When we think about our personal data, what bothers us most is generally not the initial collection and use, but the secondary uses. I personally appreciate it when Amazon.com suggests books that might interest me, based on books I have already bought. I like it that my airline knows what type of seat and meal I prefer, and my hotel chain keeps records of my room preferences. I don't mind that my automatic road-toll collection tag is tied to my credit card, and that I get billed automatically. I even like the detailed summary of my purchases that my credit card company sends me at the end of every year. What I don't want, though, is any of these companies selling that data to brokers, or for law enforcement to be allowed to paw through those records without a warrant.

A spokeswoman for Sequoia Voting Systems, which uses some of Microsoft's development technology in its devices, defended her company's lobbying. "We also vigorously protect our intellectual property and trade secrets as well as the overall security of our voting system," she said. Sequoia currently complies with all current state and federal review and escrow laws, she noted. Over the past year, she said Sequoia has worked with the Elections Board to satisfy its requirements without disclosing any third-party proprietary source code such as Microsoft's. After the legislature's session closed, she expressed frustration, claiming the issue remains unresolved. "We would ideally like to work with the board to reach a solution that works for all parties involved," she said Friday.

Cruise, also one of the film's producers, is a member of the Church of Scientology which the German government does not recognise as a church. Berlin says it masquerades as a religion to make money, a charge Scientology leaders reject.

The new laws should significantly ease the triple-digit interest rates charged by payday lenders and their cousins, auto title lenders. Indeed, payday lenders say the new laws will drive them out of the state altogether. Whether that is so remains to be seen, but the laws still allow payday lenders, through a combination of interest rates and "origination fees," to charge effective annual interest rates of well over 150% on one-month loans.

If that's so, however, the demise of the industry might not be a bad thing at all. Any industry whose best argument is that it can only make money by exploiting the worst of its credit risks, and keeping them in a never-ending cycle of renewals and interest payments, doesn't seem to have much going for it.

President Bush has asserted that he is not necessarily bound by the bills he signs into law, and yesterday a congressional study found multiple examples in which the administration has not complied with the requirements of the new statutes.

Only the minimum personal data needed should be collected, and it should be retained for the minimum time necessary. ... The subject has the right to know whom is keeping and accessing their personal data, and the right to examine the data and to have the data removed or changed.