Personal privacy issues routinely arise when data collected is harmless in isolation, but becomes a threat when combined with other data, or examined by a third party for patterns. In other words, what are the potential "unintended consequences" of such an electrical system? And more importantly, what must we do to ensure that those unintended consequences are never realized?

Before we...willfully give up our civil liberties and freedoms, support wars on countries that did nothing to us, and sign off on wasting HUGE amounts of money on ineffectual security systems, consider this: Your chances of getting hit by lightning in one year is 500,000 to 1 while the odds you'll be killed by a terrorist on a plane over 10 years is 10 million to 1.

The only real interest "clash" will be between those that want to protect privacy and the right to control one's own data versus those that seek to profit off or benefit from accessing, buying and selling it.

Two privacy protection bills introduced by Senator Joe Simitian (SB 29 and SB 31) are awaiting Governor Schwarzenegger's signature or veto. They address privacy concerns and problems with "skimming" - the unauthorized surreptitious reading of RFIDs by persons with malicious intent.