Stewart Baker, US Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Policy, says it best: "It is very important to remember that it is your intellectual property - it is not your computer. And, in the pursuit of protection of intellectual property, it is important not to defeat or undermine the security measures that people need to adopt in these days. If we have an avian flu outbreak here, and it is even half as bad as the 1918 flu, we will be enormously dependent on being able to get remote access for a large number of people, and keeping the infrastructure functioning is going to be a matter of life and death, and we take it very seriously as well."

(Charl Bergkamp is an overworked, underpaid systems support engineer in the Lambda Bureau, the ICT department of the Ministry of Boards, Committees and Working Groups. He would love to hear from kindred spirits in the ICT corporate world. Send tip-offs, hints and blatant accusations to charl.bergkamp@gmail.com)