It’s hard to have confidence in Dubya’s pledges to keep illegally obtained data from being seen by unauthorized persons; the government can’t even keep the personal data it obtains legally from being seen by anyone who wants a peek.
Sunday, June 25, 2006
An Alternative Solution
Friday, June 23, 2006
Tunnel Vision
A leading indicator of 21st Century hell is the presence of advertising everywhere. On the walls above urinals, blue screens at ballparks for ads only television viewers can see, before the movie (trailers don’t count; Pepsi ads do). A gas station in
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
The Flag Amendment
I am a veteran and a member of the American Civil Liberties Union. (Inclusion in both groups is not an oxymoron.) I am appalled by the upcoming vote to amend the Constitution to allow Congress to pass laws outlawing flag burning. While I have no intentions of burning any flags and think those who do are reprehensible, I am frightened by what would be the first step to abridge the rights specifically laid out in the Bill of Rights over two hundred years ago. Passing this amendment would serve no constructive purpose other than to start us on a slippery slope to Constitutionally limiting our rights.
Friday, June 09, 2006
Casting an Increasingly Narrow Net
It seems like just a few days since I wrote to my senators and representative about a matter of high importance. I used to rant to all of you about them, but, frankly, none of you ever did dick to make things better. Now I’m going over your head.
Not that I’m kidding myself that these guys care. Every elected representative has one primary agenda item: get re-elected. Senator Sarbanes is retiring this year, so that doesn’t apply to him, yet he is the only one of the three to reply to my last letter. All right, I know it wasn’t really him, it was his office, but it was a nice note, written with an eye toward allowing the less enlightened to delude themselves.
Today the
Here’s the note I wrote to my elected representatives. I know they don’t care what I think, and they don’t care what you think. Enough of us get mad enough, and they might care what we think. Go ahead. If you have time to read this and half of the other crap you skim or watch on TV each day, you can write a letter.
As the gap between the richest and poorest continues to grow, the Internet has become a prime method for economic and educational advancement by those who may not have the resources for more formal education, or traditional
business opportunities. Pending legislation eliminating net neutrality endangers these opportunities.
Allowing telecommunications companies to control Internet access essentially makes them censors of the Internet. They may dispute this, but we have an excellent of their good intentions in our own back yard: Comcast’s refusal to
provide its cable customers with access to the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network (MASN) because MASN is a competitor of Comcast Sports Net. Other cable companies have refused specific programming that differed with their corporate agendas. This legislation would allow them the same control of the Internet.
Aside from the educational and economic opportunities, the Internet has become the ultimate safeguard of our First Amendment rights. Allowing large telecommunications companies to provide access based on the content provider’s ability to pay (or their political, religious, or personal convictions) has the grim potential to shackle large avenues of open discourse. This is anathema to the values
In these times of domestic surveillance and government credibility gaps, an unfettered Internet serves a valuable function.
Please take advantage of the respect and influence you have earned from your peers to help to defeat this restrictive and un-American legislation.
Sunday, June 04, 2006
Just Another Dick Head
A side benefit of last summer’s
The Crazy Like Me Correspondent and I were lucky enough to catch Dick in concert this week at The Ram’s Head in
Dale doesn’t just give a concert; he puts on a show. He plays some tunes you wouldn’t expect: “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” “Folsom Prison Blues” (to which he sings as much of “Ring of Fire” as he can remember), “Fever,” and the timeless surfer classic, “Hava Nagila.” (Dale makes you wonder how the Beach Boys missed covering this one.) Of course, the evening couldn’t go by without the classic, “Miserlou,” made famous (again) as the theme for the movie Pulp Fiction.
His relaxed banter is corny, but genuinely amusing. He also plays drums (well), double teams with his bassist on the same ax, plays bass using drum sticks instead of his fingers, and knocks off a few choruses of jazz trumpet quite nicely.
Dale turned sixty-nine last month but looks like he’s having too much fun to stop making his annual tour any time soon. That’s good news. Anyone looking for a fun evening watching an accepted master would do well to become a Dick Head for a night.
I took the Sole Heir to see Maynard Ferguson when she started playing trumpet; I wanted her to be able to say thirty years from now that she’d seen Maynard play in person. (Incidentally, Maynard and Dick Dale share May 4 as a birthday.) She had a ball, and I think she appreciated the sentiment. Now I can thank my brother for the same thing, as I have seen the King of the Surf Guitar and lived to tell about it.
Bitchin’.
Piling On
It’s not bad enough some hooplehead (don’t forget: www.savedeadwood.net) at Veterans’ Affairs lost my (and possibly your) personal information; the credit reporting agencies have to pile on, too.
Yours truly recently requested a fraud alert to be placed on my account at the three credit reporting agencies. Instructions indicated that I only had to inform one, and the others would be notified and would comply.
I called TransUnion. They had an easy, automated, phone system for taking my information as securely as could be expected, and the alert took effect earlier this week. Experian notified me of their compliance a couple of days later.
Yesterday I received word from Equifax that I had to send them much the same information as was “misplaced,” except in a more current form. They wanted photocopies sent to a Post Office box.
This makes me feel much better. This is private information, the disclosure of which prompted the fraud alert in the first place. I feel a whole lot better dropping it into a computer system than leaving it in a batch where some minimum wage-earning cracker (they’re in
Here’s the real problem: they’re The Man. They have me (you, us) by the short hairs. Our private, personal information is now their property. They may do with it pretty much as they want; our wishes and intents don’t matter.
If this bothers you as much as it bothers me, all I can think of to do is get The Other Man involved: the government. (I almost wrote The Bigger Man, but then I remembered who really runs things in
Dear:
I am one of the veterans affected by the recent loss of records by a VA employee. I immediately contacted TransUnion to place a fraud alert on my credit history. They had a special phone line set up to accommodate the high volume of calls expected. The process was quick, relatively painless, and fully automated, which relieved some of my worries about passing along private and potentially sensitive information. The web site I checked, and the TransUnion phone message, indicated that the other two major credit reporting agencies would be informed, and that fraud alerts would be placed at both of those locations.
Yesterday I received in the mail a notice from Equifax, informing me they would not place a fraud alert on my account until I provided photocopies of the following:
- Social Security Card, W-2 form, or current pay stub with Social Security Number.
- Driver’s License, State Identification Card, Utility Bill, or Lease Agreement with current address.
I’m asking for the fraud alert because personal information (such as my Social Security number) may have been obtained by parties unknown; Equifax now wants me to send the same information through to a Post Office box so they can “assure” me some minimal level of protection from someone else using it. This borders on the surreal.
There’s no practical way to live in contemporary society without access to credit, so the credit agencies are a necessary evil. Why they are allowed to grant requests as to individuals’ personal information, without informing that individual, has always been a mystery to me. (It seems all the vaunted privacy protections we have in this county are primarily intended to protect out personal information from ourselves. Credit agencies are under no obligation to inform us of irregular activity; my medical records belong to my doctor, not to me.) To create an additional potential security hole to an already extraordinary situation only adds insult to injury.
This is a relatively trivial matter when compared to the suffering of those veterans who are currently returning from
I’m just one individual, and I expect I’ll complain abut, but will comply with, the Equifax request. What I’m asking is that you use your considerable authority and respect in the Senate {House} to see to it that all those affected are protected as well as they can be.
Thank you for your time and attention.