Adjust the cams, get fines

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Of course, this has been suspected/known for a long time, but Ars Technica covers the story of cities that seem to be changing the timing of traffic lights to ever shorter durations in order to increase revenues from red light cameras.

George W. Bush

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Bush, will be turning US spy satellites on Americans.

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South Carolina's Governor just signed into law a bill that gives SC residents the ability to freeze their credit for free!

And of course there's always this:

The credit reporting industry has opposed such legislation relating to credit report freezes. One concern is that too many states will have different regulations, which would make it difficult for credit reporting bureaus to comply. That's a good argument, and it's why this issue needs to be addressed at the federal level. In the meantime, South Carolina was right to take action on the state level.

Imagine that! Different states have different laws! Oh wah wah, cry me a freaking river! If they wanted to do business in Mexico or Canada, do you think there might be some different laws? It's not as if there aren't companies who do business in tons of different countries in the world successfully despite all the different laws and customs.

This is such a bogus argument, I'm going to have to try to remember not to even bother getting worked up about it anymore.

CIA

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Someone I know of who works at a three-letter agency forwarded me this CIA Simple Sabotage Field Manual from 1944 that was recently declassified. If you every wondered if someone was TRYING to get in the way at work, maybe they are…

Here's the full list in case you don't want the pdf:

You can Downlaod it here

George W. Bush

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A recent ABC story shows that the authorization for torture when high, but didn't include Bush. Now it seems as if that may not be the case.

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A few important links: Mystery Shoppers Find Deceit, Incompetence Among Tax Preparers Tax Scams Proliferate In April

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Well flipping duh.

Most newly issued passports carry an embedded RFID containing digitally signed biometric information. Access to this chip is wireless, which introduces a security risk, the possibility that an attacker might be able to access data on a person’s passport without the owner knowing.

It's this reason that putting RFID in passports was such a stupid idea to begin with. Put wireless into any system that protects private information and watch the world come crashing down around you.

I'm not saying that it's impossible to secure a system using wireless, but it takes a whole hell of a lot more effort that was put into the passports system.

Anyway, now that someone has proven this is viable, those fears that someone can just scan a crowd and find the Americans to target have been entirely validated.

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Though the credit reporting companies scrambled to allow freezes in all states most likely to prevent each state from enacting their own laws with lower fees and more restrictions than they wanted, many states are still pursuing their own legislation (as they should).

Georgia's proposed law would allow freezes for only $3 and would automatically be free for anyone 65 and up (the first state I've heard of to have such a provision). Though it's not law yet, this is one of the better ones I've seen.

Arizona is also busy on a credit freeze law, but I wasn't able to find any details on how well their law is written.

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According to Businesswire.com, Lifelock will be adding a real bon-a-fide service to their program.

Effective immediately, LifeLock will begin rolling out eRecon(TM), a regular patrol of the Internet in search of the social security numbers, credit card numbers, driver’s license numbers and email addresses of LifeLock members to protect against the information being illegally traded or sold online.

What is not explained is what parts of the Internet will be "scoured" or what they will do when they find this information. But in either case, a service that actually monitors your online profile is hinting at becoming actually useful.

Don't let them cheat you.

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Not too long ago, I put an item on my Christmas wishlist that my wife bought, but I put a link to a fraud company as a place to buy it. If I had bothered to check it out first, I would have quickly realized as much and saved us both a lot of trouble.

So before you pull out your credit card, you should check them out.