Future Technologies

President Obama's  defense of the government's collection  of phone records and Internet traffic may not appease staunch privacy advocates. Jody R. Westby, adjunct computer science professor at Georgia Institute of Technology, would prefer that Obama call for "a full investigation to ensure that no laws have been stretched or broken." Should the wide exposure of the government's Internet and telephone records data mining projects prompt a similar reaction among the general public, the tech giants that generate and store this data very well might be compelled to adjust their business models, going forward. Americans have always been willing to know that some crimes will take place simply because people are acting undetected, but the rule of law, based on police, courts, and prosecutors to keep the public safe works well, says Westby, who is also CEO at consultancy Global Cyber Risk LLC. "Whatever happened to that line of thinking? It is an odd tw...