From the "seems to insane to be true" department, the government has appointed D. Reed Freedman, Chief Privacy Officer of Claria, formerly known as Gator, to the Department of Homeland Security. Gator is infamous for developing GAIN, a pesky spyware application that installs itself on home computers, unknowingly and unwanted. Freedman has been appointed to the Privacy Advisory Committee. Slashdot users, in their typical cynical fashion, were quick to point out the parallels with Orwell's 1984, and the entire story is dripping with irony. This story seems like it should have originated from the pages of The Onion, but has almost come to be expected from an administration that appoints oil executives to create environmental and regulatory policies.