ChoicePoint owns you

Shifting sands in data leak (SFgate)

ChoicePoint knows quite a bit about you. If you're unlucky, you're one of the people who's identity has been stolen through the misuse ChoicePoint's data. So who are they?

...ChoicePoint, based outside Atlanta, was created in 1997 as a spin-off from Equifax, one of the leading credit-reporting agencies. Its original purpose was to analyze claims on behalf of the insurance industry.

That mission evolved and expanded as ChoicePoint went on a buying spree, acquiring about 60 other firms with businesses ranging from data collection and background checks to DNA analysis and direct marketing.

ChoicePoint is now one of the leading data brokers in the country, acting as a sort of private intelligence service for both corporate and government clients (including the FBI).

The company had about $900 million in sales last year and is believed to have more government clients than its two main rivals, LexisNexis and Acxiom.

'Any interaction where you give up personal information can create an opportunity for them to obtain it and put it in their database,' said Chris Hoofnagle, who heads the San Francisco office of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

'You get arrested, you get married, you have a child -- ChoicePoint can get copies of the records and sell it,' he said. 'If you've ever had dealings with the government, they have information about you.'

From a consumer's point of view, one of the biggest problems about ChoicePoint is that there's no way to opt out or otherwise prohibit the company from circulating your personal info.

..Jones said the company's services range from $5 overviews of new employees to in-depth profiles of individuals costing clients thousands of dollars.

...To be sure, not everything ChoicePoint does is a potential threat to consumers. For example, the company offers its vast resources free of charge when children are missing or abducted...

They're an unregulated industry and they're overdue for regulation. Interestingly even the CEO is quoted as welcoming more oversight. "Stop me before I kill again ...".

Orwell figured this kind of thing would be the provice of governments. He really didn't understand capitalism all that well.

American torture: the case of Maher Arar

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Thrown to the Wolves

I've previously written about this story here and here. We're still doing this; outsourcing our most extreme torture programs to other nations. Note that while we evidently were using Syrian dungeons in 2002, we're now threatening to attack Syria. I guess their torturers didn't give us the answers we wanted.

I really, really, really, tried to defeat Bush.

...In the fall of 2002 Mr. Arar, a Canadian citizen, suddenly found himself caught up in the cruel mockery of justice that the Bush administration has substituted for the rule of law in the post-Sept. 11 world. While attempting to change planes at Kennedy Airport on his way home to Canada from a family vacation in Tunisia, he was seized by American authorities, interrogated and thrown into jail. He was not charged with anything, and he never would be charged with anything, but his life would be ruined.

Mr. Arar was surreptitiously flown out of the United States to Jordan and then driven to Syria, where he was kept like a nocturnal animal in an unlit, underground, rat-infested cell that was the size of a grave. From time to time he was tortured.

He wept. He begged not to be beaten anymore. He signed whatever confessions he was told to sign. He prayed.

Among the worst moments, he said, were the times he could hear babies crying in a nearby cell where women were imprisoned. He recalled hearing one woman pleading with a guard for several days for milk for her child.

He could hear other prisoners screaming as they were tortured.

"I used to ask God to help them," he said.

The Justice Department has alleged, without disclosing any evidence whatsoever, that Mr. Arar is a member of, or somehow linked to, Al Qaeda. If that's so, how can the administration possibly allow him to roam free? The Syrians, who tortured him, have concluded that Mr. Arar is not linked in any way to terrorism...

... Mr. Arar is the most visible victim of the reprehensible U.S. policy known as extraordinary rendition, in which individuals are abducted by American authorities and transferred, without any legal rights whatever, to a regime skilled in the art of torture. The fact that some of the people swallowed up by this policy may in fact have been hard-core terrorists does not make it any less repugnant.

Mr. Arar, who is married and also has an 8-year-old daughter, said the pain from some of the beatings he endured lasted for six months.

"It was so scary," he said. "After a while I became like an animal."

A lawsuit on Mr. Arar's behalf has been filed against the United States by the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York. Barbara Olshansky, a lawyer with the center, noted yesterday that the government is arguing that none of Mr. Arar's claims can even be adjudicated because they "would involve the revelation of state secrets."

Even now US courts can still surprise. Perhaps Mr. Arar's case will yet be heard. Judging by the fall of Zimbabwe, sometimes the courts can retain integrity even when all other institutions have been corrupted.

The IQs of nations

I came across this post in a Slashdot thread:

The following countries have lower average IQs than that of the US (which is 98):

Canada 97 Czech Republic 97 Finland 97 ... Guinea 66 Zimbabwe 66 Congo (Zaire) 65 Sierra Leone 64 Ethiopia 63 Equatorial Guinea 59.

I wondered where the heck this alleged data came from, so I searched on a subset of the list (what did we do before the net?). It turns out it's from a book called the IQ and the Wealth of Nations, evidently inspired by the notorious/famous/infamous "Bell Curve" book.

Hong Kong was #1 on the full list, but one could argue it's too small and atypical for this sort of ranking. South Korea was #2 and perhaps deserves pride of primacy (Despite being a euro I have some strong familial bonds to SK, so I'll claim a sort of secondary pride. One amusing correction: the web page links from SK to an article on the IQ benefits of learning Chinese characters -- which kind of misses the point that one of Korea's most brilliant inventions was a phonetic script that led to widespread literacy.)

So is there anything to this ranking? I'm skeptical of both the quality of the data and the agenda of this web site, but from what we know of the impact of malnutrition and intrauterine stress I would expect many of the world's most poor nations to be at the bottom of an "honest" list. The lesson here is that we we need to couple interventions to improve nutrition and reduce disease burden to the economic interventions critical to reducing poverty.

ALS and Soccer

BBC NEWS | Health | Footballers risk nerve disorder

I recently read that the incidence of ALS in the US was about 1/1000 (higher than I'd have thought). In Italy there were 33 cases among 24,000 soccer (football) players. That's about 50% higher than one would expect based on the US numbers (and the US numbers are lifelong, so the Italian soccer risk might well be 100% higher), but the article refers to a 4-5 fold risk increase.

Well, let's assume there really is a significant increase in risk in Italian soccer players compared to the general population. The commentary in the rest of the article is quite good:

The researchers suggested that the high risk might be linked to sports injuries, performance-enhancing drugs or exposure to environmental toxins such as fertilizers or herbicides used on football fields, as well as genetic factors.

But equally, it might be that people prone to ALS are drawn to sport, said Dr Ammar Al-Chalabi from London's Institute of Psychiatry.

'There could be some quality in their neuromuscular make-up that not only makes them good at sport, football particularly, but also makes them susceptible to ALS,' he said.

Dr Brian Dickie of the Motor Neurone Disease Association, said: 'We still don't know what causes this link, or whether it would be reflected in other groups of footballers and sportspeople.

'There is some anecdotal evidence of a link between high levels of physical exercise and an increased risk of developing motor neurone disease.

'However, much more research needs to be carried out before we can draw definite conclusions.'

It's an interesting correlation, but I bet it's not a causal relationship. It does suggest some interesting research opportunities. Researchers will look at prevalence by socioeconomic class. Does ALS correlate with wealth or relative poverty? Is it related to the prevalence of some early infection? (I've always been interested in the relationship between MS and sunlight, presumably due to some modulation of the cutaneous immune system.)

Bloglines is having trouble ...

Last November Blogger was staggering badly. The election gave Blogger and Blogspot a bit of breathing room, and while they've had problems their doing far better than they were a few months ago.

Now Bloglines is in trouble. The "plumber" picture isn't funny after the 3rd or 4th visit. They're a great service, so I hope they dig out their current mess.

The rise of pseudo-fascism -- winner of the 2004 Koufax Award for best series

Orcinus: the rise pseudo-fascism - a series

This series of posts won the 2004 Koufax best series award. I've not bothered to figure out what the award means, but I did read the conclusion to the multi-part series. Interesting stuff. I did not know the leader of the American Nazi party was assasinated when I was 8 years old; 22 years after the end of WW II.

The premise of the series is that the American right wing, and increasingly the GOP, demonstrates many of the external attributes of a fascist movement. The historical analogies are particularly interesting; American history from 1890 to 1970 is simply astounding.

Paris Hilton may not be brilliant, but T-Mobile is a moron

Read my posting on the "stupidity of the secret question".

Then read this article: MacDevCenter.com: How Paris Got Hacked?

Paris Hilton's phone may have been hacked because she used her dog's name as a sort of global password. Unfortunate but, frankly, completely commonplace. It is, however, inexcusable that T-Mobile uses those idiotic "secret questions", such as "name of your dog" to do password resets.

Paris has enough money to sue T-Mobile from here to Mars. I sincerely hope she makes them suffer.

The skies, the skies ...

BBC NEWS | Wales | South East Wales | Astronomers find star-less galaxy

I remember the cosmology of the 1970s. We're not in Kansas any more.

Astronomers say they have discovered an object that appears to be an invisible galaxy made almost entirely of dark matter.

Alzheimers, inflammation and the endocannabinoids

BBC NEWS | Health | Marijuana may block Alzheimer's

Or not. I read recently that headline writing is a low prestige, low paying job, in journalism. I can believe it.

Some background. The current fashion in Alzheimer's research is that local inflammation plays some role. We don't know why there's inflammation (though some think it's a response to malformed protein -- amyloid), we don't know if it's an isolated or secondary phenomena, we don't know whether (if it's secondary) it's ever an appropriate response, we don't know if stopping the inflammation will help or hurt, etc. Some of the lesions of Alzheimer's dementia or now thought to be part of the brain's appropriate response to injury; so stopping inflammation may help in the short term but be very bad in the longer term.

The microglia seem to play a role in activating this inflammation. Researchers found activating the CR2 receptor seemed to protect against the microglia-initiated inflammation triggered by amyloid protein in rats. The CR1 receptor wasn't protective. Marijuana contains a wide variety of cannabinoids; some of them activate CR1, some activate CR2, some do both, etc. CR1 mediates most of the recreational/toxic effects of marijuana.

So the headline is fun but of course quite misleading. Something in marijuana may play some role someday in something do with Alzheimer's disease. In rats, anyway.

On the other hand there are some things that we can't forget.

1. The Alzheimer's process is a condition that seems to begin quite early in life -- perhaps before age 5. It attacks almost everyone to some extent but has its greatest impact on persons with low IQs (it's very severe in people with Down's syndrome). If we can slow or remediate the onset of Alzheimer's the social impact will be vast. Our 75 yr projections for medicare and social security will look quite a bit better.

2. The discovery of the endocannabinoids and the medications that will act on them may bring a new revolution in psychiatry. Some things we'll learn will have bad effects, but I'm optimistic.

3. The role of inflammatory processes, including infectious processes, in what where thought to be "age-related" degenerative conditions of the stomach, brain and heart is quite startling. I'm quite ready now to believe we'll uncover an infections component to rheumatoid arthritis (a longstanding hypothesis that's been often investigated without success).

So this is exciting stuff, despite my kvetching on the headline.

DMCA abuse -- the courts refuse to roll over

Last July, I wrote about how the DMCA might be applied to lock customers in to custom batteries -- or printer catridges. Vendors wanting to move customer off of old products can just stop selling the batteries -- or the printer cartridges.

I figured this was inevitable, but may be I was wrong:

SiliconValley.com | 02/22/2005 | Lexmark printer running low on legal size paper

Looks like Lexmark's effort to use the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to prevent other companies from making refurbished toner cartridges for its printers has received a potentially fatal blow. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit has denied Lexmark's request that it reinstitute an injunction against Static Control Components (SCC), a maker of computer chips that enable recycled toner cartridges to work in Lexmark International printers. Lexmark had argued that SCC's Smartek chip circumvents a copyrighted technological measure that its printers use to verify toner cartridges are original and because of that violates a clause in the DMCA that prohibits the dismantling of devices intended to protect intellectual property rights. It was a worrying use of the DMCA and one that, as SCC pointed out in a legal brief, could cause consumer-unfriendly DMCA-protected chips to appear in many consumer products. Evidently, the court agreed. Now, barring the intervention of the Supreme Court, it looks like Lexmark's case is dead in the water. 'This is a very gratifying decision,' said SCC chief exec Ed Swartz. 'We have asserted from the outset that this is a blatant misuse of the DMCA. The Sixth Circuit's ruling and the court's decision not to hear Lexmark's request for another hearing solidifies and supports our position that the DMCA was not intended to create aftermarket electronic monopolies.'

A test of political mores: fun on the web

Moral Politics - A Morality-Based Political Test

I took both the two question test and the 15 question test. On the two test question I fell in the "Moderate Liberalism" category (as in 19th century Liberalism) and I had a 96% overlap with John Kerry. On the longer test I was "Moderate Socialism" and had a lesser overlap with John Kerry.

I knew I liked Kerry for a good reason.

I think I'm in-between the two axis -- but the two question test was more accurate. Both tests pegged me on "Moral Order" (ideal view of the world) but the longer test was less accurate on "Moral Rules" (rules that point to moral order).

I suspect what the longer test misses is the gap between how I'd like the world to be and what I believe humanity is capable of. So I'd like a world that was more of the "moderate socialist" order, but I don't believe humanity can really manage that degree of enlightened self-interest. The best humanity can sustain is "moderate liberalism".

Now if we make a few changes to the genome ...

Jon Stewart is completely hilarious -- the Gannon show

Jon Stewart's Daily Show on Bloggers 02/16/05

This site is hosting a John Stewart's Gannon show as a QuickTime video. It's hilarious. It almost makes me want to watch TV.

Is Stewart the only real journalist left?

I wonder if he'll do the "Bush tapes". Perhaps not, neither Bush's allies nor his "enemies" really like the tapes. To Bush's allies the tapes are disturbing and upsetting. To his "enemies" (who wish him well in retirement) the tapes portray him as too much like one of us.

Obituary for a Grammarian

The New Yorker: The Talk of the Town

To one correspondent she sent a beautiful letter, frank and kind, needlessly grateful, which ended with the sentence “Please forget about me.” Of course, we never could and we never will.

The Grammarian of the New Yorker dies at age 87, five years after a stroke forced her out of her office. All die, few have such a fine obituary.

Friends don't let friends buy HP

Boing Boing: HP faces lawsuit for inkjet cartridges with expiration chip

The allegation:

H-P ink cartridges use a chip technology to sense when they are low on ink and advise the user to make a change. But, the suit claims, those chips also shut down the cartridges at a predetermined date regardless of whether they are empty. 'The smart chip is dually engineered to prematurely register ink depletion and to render a cartridge unusable through the use of a built-in expiration date that is not revealed to the consumer,' the suit said.

I soured on HP after buying some of their sheet feeder scanners that doubled as paper shredders. They seemed to be making poor quality devices and punishing anyone foolish enough to buy from them.

Now this. If it's true then:

1. Does everyone do this? (I've got a Canon printer, I liked the separate ink wells.)
2. I won't be buying anything from HP. (Ok, so I wasn't going to anyway

More things I did wrong in my practice

Another day, another thing I did wrong when I practiced medicine:

TheMilwaukeeChannel.com - Health - Study: Hormone Therapy Makes Incontinence Worse, Not Better

By some estimates, up to half of all women over 50 will suffer from urinary incontinence. Many women take hormone replacement therapy because doctors believe it can reduce the risk of urinary leakage, but according to a new study, the opposite is true.

... Hendrix and her colleagues tracked the health of more than 27,000 post-menopausal women for one year to see if hormones reduced incontinence.

The study, published in Wednesday's issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, showed that women who hadn't had leakage before taking the hormones were more likely to become incontinent, and women who were already incontinent were more likely to see their condition get worse...

... Women taking estrogen pills for one year were 53 percent more likely to develop urinary incontinence than women who took dummy pills. Women taking pills containing both estrogen and progestin faced a 39 percent higher risk.

I stopped doing clinical practice about 4-5 years ago, and it's been more years than that since I saw women for incontinence. Back then, however, a 50 yo woman with incontinence was a great candidate for estrogen therapy (w/ progestins usually): build up bones, reduce incontinence, reduce fracture risk, reduce heart disease risk, less dementia ...

Except none of those things, except the fracture, are felt to be true nowadays. Maybe this study is wrong (the design doesn't sound very robust), but I gather it's not the only study with similar results. It seems unlikely that estrogens are a great treatment for incontinence, and given their other issues I wouldn't use them for urinary incontinence today.

Sigh. Things wouldn't be so bad if I were confident that the newer therapies will hold up significantly better than the nostrums I was taught eons ago ...