The Patriot Act should never have been passed. We all saw the potential for abuse, but our "trust us" government assured us that it would never happen. Yeah, right. Now that the inevitible abuses have come to light, it would be nice if someone would face some consequences for a change. Like maybe Alberto Gonzales who lied to congress saying that there were no abuses during the hearing for the reauthorization of the Patriot Act. JTAG ERROR: No slashdot_ht index defined Tags: George Bush, Well Duh!

I feel pretty dumb for not noticing this new law, but now Maryland residents will get credit freeze protection! It doesn’t go into effect until Jan 1st, 2008, but as soon as it does, people in Maryland will no longer have to worry about most ID theft or data breaches. Here’s a link to the PDF describing the process for implementing the freeze: Consumer’s Union Writeup of Maryland Credit Freeze procedures. Tags: Good Stuff, Identity Theft

The Firefox team has decided to include a user-written plugin into the standard release of Firefox 3. This plugin highlights the domain name making it easier for normal users to see and understand what site they’re actually on versus what they think they’re on. For example, most people think that just because the url says yourbank.com anywhere means that’s the site they’re on. The reality is that it must be in this format: http://[anything at all].yourbank.com/[anything else] to be valid. Any other arrangment is a phishing attack: http://yourbank.loans.com http://12.293.28.18/yourbank.com etc. This plugin will make it easier to spot by highlighting the valid part of the URL which is the domain (which is easily confused by less techie users who don’t understand that the domain section of the URL is backwards). Tags: Good Stuff, Identity Theft

Consumeraffairs has been watching the banking industry with increasing shame. Banks realize how easy it is to "encourage" customers to make banking mistakes that end up in costly fees: Note that these are concious, purposeful acts designed to bring more debt to the consumer. Let me explain one of the scenarios above: You make the following purchases during the day: Your account balance: $70 (It's almost payday, you're running low)

Sandwich: $5

Starbucks Coffee: $10

Socks, Flowers, and a DVD movie (you're at Walmart… One stop shopping): $35

Eggs and Milk: $5

Little do you realize, your wife has decided to go ahead an fill up the SUV for the weekend trip.

Gas: $65

Now, assuming that the bank takes care of all transactions at the end of the day, what's the most advantagous way for them to do this? Easy! Apply all debits in order of size. Watch what happens: And to add insult to injury, maybe you got paid that day and deposited the money, but the bank held the deposit until the next day for no reason that you can think of (also part of their bag of tricks). So in this case, the bank's artificial policy of applying drafts in size order has hurt you plenty. If you complain (if) then there's a chance they'll reverse one charge as a matter of customer service. That still leaves you with a $60 debt to the bank. Compare it with this scenario where it was done in the order the drafts occured: In this case you have one overdraft fee due to a simple mistake. Chances are the bank will credit it and you and your wife can make sure you don't make the same mistake twice when the balance is low. Life is happy and birds sing… Anyway, you see how banks, who know a whole lot more about money management than you, can make very little and innocent csounding policy changes that will screw you royally. Let's hope that the bill that Consumeraffairs mentions in the article passes to end this kind of crap. Lastly, a freebie for you. If you are the kind of person who frequently finds themselves paying overdraft fees, try this trick I learned in my more "cash desperate" days: Tags: Consequences, If You Only Knew, Scams - Ripoffs - Dirty Tricks

Public Citizen with it’s ever-watchful eye on congress, brings us news of a bill to try and kill mandatory arbitration in clauses in employment, consumer, franchise, and civil disputes. Mandatory arbitration is used to preemptively prevent you from ever suing the company by forcing you to agree to let a “nuetral” third party decide and and all disputes between you and them. Being that it completely prevents you from utilizing the court system for redress of wrongs, I’d say that this bill is a pretty good thing. Tags: Congress, Good Stuff

It's well known that body language is very difficult to control and often gives away your true thoughts and feelings for those capable of looking for the signs. Now a German company is trying to make software that understands those slight signals in order to produce superior quality ads. And with all such technologies, they must be banned or strictly controlled to prevent them from being turned against us at the flip of a switch. Tags: Big Brother

The TSA is failing more tests: To which the TSA replied that the tests are unnaturally difficult and whine that it paints an "innacurate" picture of their work force. To which I wonder if the terrorists will not be so sneaky and mean as the TSA auditors. Perhaps they won't use every dirty trick. They wouldn't want the TSA to look bad after all. That sounds like a perfect Bush-era response. "These statistics are horrible!" "Yeah, what should we do to fix them?" "Fix them!? We should cover them up!" Too bad the TSA doesn't get Nation Security as an excuse. (Thanks to The Consumerist for the link) Tags: Big Brother, George Bush

Most people don’t realize that in many cases, the only thing that prevents you from keeping your phone when switching to another carrier is corporate greed and a bit of non-obvious industry collusion. Everyone seems refuses to take customers unless they sign a new contract and buy a new phone. The FCC chairman is proposing a new rule that would, in effect, do away with this sad state of affairs. Granted, that’s only for the new 700Mhz band that will be opening up once TV is forced to go digital, but any company that wins the rights to that band will have to follow the new rules. Now, what are the odds that all those big, bad cell companies will allow that kind of rule to go through? And isn’t it pathetic that a company can even control what the head of the FCC does?

In an act of extreme courage and dedication, a current Department of Justice employee wrote a devastating op-ed in the Denver Post which has been picked up by Crooks and Liars.com, Digg.com, and hopefully others. Calling him a "National Disgrace", John S. Koppel, a 26 year veteran of the Department of Justice blasts Bush and his tenure as president. Wow. This guy is my new hero. Tags: George Bush

In a somewhat humbling article of human nature, Shankar Vedantam explains how people tend to villify wrongs done to them while minimizing wrongs done by them. What does this have to do with Bush? It explains why he can be so wrong but believe he's so right. Spoken about the Libby pardon: Very true. I am sorry if I ever called him evil and despicable (which, for the record, I never have). But as I've said before, it doesn't matter what he believes. He's a lead weight that is sinking our country and the rest of the world along with us. Tags: George Bush