Dr. Donald Kerr's remarks have been widely reported in the press. or rather they have been a pretext for talking about the Bush administration's eavesdropping on foreign conversations where one party is located in the United States.

The most contentious issue in the new legislation is whether to shield telecommunications companies from civil lawsuits for allegedly giving the government access to people's private e-mails and phone calls without a FISA court order between 2001 and 2007.

Some lawmakers, including members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, appear reluctant to grant immunity. Suits might be the only way to determine how far the government has burrowed into people's privacy without court permission.

The committee is expected to decide this week whether its version of the bill will protect telecommunications companies. About 40 wiretapping suits are pending.

The central witness in a California lawsuit against AT&T says the government is vacuuming up billions of e-mails and phone calls as they pass through an AT&T switching station in San Francisco.

Mark Klein, a retired AT&T technician, helped connect a device in 2003 that he says diverted and copied onto a government supercomputer every call, e-mail, and Internet site access on AT&T lines.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which filed the class-action suit, claims there are as many as 20 such sites in the U.S.

The White House has promised to veto any bill that does not grant immunity from suits such as this one.

Ah! So as usual, its all about finding new ways to embarrass the administration.

If on the other hand, the media had spent a little more time reporting on Dr. Kerr's remarks, they might have generated somewhat more light than heat.

Safety and privacy – it’s common thinking that, in order to have more safety, you get less privacy. I don’t agree with that. I work from the assumption that you need to have both. When we try to make it an either/or proposition, we’re bound to fail. You can be perfectly safe in a prison; but you certainly aren’t free. And you can be perfectly free in an anarchist society; but you certainly aren’t safe.

Kerr amplifies this point in his speech, but it stands as is--privacy simply isn't an either/or proposition--it must be balanced with other concerns. Anyone who develops software as I do, knows all too well this tug-a-war between usability and security. Too much security and people will simply set aside your product as too much trouble. An open society suffers from the same tension between open access and security--both must be present in balance.

Too often, privacy has been equated with anonymity; and it’s an idea that is deeply rooted in American culture. The Long Ranger wore a mask but Tonto didn’t seem to need one even though he did the dirty work for free. You’d think he would probably need one even more. But in our interconnected and wireless world, anonymity – or the appearance of anonymity – is quickly becoming a thing of the past.

Anonymity results from a lack of identifying features. Nowadays, when so much correlated data is collected and available – and I’m just talking about profiles on MySpace, Facebook, YouTube here – the set of identifiable features has grown beyond where most of us can comprehend. We need to move beyond the construct that equates anonymity with privacy and focus more on how we can protect essential privacy in this interconnected environment.

Protecting anonymity isn’t a fight that can be won. Anyone that’s typed in their name on Google understands that. Instead, privacy, I would offer, is a system of laws, rules, and customs with an infrastructure of Inspectors General, oversight committees, and privacy boards on which our intelligence community commitment is based and measured. And it is that framework that we need to grow and nourish and adjust as our cultures change.

I think people here, at least people close to my age, recognize that those two generations younger than we are have a very different idea of what is essential privacy, what they would wish to protect about their lives and affairs. And so, it’s not for us to inflict one size fits all. It’s a need to have it be adjustable to the needs of local societies as they evolve in our country. Eventually, we can only hope that people’s perceptions – in Hollywood and elsewhere – will catch up.

Its worth noting that Kerr isn't advocating a position, but describing a new reality--technology makes anonymity an archaic concept. We leave a data trail everywhere we go. Bluetooth is a very local wireless network being used for financial transactions and as it becomes increasingly ubiquitous, it becomes possible to actually track people by their bluetooth signal as they register on passing receivers, creating a virtual map of one's wanderings.

Yeesh.

The new privacy is not an altogether new concept--individuals living in very densely populated societies learn to ignore what is in plain sight. They see without seeing. Discretion becomes an integral part of the culture. Preserving privacy in a technological age thus becomes a matter of discretion in the absence of isolation. What we do and say will be seen as a matter of practical reality, but whom we share it with constitutes the real choice when it comes to the new privacy.

Important news you have to dig for--scandal goes into high rotation.

CNN personality Richard Quest was busted in Central Park early yesterday with some drugs in his pocket, a rope around his neck that was tied to his genitals, and a sex toy in his boot, law-enforcement sources said.

Kids no longer want to grow up to be President, now they just want to be famous--anyway they can. Television shows like American idol couldn't exist without the pathological need of no talent hacks willing to embarrass themselves for their 15 minutes of fame.

Unfortunately, as Quest has discovered, fame has its downside. You, the unknown reader, can get arrested in the park with some weed and a rope tied around your gentalia, and in all likelihood the only person who might find out is your Dad, because you called him to bail you out. For Quest, getting arrested is guaranteed public embarrassment, since the records are public and someone at the paper is always cruising the blotter looking for just this kind of glint in the pan.

If you are gay and famous, this kind of embarrassment is even more likely because so much of the gay lifestyle involves risky, and usually illegal behavior.

The famous, like Caesar's wife, need to be above suspicion.