It is not how they are doing it, but why -- what have they got to hide? If they are not doing anything wrong then they have nothing to fear by us knowing!

I am not a sheep.

Will it include corporates such as newspapers who grab images, etc, from individuals' web sites and publish it on their web site and ignore any attempt by the copyright holder (individual) to get proper compensation ?

I doubt it - such laws do not seem to apply to corporates.

I much prefer chatting face to face, but in a distributed environment that is often not possible - so what I will actually achieve is phone or email. Having said that: a written form (eg email) can be better at communicating decisions that are complex and need to be remembered.

Is it named as a tribute to the late Leonard Nimoy ?

I would like to know: the next time that I receive a £60 parking ticket will the authorities be content with me paying £5?

I now have it; but I am now looking for a monitor that is wide enough ...

Correct: it is talking about the sales of new records/CDs. This tends to disfavour long lasting styles such as classical music and boosts the here-today, gone-tomorrow junk that fills the 'pop parade'. This is exactly what the music industry wants, they need churn in taste and bands/performers/... to keep people buying their output.

Zimmermann might well be good and honest ... but how well does he know the people who he will employ to help him ? What if one of them has a problem: financial/drugs/marital/... that allows the NSA to put pressure on them (''help them out of their sticky situation'') in return for ''something that is in the best interests of the USA'' ?

In mitigation: they do publish their source code for review. I don't know how easy it is to check that that is what is installed on the phone that you buy.

I have to ask: is there secret NSA involvement in this ? An inside man who will put a couple of back-doors in the 'phone.

I have absolutely no knowledge that this is the case, but the NSA certainly has the resources & motivation to do so. It seems to have done this sort of thing in the past.

I did not realise that bankers were around as early as 875 million years after the big bang.

Should Gemalto be sued by people who use their cards & other products on the grounds that they did not adequately secure their computer systems and thus let in outside crackers to steal the encryption keys ? That the crack was done by GCHQ/NSA does not really alter things -- they were cracked. The point of this is that successful legal, and expensive, action would make all corporates treat security properly; this would have great benefits -- more than just keeping the spooks at bay.

The only problem is that to sue Gemalto the plaintiffs would need to demonstrate that they have suffered. This might be hard, although insisting that they were all given new SIMs might be a start.

enlarge human ears ? If so, Disney would sue!

Individuals, not corporations. Think photographs as an example: if you copy a corporation's picture and put it on your web site - you will be hammered; if a corporation copies one of your pictures and uses it - nothing will happen; you can complain and will just be ignored.

Quite. I have not watched a television at home for several years. I do watch Dr Who & similar on the iplayer (which ought to count as TV), prob 20 hours/year. I'll watch a bit more if I am stuck in a hotel.

Now: ask me how much time I waste on the Internet, that is a different story :-(