Privacy and the Banana Boat Crowd

You might remember Bob Cringley as the host of the extraordinary PBS documentery Triumph of the Nerds. I say extraordinary because even though the show was produced and aired on PBS, it is remarkable in that it gave a very good account of the development of the PC without the usual social and political commentery that PBS is known for.

Bob has other PBS shows describing the development of the intranet (and yes, Al Gore had very little to do with it) and electric money. Bob's weekly column I, Cringley is a nice way for non-computer geeks to stay up to date with currenty topics in computing. A recent column describes how if you think your social security number is safe, think again (on average it is in use by 3000 other folks). But much more informative from his analysis is how the major credit agencies have a very accurate count of the current ilegal alien population in the US and that number is somewhere very close to 17-million. Also of interest is the concept of using our "portable" cell phone numbers as a potential supplement to the SS# for identity purposes.