COMMENT Isn’t it time we all just grew up about the internet? For the better part of a decade now, most of us have lived our lives online as though there were no tomorrow, wandering at will through dangerous landscapes peopled with phishers and pharmers and others skilled in the dark arts of cyber-evil.
Now all these pharms and phisheries have produced a harvest of identity theft, and politicians are rushing in with legislation to try to save us from ourselves. This being America, everybody has to have their own version of a data security law, from the federal Congress to the legislature of Arkansas (which recently passed the toughest such law in the nation). But laws have never been more than a small part of the solution to crime: that is why God invented burglar bars. It takes a village to fight crime: it takes laws and norms and nosy neighbours – and deadbolts. And most of all, it requires the adults among us to start acting our age.
