May 24, 2007 10:50AM 

# Announcing: Harper’s Law 

By [Jim Harper](https://www.cato.org/people/jim-harper) 

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Mine is a simple — dumb, even — adaptation of [Metcalfe’s Law](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe's_law).

> “The security and privacy risks increase proportionally to the square of the number of users of the data.”

> — First quoted in [this *eWeek* article](http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2135233,00.asp) about the electronic employment verification system included in the [current immigration bill](http://www.washingtonwatch.com/bills/show/110_SN_1348.html).

(I actually suspect that [Briscoe’s et al’s refinement](http://spectrum.ieee.org/print/4109) of Metcalfe’s law is more accurate, but that’s just *so complicated*.)

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