Timing is everything. When I read this article from the New York Times this morning, it was a slam-dunk for publishing a pointer to it here (thanks, Amanda, for the pointer).

The article is about privacy, and talks about how medical privacy laws are being pushed to (or perhaps beyond) the breaking point by the federal government that enacted them scant few years ago.

Of particular interest is the Strategic Medical Intelligence section of the FBI which is mentioned in the article. If your doctor finds something odd about that strange rash on your arm, they are supposed to report it to the FBI and not mention that fact to you.

Of course, most arguments about trading liberty for security will sound different this evening than they did this morning. With the bombing in Spain, people will once again be concentrating upon the safety aspects with less regard for privacy.

It seems that the only time that we are going to be consistently worried about the privacy issue is when it is too late.