Jim, I can see where you are coming from here. No doubt you are right in practical terms. I cannot speak for Celeste, but I think what she may be getting at is that this issue goes beyond the personal and beyond the contemporary state of modern communications. Whether privacy is dead for those of us online or not may be debated. What is not up for debate, in my view, is the *idea of privacy itself*. If we surrender privacy as a concept with legal and everyday meaning it insidiously undermines not only our personal sense of security but ultimately how we relate as a larger society. The inability to live a private life is one harbinger a degraded polity. Dylan Hannon in the etherveld