The tech firms must come to terms with the fact that every previous form of communication from the conversation to the letter to the phone has been open to some form of eavesdropping: they cannot claim their realm is so distinct and inviolate that it can imperil others' lives, especially as the number of people who need to be monitored is in the thousands.
As a consequence, matter-antimatter pairs can disappear in a puff of energy without breaking conservation laws which physicists regard as inviolate; the opposite values simply cancel each other out without producing a surplus of either charge or angular momentum.
Metrologists are busy trying to recast it in terms of Planck's constant, a formula which is deemed cosmicly inviolate, as is the speed of light (pending further findings from CERN, anyway).
One idea being tried in parts of Michigan and Maryland is for communities to buy farmland or environmentally sensitive land to prevent its development; another idea, practised in Oregon and Washington state, is to set an "urban growth boundary" to enclose an urban area within an inviolate green belt; a third is to offer tax inducements to communities that forgo development rights.
SEPTEMBER is a cruel month in international monetary history, when regimes that once seemed inviolate have shattered.
The government has even warned the Catholic bishops, once considered inviolate, to shut up or suffer the same fate.
Speed-camera fines, for example, will rise by 50% to £60 to meet the costs of enforcement.The Treasury has sought to draw a distinction between charges for, say, parking or congestion (the revenues of which it accepts can be hypothecated), and ordinary taxes which must remain inviolate.
The politics of finding the extra savings will be no less excruciating and the Treasury may end up having to contribute, by making further reductions in its own handouts.The welfare bill may seem huge, but much of it is in effect inviolate.
But despite the winding down of the cult of Mao in the years after his death in 1976, the mausoleum has remained inviolate.
But followers of Justice and Benevolence refuse to take part until two of the constitution's articles are revised: the 19th, which gives a lot of power to the king, recognising him as Commander of the Faithful, thus heir to the Prophet Muhammad and rightful leader of Morocco's Muslims; and the 23rd, which states that "the person of the king is sacred and inviolate".
Mr Wang's egg-yolk remains inviolate.
