'Watch out for reefs'

“As I set out across the lake, about noontime, the cook, emerging to draw molasses from the barrel, warned me to ‘watch out for reefs’– rifts, that is, in the ice, where a warm current might have melted most of the way through. But the ice was solid, several inches thick, heavy enough to hold a team. There was only gladness in my heart as I started across the wide white plain toward the woods on the far-off shore.’’

Stereoscopic photos of lumber being pushed down a Maine river around 1900

-- Robert Smith, in My Life in the North Woods (1986), a memoir of his stint in a lumber camp in Maine during the Depression.

Move your personal information offline

When will Americans push back against being forced by business and government to put so much of their personal information online? NONE of it is safe there. NONE! And it never will be, whatever the absurd assertions that somehow cyber-security experts will protect us.

The hackers and thieves are just getting started.

Companies want to put as much stuff online as they can to make it easier to lay off employees.  The mantra is:  Automate everything!

The cost of this exposure is only starting to be understood. More people should have heeded the warnings of Robert Smith, the longtime editor and publisher of The Privacy Journal.

Consider the breach at Anthem, the health-insurance company, announced this week. The personal information of 80 million people violated!

-- Robert Whitcomb