You Got Me Babe

Here are two books one can read on-line and that I may read:

• Protecting Individual Privacy in the Struggle Against Terrorists: A Framework for Program Assessment, National Academies Press (2008)
• Nicholas Kaldor, The Scourge of Monetarism, Second Edition, Oxford University Press (1986)

The first book discusses data mining in an anti-terrorism context. Success of this tchnology in this context is difficult, while false positives are a threat to privacy. At least this is the conclusion - if I am fairly summarizing - of the Committee on Technical and Privacy Dimensions on Information for Terrorism Prevention and Other National Goals. (The National Academies Press publishes reports by the National Academies and by the National Research Council, organizations of some importance in the formation of United States policies on science and technology.)

The second book is Nicholas Kaldor's demonstration that monetarism does not work. On this blog, Kaldor should need no introduction.

Both books are in a freely readable on-line format that I find annoying. I suppose the format of the free version of the first is a business decision to encourage the purchase of the PDF version. And I blame copyright law for the format of the second.