Apocalypse When?

Margaret Legum has published a very insightful article on the risks of collapse of the American economy in Sane Views. Her perspective takes into account the effects of the current glitch in the markets on ordinary people, a focus almost completely passed-over in mainstream media coverage.

“What about the millions of non-wealthy people, not only in the States, now dispossessed of their homes: imagine that process for yourself. They were persuaded by lending institutions to take out loans and bonds that can be repaid only over decades – and on only the most optimistic assumptions, including no interest rate rises? Now their loans are ‘junk’, and they are homeless. To add insult to injury it is they who get skelled-out by governments for irresponsible borrowing – not the institutions which in effect misled them about the safety of their loans. Those institutions are financially protected by the collateral on the loans; the borrowers are stripped.

And what about the solid citizens who have saved for a pension and/or put savings into stock exchange assets only to find they have plummeted in value, contrary to what was promised. The managers who invested those funds have done their best, in good conscience, and covered themselves in the small print about how the value can go down as well as up. They are not personally to blame. But the victims are the deluded savers.

In any case, is it true that this is simply a temporary blip? The financial experts say the world’s underlying economies are ‘strong’, so no need to worry in the long term. They are referring principally to company profits – not to growth, employment or average incomes. In all developed countries growth rates are down there at 1% or 2%., and unemployment and high rates of working poor are problems everywhere.

What keeps company profits up is two very different things: people buying their products: and asset stripping through mergers and acquisitions, and the specialist version called private equity deals. Click here for more.”

Severn man gets 6 years for identity theft

The Baltimore Sun reported that:

A Severn man was sentenced to more than six years in prison today and ordered to pay restitution of at least $120,000 for stealing people’s identities and gaining access to private and corporate credit counts, federal prosecutors said.

Ronald Steven Williams II, 32, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to engaging in the fraud from June 29, 2001, to July 14, 2006.

Convicting Williams is definitely on the right track to curtailing identity fraud. The damages he was ordered to pay suggest straight forward restitution of monetary losses. It is difficult to assign a value to the other damages incurred in having one’s identity stolen, however, a precedence will have to be set eventually if we are to continue to rely upon and have faith in an identity based social structure.

UK government announces advanced supply contracts for pandemic ‘flu vaccine

This is interesting, the UK government is reportedly ensuring a guaranteed supply will be available of a vaccine that doesn’t even exist yet for a human flu strain that hasn’t been identified.

Advanced supply contracts to provide the vaccine for a possible ‘flu pandemic have been awarded by the UK Department of Health to pharmaceutical company GSK and Baxter Healthcare.

The contracts, worth £155.4 million over four years, are part of the government’s continued work to prepare for and reduce the impact of a possible ‘flu pandemic. Under these contracts GSK and Baxter are committed to supply a pandemic influenza vaccine as soon as the pandemic strain is identified and made available by the World Health Organization. Click here for more.”

Monster attack steals user data

The BBC ran the following article on an attack on the Monster website, of which everyone should be made aware. In addition to Trojan attacks on such online services, criminal rings are sending unsolicited e-mails purportedly affiliated with job postings on Workopolis.ca, which appear to be part of a money laundering operation.

A computer program was used to access the employers’ section of the website using stolen log-in credentials.

Symantec said the log-ins were used to harvest user names, e-mail addresses, home addresses and phone numbers, which were uploaded to a remote web server.

The stolen data could be used to send phishing and spam e-mails.

“This remote server held over 1.6 million entries with personal information belonging to several hundred thousands of candidates, mainly based in the US, who had posted their resumes to the Monster.com website,” reported Symantec.

The firm has contacted Monster.com to inform them of the security breach. Click here for more.

Iraq’s Biometric Database Could Become “Hit List”: Army

Humans have developed such wonderful technology. Now, if we could just develop humans a little more perhaps the technology would be safe to use…

Wired has published an interesting interview with Lieutenant Colonel John Velliquette, the biometrics manager in Iraq for the “Coalition Police Assistance Training Team.” The interview covers a growing biometric system in Iraq that has been compared with the Rwandan identification card system left behind by the Belgians. The now infamous Rwandan system was used by the Hutus to easily determine Tutsis for extermination during the genocide in 1994. The concern with the Iraqi system stems from the degree to which personal names might denote religious or tribal affiliations and how such information might be used in an already unstable region teetering on the brink of (if not already in) civil war should the system fall into the “wrong hands”.

This seems to be a perfect case of how a tool may help one group of people in the short-term and, as a result, is implemented with little thought (or perhaps care) as to what the long-term implications might be.