Bring out the firemen

[Wombat]

I guess shattering CD's isn't quite the spectacle that burning books is, but the end result is the same:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-111801inform.story

Further instructions from the Ministry of Love will follow. Protect the homeland.

[Wombat]

Fine, but this isn't just about the internet. The instructions included directives to US librarians to destroy the records kept by the library.

The Government Printing Office has begun ordering about 1,300 libraries nationwide that serve as federal depositories to destroy government records that federal agencies say could be too sensitive for public consumption.

* Federal agencies are imposing a stricter standard in reviewing hundreds of thousands of Freedom of Information Act requests from the public each year; officials no longer have to show that disclosure would cause "substantial harm" before rejecting a request. Watchdog groups say they have already started to see rejections of requests that likely would have been granted before.

Security through obscurity is not the answer. It doesn't work. Hiding flaws doesn't make them go away. Fixing them does.

Someone else said it best. Paraphrasing "After the first WTC bombing, a lot of privacy rights were under attack. A truck full of diesel and a large quantity of industrial fertilizer nearly blew up a building. Now the government has used this to increase police powers and surveillance, while there is nothing to suggest that these powers would have prevented the attack. Meanwhile, diesel fuel and industrial fertilizer are still a cash-and-carry business, and you don't need to show any ID to purchase them."