Quick Roundup 62

Grill it outside the husks....

After wrestling with a software install (to use the term charitably) yesterday that might have me looking for a new Linux distribution, I took some time off to fire up the grill in celebration of Memorial Day. I can think of worse ways to kill an evening than to sip some Dogfish Head Raison d'Etre while reading from Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics and tending my grill.

It had been awhile since I tried grilling corn on the cob. Last time, I was unhappy with the results of grilling it in foil, so I decided to try Steve Raichlen's method of grilling it directly, basting with a butter sauce. Very good. I'll tweak the sauce a couple of times and it will be spectacular!

Hmmm. I sound like some backwoods, distant relative of Hugh Akston here.... Why couldn't I have thought of "Bubba Akston" for a blog name?

Done: An Army of Davids

After reading a few pages here and there over the span of a month or so, I have finally finished reading Glenn Reynolds' book, An Army of Davids, and will comment on it at length some time in the near future. The quick and dirty is that this book vacillated between exciting and excruciating. Reynolds does a great job of showing the scope of the amazing technological innovations that have occurred in the past few decades, and how they can significantly change our lives for the better. But then, he'll fall short of some really good point because he is indifferent to (or unclear about) the principles that make freedom -- and such innovation -- possible.

It's worth a read, but be prepared, especially if you're familiar with the works of Ayn Rand, to gnash your teeth a few times when he misses a point that ought to be obvious, or contradicts himself.

Why is this a problem?

The New York Times has a long story on how the over-eagerness of credit card companies to extend credit is making identity theft easy.

[T]he real problem, many officials and consumer advocates say, lies elsewhere. In recent years banks have campaigned energetically to extend more credit to more people with fewer hassles, and retailers and consumers have embraced instant, near-anonymous access to credit.

Last year a group of prosecutors, law enforcement officers and security executives from banks and credit card associations met to discuss ways of curbing identity theft. The group had plenty of ideas, including PIN numbers or fingerprint verification for all credit card purchases and a ban on mailings that include blank checks.

But all ran counter to the promotional campaigns of banks and, banks say, to the desires of consumers. [bold added]

The article goes on to discuss "credit freeze" legislation and other attempts to fix the problem. Another, older article describes legislation that goes after small business owners if they do not keep personal information of employees sufficiently secure. All of this strikes me as the kind of superfluous, pandering legislation we already see too much of these days.

The Times article also describes a service to which one can subscribe to prevent identity theft.

Though like most consumer victims the Harrises did not have to pay the bogus charges, they now pay $220 a year to LifeLock, a protective service that started last September in Phoenix.

The company's core service is simple: Whenever a bank or other business requests to look at a LifeLock subscriber's credit history, the company gets a fraud alert asking to confirm that the customer applied for credit. Federal law empowers consumers to get these alerts on their own, but they must reapply regularly to one of the three companies that issue credit reports.

I have a wee little question here. Why does federal law -- and by implication, state and local law -- apparently "empower" credit card companies, by default, to open accounts in my name so easily? Why do we have to either pay (or regularly go through a hassle with a credit reporting agency) to achieve what should be the default condition -- that the bank should confirm that we have applied for credit? And doesn't that ability, whims of the general public notwithstanding, violate my rights?

"Default permit" is as stupid in banking as it is in computer security (HT: Ian Hamet). The real question isn't "What can I do to prevent it?" but "Why do I have to worry about this in the first place?" I am far more careful than most people with my personal information. No one had to tell me to get a shredder. And yet I still have to worry about having a credit account opened in my name?

I will admit that I haven't thought very much about this. Your input is welcome.

Update: I found that this article lent some good perspective on the Times's numbers for the incidence of identity theft. In sum: It happens far less often than the Times indicates and about half of the victims have identities stolen by "friends" and relatives.

Comments Galore

I enjoyed the discussion generated by Friday's post on "Philosophy in The Simpsons" over the weekend.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Added update to ID theft section.