Wonkette

So, this guy? He is your Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence, Donald Kerr, and he would like you to trust him and all the nameless, faceless bureaucrats reading your e-mail, listening in on your phone calls and checking your financial accounts. Because, see, while it’s fine for them to be anonymous, he needs you to understand that you really don’t need to be, because “privacy” has nothing to do with anonymity anymore!Last month, Dr. Kerr attended an intelligence conference in Texas (insert your own oxymoron joke here) and he told the assembled (anonymous) masses “I think all of us have to really take stock of what we already are willing to give up, in terms of anonymity” in exchange for certain kinds of security. You see, he doesn’t understand why people are all whiny about allowing the government to have unfettered access to their private data, because a government employee that misuses that data is subject to potential fines and stuff. So, really, we should just trust our government to know how to appropriately safeguard our private data and stop worrying so much about that pesky anonymity we don’t even have. Besides, you can Google a person and maybe find out their major in college anyway.

Intel official: Expect less privacy [Yahoo News]
VA Loses Data on 26 Million Veterans [consumeraffairs.com]