MemeStreams | a fragile line of defense

For decades the state, professionalized bureaucracy, democratic control of public finance, and the public itself have been vilified, while incentive pay and volunteerism -- exemplified by homeschooling, armed self-defense, the anti-vaccination movement, and other forms of civic abandonment -- have been ascendant. But as history shows, these rearguard actions make a fragile line of defense against the state's imperfections, and the ills of corruption and illegitimacy they breed can be far worse than any problems such anti-public measures may hope to solve.

Justin Fenton:

Baltimore prosecutors withdrew key evidence in a robbery case Monday rather than reveal details of the cellphone tracking technology police used to gather it.

Edward Hasbrouck:

For more than a decade, advertising for Las Vegas' hotels and casinos has centered on the implied promise to protect the privacy of their guests' activities while on their premises, "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas." But these same casinos and hotels have actually been in the vanguard of the hospitality industry in guest surveillance, with the owners of Caesar's in particular recognized as the industry leaders.

James Risen:

It is difficult to recognize the limits a society places on accepted thought at the time it is doing it. When everyone accepts basic assumptions, there don't seem to be constraints on ideas. That truth often only reveals itself in hindsight.

Henry Corrigan-Gibbs:

Diffie and Hellman's now-legendary key-exchange algorithm has an elegant one-line representation. Debates over academic freedom and government secrecy do not lend themselves to such a concise formulation. "It's not a neat, simple calculation," Aftergood said. "There are competing interests on all sides, and somehow one just has to muddle through.

BBC:

According to Prof Steve Rayner of Oxford University, it is easier to devise the technology than to understand its effects or how its use should be governed.