The modern innovators of Internet human rights are not U.S. leaders or bold Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. They are stodgy bureaucrats, politicians, and lawyers in Brussels, Berlin, and Strasbourg. As the National Security Agency (NSA) and American firms have relied on sucking up massive amounts of data to observe citizens and create and serve consumers, the ...

THREE DECADES ago, a German history professor listed 210 proposed explanations for the fall of the Roman Empire. The remarkable array included such fanciful causes as Bolshevism, public baths, hedonism, the pressure of terrorism and, most famously, lead poisoning. The last explanation has been discredited. It is highly unlikely that lead water pipes caused the ...