

Her conclusion, which I think is excellent:

...we should ease off the privacy hand-wringing and turn our attention to something much more fundamental: how we relate as citizens to our government and how much power we have in that relationship.