The price of the privacy rule--hardly a deal.(As I See It)

Privacy--it's one of the defining issues of the Information Age. As the sum of our existence becomes more and more represented by data that can be measured, mined, and manipulated, many of us want to restrict access to our personal information as much as possible. That's part of the popular uproar against the Patriot Act--the intrusive gaze of Big Brother is too much for many to tolerate.

The federal government hasn't always been blind to privacy concerns--take HIPAA's Privacy Rule, for example. Yet I wonder if bureaucrats' usual tendency to regulate everything has marginalized the Privacy Rule's well-intentioned goals of protecting medical information and giving …