Apply it to all Presidents and Vice Presidents. Exclude issues of national security. This would be fair to all parties. If you wanted a greater degree of fairness, extend it to all state and federal officials.

If the couriers have a cover reason for going to the compound, they could do so fairly frequently and not raise any flags. Covers could include food delivery, package delivery and even what appears to be friends, family and business associates. Beggars would also be a possible cover. Appearing to be a family member who lives in the compound can also be a cover, one that would allow the person to go in and out of the compound frequently. You could also have couriers that never enter the hideout but, instead, have a drop point. It does sound like the number of couriers was limited though. Though in five or so years, a courier doing daily runs at one message a day could carry eighteen hundred messages. If the courier carried six or more messages a day, you are getting into the ten thousand message range.

Odds are that many of Bin Laden's contacts would assume that their identities are compromised whether there was a single thumb drive involved or an entire building of thumb drives, external hard drives and computers. Stating that a large amount of data was found might scare away those who are on the fringe of the organization.

Of course a "mother lode of data" could simply be a few spread sheets of names and locations. I recall reading that more information was collected during this raid than ten years of more conventional information collecting. That wouldn't take much given how long it took to find him.

Consider it to be a CYA type thing. It is a computer. It is on the network. While you may have set it up, IT ultimately has to answer for things that are on the network. If your machine ends up being a security hole, they will get the blame at first because some part of the network was hacked. If they can't sign in to your machine to verify that everything is up to date, they can only assume that your machine is the cause and they can't fix it.

Note that the lab servers are probably locked down so they won't do much damage if they are hacked. They may even be managed by IT, even if the content comes from the labs.

The original poster could be a troll, or they could be someone trying to get advice without revealing who they are. In some academic environments, IT is stretched very thin and it lacks authority to enforce what should be standard operating procedure. If someone wants something done, they refer to their local, unofficial IT staff and jury-rig it.

Eventually IT inherits the kludge and has to figure out how to make it work. If IT is lucky, it comes before a disaster occurs. If IT is unlucky, it happens because of a disaster.

We might be mining methane for the hydrocarbons using automated skimmers. But they would likely be launched from space or perhaps the moon using mass drivers.

Chance are we would NOT be using the hydrocarbons for fuel though. The energy cost of doing the hydrocarbon harvest would likely be much greater than the energy provided by the hydrocarbons.

Another option would be to promote midrange products and how they can ultimately save money. If a pair of jeans costs forty dollars but lasts three times as long as a pair of twenty dollar jeans, you save money despite the bigger front end expense.

Unfortunately, the WalMart mentality has created a situation where you have cheap stuff and extremely expensive stuff, with little if any middle ground.

Of course, another option would be for innovation to take over. Let's say that the innovation fostered by a group like MAKE magazine encourages people to go into limited run manufacturing. It is done in garages and neighborhood production centers, so shipping and handling is minimized. If the manufacturing equipment is flexible enough, you can produce a lot of different things that are high quality AND customized. You may pay more for the jeans, but they will be a perfect fit AND they will be the colors you want.

I recall reading an article about a Russian woman who came to the US to 'prove' that all our talk about a better standard of living was propaganda. She cried when she got a tour of a typical supermarket, realizing that the propaganda was true.

Then there was the case of a science/SF writer that took a Czech engineer to Disneyland. The engineer was frightened by the level of technology that went into simple entertainment. The logic behind his fear was simple: If the tech that went into entertainment was that advanced, what was the top secret military tech like?

I like to say that Pepsi, MTV and Levi jeans were what brought down the Iron Curtain. While you can't diminish the fact that the military kept the USSR contained, the amenities were what broke down the Wall. (Was the Wall there to keep the evil capitalists out or to keep the people in?)

I seem to recall that this quote was intended to drum up more support for the Patent Office. They didn't have enough manpower and the number of patent applications was soaring. (It shows that sarcasm marks have been needed for over a century.)

Add in deductions for pollution control and safety measures. That would address the 'problem' of regulatory differences. (Or you could have a pollution/safety tariff on imports.)