It’s a huge, multifaceted problem — the bilking of senior citizens. And making seniors aware is only part of the solution. Of course they, we, I need to be aware of and on guard against all the schemes. But articles like The New York Times’ “Phone Swindlers Tap Into Fear and a Sense of Duty” … Continue reading Fighting phone fraud
“I cannot imagine a more ‘indiscriminate’ and ‘arbitrary’ invasion than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for purposes of querying and analyzing it without prior judicial approval.” Those are the words of Judge Richard J. Leon of the Federal District Court of the District of Columbia as … Continue reading Judge comes down hard on NSA phone tactics
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOya0-Dk_TE] On August 9 President Obama announced reforms to the US intelligence gathering system, apparently in an effort to reassure an increasingly skeptical public. As I sat rolling my eyes at changes we’ll have no way of verifying, he said, “America is not interested in spying on ordinary people.” My thoughts at the time were … Continue reading NSA reforms: Obama not believable
Privacy advocates are understandably outraged over yesterday’s revelations of widespread spying on Americans by the Obama administration. Coming on top of last month’s allegations of spying on AP reporters, IRS misdeeds, and Benghazi bungling, it appears more and more as though the wheels have come off the Obama administration. At first it looked as though … Continue reading The wheels have come off the Obama administration
Still scratching my head over the TSA’s decision to allow small knives on planes again. Where’s the logic? The knives they are going to allow (blades up to 2.36″ long and .5″ wide) have longer blades than the box cutters used to hijack the 9/11 planes. How are they not a bigger threat? This makes … Continue reading Aren’t knives worse than box cutters?
An interesting article on Ars Technica yesterday told of a really dumb Internet extortionist who stole compromising photos from some women’s Facebook pages, and then threatened to post them publicly if the women did not display more for him via Skype. Instead, they called police, and the perpetrator was tracked down very quickly via his … Continue reading Sermon 2013: The Internet is not private
