Well, since the family left, I haven’t had much to post about. I certainly haven’t done much other than work, so I think I will post a mixture of stuff that I’ve been reading lately.
Next is a really good post on Bruce Schneier’s blog about a very big misnomer, identity theft. As Bruce points out, identity theft isn’t really about stealing your identity. You are still you. What it is is financial fraud against credit companies, whose incredibly lax credit controls allow people to be issued credit in your name. In any other case, the credit companies would be liable for this fraud, not YOU, who has committed no crime and has no control over the matter at all. The US Congress needs to put the liability back where it belongs, on the credit companies who allow such poor controls that anyone with a bit of public information can get credit in your name.
However, I hold out little hope for this since the incomparably corrupt members of the US Congress just passed a law that was literally bought by the credit card companies, which makes it almost impossible to declare Chapter 7 bankruptcy. In classic “I don’t care about anyone but my bribers^H^H^H^financial backers” form, the Congress also refused to consider for special treatment cases where people are driven into bankruptcy from medical bills (despite the fact that 44M people in this country don’t have medical insurance and hence when they get seriously ill, they either have to declare bankruptcy or die), where they are US Servicemen or women overseas, etc. Next on the Congressional agenda… debtor’s prison. Hope you like the government you voted in folks. It’s obvious they don’t like YOU.
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