The Consumerist has the story:

WaMu’s crack fraud department is at it again, according to reader Kristin. Someone broke into her iTunes account and bought a couple hundred dollars worth of iTunes gift cards with her debit card information. She disputed the charge and WaMu told her not to worry — they’d take care of it. Two months later, while on a trip to Chicago, WaMu reversed the credits, causing Kristin to become severely overdrawn. No amount of protesting will convince WaMu that she wasn’t lying about the iTunes break-in. Why? Because she never responded to some mail they sent to her old address.

Yuck. Read the customer’s full account, and more information about the credit card fraud laws, in the full article.

Yes, the New York Police Department provided an escort, but during more than eight hours on Saturday, one of the great hoards of coins and currency on the planet, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, was utterly unalarmed as it was bumped through potholes, squeezed by double-parked cars and slowed by tunnel-bound traffic during the trip to its fortresslike new vault a mile to the north.

In the end, the move did not become a caper movie.

“The idea was to make this as inconspicuous as possible,” said Ute Wartenberg Kagan, executive director of the American Numismatic Society. “It had to resemble a totally ordinary office move.”

[...]

Society staff members were pledged to secrecy about the timing of the move, and “we didn’t tell our movers what the cargo was until the morning of,” said James McVeigh, operations manager of Time Moving and Storage Inc. of Manhattan, referring to the crew of 20 workers.

From my book Beyond Fear, pp. 211-12:

At 3,106 carats, a little under a pound and a half, the Cullinan Diamond was the largest uncut diamond ever discovered. It was extracted from the earth at the Premier Mine, near Pretoria, South Africa, in 1905. Appreciating the literal enormity of the find, the Transvaal government bought the diamond as a gift for King Edward VII. Transporting the stone to England was a huge security problem, of course, and there was much debate on how best to do it. Detectives were sent from London to guard it on its journey. News leaked that a certain steamer was carrying it, and the presence of the detectives confirmed this. But the diamond on that steamer was a fake. Only a few people knew of the real plan; they packed the Cullinan in a small box, stuck a three-shilling stamp on it, and sent it to England anonymously by unregistered parcel post.

This is a favorite story of mine. Not only can we analyze the complex security system intended to transport the diamond from continent to continent­the huge number of trusted people involved, making secrecy impossible; the involved series of steps with their associated seams, giving almost any organized gang numerous opportunities to pull off a theft­but we can contrast it with the sheer beautiful simplicity of the actual transportation plan. Whoever came up with it was really thinking­and thinking originally, boldly, and audaciously.

This kind of counterintuitive security is common in the world of gemstones. On 47th Street in New York, in Antwerp, in London: People walk around all the time with millions of dollars’ worth of gems in their pockets. The gemstone industry has formal guidelines: If the value of the package is under a specific amount, use the U.S. Mail. If it is over that amount but under another amount, use Federal Express. The Cullinan was again transported incognito; the British Royal Navy escorted an empty box across the North Sea to Amsterdam -- ­where the diamond would be cut­ -- while famed diamond cutter Abraham Asscher actually carried it in his pocket from London via train and night ferry to Amsterdam.

This is reminiscent of another recent story in which an Apple Store employee was able to use Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard's Back to My Mac remote access software to connect to a laptop that was stolen from her apartment to grab images and screenshots of the two men alleged to have taken the laptop and other gear.

The unsaved will be 'left behind' on earth to go through the "tribulation period" after the "Rapture".... We have made it possible for you to send them a letter of love and a plea to receive Christ one last time. You will also be able to give them some help in living out their remaining time. In the encrypted portion of your account you can give them access to your banking, brokerage, hidden valuables, and powers of attorneys' (you won't be needing them any more, and the gift will drive home the message of love). There won't be any bodies, so probate court will take 7 years to clear your assets to your next of Kin. 7 years of course is all the time that will be left. So, basically the Government of the AntiChrist gets your stuff, unless you make it available in another way.

But what if the creator of this site isn't as scrupulous as he implies he is? What if he uses all of that account information, passwords, safe combinations, and whatever before any rapture? And even if he is an honest true believer, this seems like a mighty juicy target for any would-be identity thief.

And -- if you're curious -- this is how the triggering mechanism works:

We have set up a system to send documents by the email, to the addresses you provide, 6 days after the "Rapture" of the Church. This occurs when 3 of our 5 team members scattered around the U.S fail to log in over a 3 day period. Another 3 days are given to fail safe any false triggering of the system.

The site claims that the data can be encrypted, but it looks like the encryption key is stored on the server with the data.

Before 9/11, airlines and security personnel -- and I use the term "security personnel" loosely -- might have let a nickname or even a maiden name on a ticket slide. No longer. If you have the wrong name on your ticket, you're probably grounded. And there are two reasons for this: security and greed.

The Transportation Security Administration wants to be sure the same person who bought the ticket, and who was screened, is boarding the plane. But when there's an inexact match, the airline can either charge a $100 "change" fee or force you to buy a new ticket. In an industry where every dollar counts, the exact-name rule is the government's gift to cash-starved air carriers.

That's the situation Gordon was confronted with, even when it was obvious that "Jan" and "Janet" were one and the same. There were suggestions that a new ticket might need to be purchased. "We didn't let it get to that," he recalls. Instead, he asked to speak with a supervisor who could finally fix the codes so that the ticket and passport matched up. How did all of this happen in the first place? Turns out Jan Gordon had signed up for a frequent flier account under her informal name, so when she booked an award ticket, it also used her informal -- and inaccurate -- name.

There are two things to get pissed off about here. One, the airlines profiting off a TSA rule. And two, a TSA rule that requires them to ignore what is obvious.

Extremely fair article on Sebastopol Wi-Fi networking health debate: The local paper manages to push the camel through the eye of the needle in presenting various aspects of the vote by the local council to rescind the gift of a local ISP to provide city-wide Wi-Fi. It neither ridicules the symptoms of people who describe themselves as electrosensitive, nor ignores the clinical research that shows such sensitivity to be unprovable, even as the symptoms are clearly manifest (just not correlated with EMF). The article notes that one radio host who speaks on health has his words carried by a station that is bumping more signal out across Sebastopol than any Wi-Fi network would. In a true Sonoma moment, however, the leading opponent to the city-wide network and the owner of the ISP cross paths in front of Whole Foods where high school students in favor of the network were gather signatures for a petition--and hugged. That kind of behavior is more of what we need: civility, understanding, and mutual working forward to improve everyone's health. More research? Sure. And more kindness, too.

Wired's Wi-Fi map: now, useful! My friend and colleague Cyrus Farivar spent weeks researching what municipal projects were proceeding, on hold, or dead across the U.S., and I wasn't very impressed by the way in which Wired presented this material in their print issue. But never fear! Online, paired with Google Maps, his research is tremendously accessible. It's now a few weeks out of date, but still useful for the scope and locations of projects. It makes me want to build an ongoing effort of the same kind!

Complimentary essay on Boston's pace: By not building fast, OpenAirBoston avoids the mistakes of other municipal networks. True. But in the end, they need to build something; they are only "behind" in the sense of not having put their neck out too far.