Good day to you all. The garden is going well and the weather is nice (though getting warm again) so I will go on to other things.

Privacy is, and has been, a major concern for sometime. A good while ago, I came to the conclusion that, by any reasonable definition, it has pretty well disappeared. A couple of stories I found this morning confirm my pessimistic notions. The first involves a case in Virginia. According to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, an appeals court has upheld a lower court judges verdict deciding that a Virginia law that prevented a woman from publishing the social security numbers she found on on-line legal documents. The appeals court went ever further than the trial judge in holding that she can publish not only the numbers of public officials in Virginia but the Social Security numbers of anyone whose numbers are on public documents. I agree with the appeals court. The state was remiss in not redacting the numbers when they put the documents on line. Many of those on-line documents were land titles and recorded mortgages. And, according to abc4.com Utah residents, or former residents, face a similar breach of privacy if they have owned real property any time in the past 30 years. In wonder how many other states have placed their residents in the same predicament.