links for 2008-10-07

  • ‘A National Research Council report, years in the making and scheduled to be released Tuesday, concludes that automated identification of terrorists through data mining or any other mechanism "is neither feasible as an objective nor desirable as a goal of technology development efforts." Inevitable false positives will result in "ordinary, law-abiding citizens and businesses" being incorrectly flagged as suspects.’
  • On one hand, having users solve math problems before sending e-mails is a brilliant way to cut down on drunk e-mailing (and I do know some people who could use this feature). On the other hand, arithmetically-challenged people like myself would never manage to send any e-mails ever.