Some of the news headlines you might have missed over the last week range from the simply inane to the truly frightening.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation apparently now has the capability to remotely activate the microphone in your wireless phone and listen to whatever is going on around you, even if your phone is “off.” Remember, your phone is an electronic device. It’s never really off unless you’ve removed its power source.

New federal rules require companies who are involved in litigation, or expect to be in the future, to retain electronic data that may be relevant to the lawsuit and produce it during the discovery process. Sounds reasonable, except that we’re talking potentially terabytes of data that someone actually has to go through. The new rules are therefore quite costly, already creating a $1.6 billion “e-discovery” industry which is expected to double in size in the next year.

Lawmakers and businessmen who missed the story a month ago (because they don’t read Homeland Stupidity) about Homeland Security’s Automated Targeting System being used to assign terrorism risk scores to international travelers are expressing outrage over the system. “I have never seen anything as egregious as this,” said Kevin Mitchell, president of the Business Travel Coalition.

Finally, Transportation Security Administration employees nationwide have lost “1,183 badges and nearly 1,000 government-issued uniforms,” according to WMAQ-TV. “And those uniforms and badges are a free pass to secure areas in airports,” Radioactive Communist Zombies points out. “Now if I wanted to commit a terrorist attack, that would be the perfect disguise.”