In what is hardly news, Bush again picks a poor choice for an important position. Michael Baroody, a high-ranking member of the National Association of Manufacturers, has been nomintated as chair of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (the agency responsible for reigning in manufacturers). What exactly is it about conflict of interest that Bush doesn't understand?

Link to ConsumerAffairs article.

On April 23rd, the ID Theft Task Force that's chaired by Alberto Gonzales (the US Attorney General) and co chaired by Deborah Platt Majores (the chairwoman of the FTC) has released their final recommendations for reducing identity theft.

Here are a few of their better recommendations:

And here are some of their less-thought-out ones:

Where's the Freeze recommendation?

For those who don't know my site, I am a big proponent of credit security freezes. I am severely disappointed in this final set of recommendations in that they softened the language from their initial recommendations from

For residents of states in which state law authorizes a credit freeze, consider placing a credit freeze on their credit file.7 This option is most useful when the breach includes information that can be used to open a new account, such as SSNs. A credit freeze cuts off third party access to a consumer’s credit report, thereby effectively preventing the issuance of new credit in the consumer’s name.

to

Among the state-enacted remedies without a federal counterpart is one granting consumers the right to obtain a credit freeze. Credit freezes make a consumer’s credit report inaccessible when, for example, an identity thief attempts to open an account in the victim’s name. State laws differ in several respects, including whether all consumers can obtain a freeze or only identity theft victims; whether credit reporting agencies can charge the consumer for unfreezing a file (which would be necessary when applying for credit); and the time allowed to the credit reporting agencies to unfreeze a file. These provisions are relatively new, and there is no "track record" to show how effective they are, what costs they may impose on consumers and businesses, and what features are most beneficial to consumers. An assessment of how these measures have been implemented and how effective they have been would help policy makers in considering whether a federal credit freeze law would be appropriate. Accordingly, the Task Force recommends that the FTC, with support from the Task Force member agencies, assess the impact and effectiveness of credit freeze laws, and report on the results in the first quarter of 2008.

This is very weak and isn't even a recommendation of it's own, just a sub-component of "Assess Efficacy of Tools Available to Victims". So it went from the nice, solid (and correctly worded) "effectively preventing the issuance of new credit in the consumer’s name" to "there is no 'track record' to show how effective they are, what costs they may impose on consumers and businesses, and what features are most beneficial to consumers". Ok. Sure.

I'm going to stick with my original assessment, the ID Theft Task force has failed. Yes there are consequences to businesses and commerce if we implement credit freezes. Industries that thrive on consumer debt (ie, 21st century slavery) will dry up or at least be cut down a limb or two and credit reporting companies will make less money (boo hoo).

But if the question is "what is the easiest, quickest, most effective way to curb ID theft", Credit Security Freezes are the hands-down answer.

This is an iteresting article about how Vista, with it's poor security, lack of compatibility, high price, and integrated features that users hate (like DRM and security alerts) might make people start to seriously wonder why they're still using Windows.

I don't personally buy the argument that Linux will be the system they run to because I haven't yet seen a version of Linux that could match the user friendliness of Windows (with the possible exception of SUSE). But I'm no Linux expert. We'll have to see.

(H/T to Schneier for the link)

And on that note, be sure to check out this link for an article comparing Ubuntu Linux VS MS Vista.

I had to laugh at this. It seems that Microsoft is offering a discount to anyone that downloaded a beta test of Vista. The article suggests it's because no one really wants Vista and why should they?

Talon, a Pentagon program that has been used to track and monitor peaceful group and members of some churches is now being dismantled.

Assuming there are protections in place to prevent this kind of thing from happening again and that whoever was responsible for this in the first place is disciplined, then this is a good thing.

From the, "why, oh why, doesn't stupid hurt?" department, congress is now considering a bill similar to the CAN-SPAM act for spyware. Like the CAN-SPAM act, it doesn't actually stop anything, but rather legalizes it instead.

Let's sum up. If the Spy Act become law, hardware, software, and network vendors will be granted carte blanche to use spyware themselves to police their customers' use of their products and services. Incredibly broad exceptions will probably allow even the worst of the adware outfits to operate with legal cover. State attempts to deal with the spyware problem will be pre-empted and enforcement left up almost entirely to the FTC. Gee, what's not to like in that deal?

(H/T to Slashdot for the link)

I had no idea Diebold sold to the French. But seriously:

Philippe de Villiers, a nationalist Catholic candidate in the election, called it a "cheating machine" as he voted in his home town of Herbiers in western France.

Note that it doesn't actually say who makes the voting machines. Maybe it really was Diebold.

From the "consider the source" department, Microsoft is tooting their own horn about how well Sender ID prevents spam. The part about this that kills me is that if Microsoft made one stupidly obvious change to Hotmail, I would almost never open spam e-mails.

All they need to do is let me see the actual address of the sender instead of just the name. That way I wouldn't confuse barbara@realsite.com with barbara@diywehhh.du.ru (which I do because Hotmail will only show you "Barbara" as the sender for both if that's the name they entered).

Right now, it is only this ridiculous flaw that causes me to open spam messages at all. Sometimes I can't tell if a message is real or not until I do.

While Dell originall switched wholesale to Vista (as did most vendors), due to high demand, they will be offering XP preinstalled again. Of course, if Microsoft refuses to license them to do so, I wonder how that will work out…

Can it be? Will they actually get rid of Cheney? Then maybe people wouldn't be so afraid to impeach Bush! Go, Go, Go!

(H/T to Digg.com for the link)

While they aren't the first (even though they mysteriously claim to be).

"We also don't think that bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., ought to tell us that if we're going to get on a plane we have to carry their card, so when it's scanned through they know where you went, when you got there and when you came home," said Schweitzer, a Democrat.

(H/T to Slashdot for the link)

If you're related to a felon or just happen to have similar DNA, the Police may come knocking at your door.

This is just one more reason why we need to fight and fight to prevent any type of collection and storage of DNA information from innoent people. I know that targetting relatives doesn't initially require DNA, but the obvious next step once they find that relative is to force a DNA sample for comparison.

I'm not certain I'm against that in some cases, but the primary question that comes to mind is, what do they do with the DNA evidence once the relative has been ruled out? Does it stay forever (likely) even though they were innocent?

(H/T to Privacy.org for the link)

In a smart move, the Phillipine government is asking hackers far and wide to break their system. In a move that's sure to provide a lot of free publicity and free security testing at worst, the Phillipines prove they can do the job much better then our guys.

(H/T to Slashdot for the link)

Tantrum turns to police record.

She flailed away at the teachers who tried to control her. She pulled one woman’s hair. She was kicking.

Unless the kid has a knife or some other kind of weapon, nothing they can do could be counted as dangerous.

Desre’e was charged with battery on a school official, which is a felony, and two misdemeanors: disruption of a school function and resisting a law enforcement officer. After a brief stay at the county jail, she was released to the custody of her mother.

So your kid has a felony and two misdemeanors on record from the time they're 6? What was wrong with the normal way, calling her mother? So now this poor girl, her mother, the community, and most of the Internet all have less respect and trust for police officers. Great work Florida.

(H/T to Schneier for the link)

From the "thank god someone is paying attention" department, California is working on a bill to ban RFID chipping kids.

Legislation approved Monday would prohibit public schools from requiring the implementation of radio-wave devices that broadcast students' personal identification and monitor their movement around campus — information the mechanical horrors could theoretically use to turn our children into livestock.

…

More RFID bills led by Simitian are currently being sent through California committees. One bill places a similar temporary ban on RFID technology in California driver's licenses. Another will place privacy safeguards on any existing RFID-enabled government IDs. Simitian also has led a bill that would restrict forced RFID chip implants in people.

Nice. Yeah, California!

List of post 9/11 watch lists.

Watch out for TIDE:

Likely to have the name of anyone who ever called anyone who ever called Al Qaeda.

That's just funny. And this one:

Name: No-Fly and Selectee Lists

Details: Being on the TSA's no-fly list grounds you, while the Selectee list gets your bags pawed through.

Who's Listed?: Likely to include someone named Bob Johnson, and Edward "Not the Senator" Kennedy.

It must be nice to be a senator so you can get your name immediately removed from these lists. Too bad for the rest of us.

(H/T to Schneier for the link)

I, like thousands of others, posted the news about Boston freaking out over nothing earlier this year. I didn't make a big deal of it then, but now it's happened a third time? Jeez Boston, get a grip!

(H/T to Schneier for the link)

Despite what many people think, violent games really has little to do with why people choose to commit violent crimes and apparently Rush Limbaugh agrees.

But how many people are playing video games out there? How many millions of people play video games, and how many millions of people have guns?

If you start blaming the video games, you may as well demand video game control because it's the same thing when you start trying to blame guns for this.

The Windows Updater is supposed to patch your system against critical flaws and exploits. To make things easier for normal users, there's an "Express Install" button where you don't have to review each update one at a time and can just trust Microsoft to install only the most security critical patches.

Enter the Windows Genuine Advantage notification tool. It tool doesn't protect you or do anything at all to help your system, it collects data about your computer and declares your copy of Windows legal or not. In millions of cases, it wrongly identifies systems as being "pirated" and nags users repeatedly about having an illegal copy and how to contact Microsoft for a legitimate one. Even worse, it locks you out of further security updates until you do.

To make sure that you don't miss WGA, they slipped it into IE7, Windows Defender, and Windows Media Player 11. But the worst of all was issuing it as a "critical update" on Windows updater. This way, anyone who clicked the "Express Install" button would get it by default without knowing better.

It's because of practices like this that geeks don't like Microsoft. They slipped a tool onto your machine that spies on your system and disables functionality. Sounds like a virus to me.

So why am I posting such old news now? First, I haven't talked about this before and it really ticks me off. Second, the WGA made PC World's 20 all time most annoying tech products (at number 9).

For it's incessant prompts to "allow or continue", it's terrible compatibility with older software, and for Aero not working on most machines even though Microsoft marketing always shows the Aero experience (which so many people don't actually get to see). PC World puts Vista as #8 on the top 20 most annoying tech products of all time.