“Those who trade liberty for safety all too often achieve neither.”
A US federal advisory committee echoes Benjamin Franklin in arguing that there should be greater restrictions on how personal information held on computers is used by government agencies (The New York Times, 17 May)
“This boat wrote the first chapters of the history of ocean diving. No one wants to look after her, so we have to.”
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Alain Foret, head of the French Federation of undersea sports and studies, on plans to rescue diving pioneer Jacques Cousteau’s famous boat Calypso, now rotting in La Rochelle harbour (Le Monde, 15 May)
“Watching the blue sky go completely black was the highlight of my career.”
Mike Melvill, after taking SpaceShipOne to 64.6 kilometres (see “Prize in sight”), an altitude record for a privately funded rocket (Aviation Week online, 17 May)
“The epidemic cuts down as many human lives as a world war. Halt this extermination.”
African health ministers appealing for wealthy countries to help the continent tackle AIDS (AFP, 13 May)
“What we have to establish is the right for people to be treated equally, regardless of their genetic make-up. We can’t keep fudging the issue.”
Nobel prizewinner John Sulston, head of the UK’s effort to unravel the human genome, calling for legislation to prevent a future genetic underclass (The Guardian, London, 15 May)
“The Kyoto protocol has no scientific foundation.”
Official advice from the Russian Academy of Sciences to President Putin. The protocol will come into force if ratified by Russia (Reuters, 18 May)
