Failure exposes the first five digits of the Social Security number. From NetworkWorld:

The study comes from Carnegie Mellon University's Alessandro Acquisti, an assistant professor of information technology and public policy, and Ralph Gross, a postdoctoral researcher.

....

The algorithm, which the authors did not detail, successfully ascertained the first five digits for 44 percent of the records in the Death Master File for people born between 1989 to 2003. The complete SSN could be picked out for 8.5 percent of those people in under 1,000 attempts. [zaimoni: Worse than random chance or adequate pseudorandom number generator (~9.5% by rote calculation).]

....

In 1989, the agency stated a program called Enumeration at Birth, assigning SSNs to newborns as part of the birth certification process. The changes, however, increased the correlation between a person's birth date and all nine digits of a SSN, especially for people in less populated states, making SSNs easier to discover, the researchers wrote.

Unfortunately, the identity-verification services used in issuing credit cards, etc. aren't that finicky about repeat attempts.

(Note: tracking this as background study for my science fantasy.)

There are no good solutions by the point that the military gets involved in deciding which branch of government is legal. (This could happen in the U.S. The conditions for invoking martial law as denotated in the Insurrection Act of 1807, border on a logic paradox when the threat to the welfare of all citizens of a state, is a branch of the Federal government itself.)

What is next to impossible to get from normal-media, is that former President Zelaya was bucking both the Honduras Congress and the Honduras Supreme Court. The problem is the latest Honduras Constitution, dating from 1982. In particular:

ARTICULO 239.- El ciudadano que haya desempeñado la titularidad del Poder Ejecutivo no podrá ser Presidente o Vicepresidente de la República.

El que quebrante esta disposición o proponga su reforma, así como aquellos que lo apoyen directa o indirectamente, cesarán de inmediato en el desempeño de sus respectivos cargos y quedarán inhabilitados por diez (10) años para el ejercicio de toda función pública.
* Modificado por Decreto 299/1998.
* Modificado por Decreto 374/2002 y ratificado por Decreto 153/2003.

Regardless of the legality of holding the poll (which I have no opinion on pending locating the text of the Honduras Supreme Court ruling declaring it unConstitutional), it is clear that under the current Honduras Constitution Zelaya not only immediately forfeited the Presidency by proceeding with organizing the vote -- he is barred from public office for ten years.

Assuming rule of law. Both the Organization of American States [OAS] generally, and the Obama administration in particular, are set on abrogating rule of law in Honduras, even without considering whether the current regime is legitimate.

The Congress and Supreme Court entered an emergency session on June 27 to determine their response to Zelaya’s illegal acts, as well as his clear intent to go through with the vote. They determined that, for the protection of both democracy and the Constitution, it was necessary to arrest Zelaya. Acting on orders from the Supreme Court and in conjunction with the Attorney General, Zelaya was arrested by a military contingent, and then allegedly given the choice to stay in Honduras and be prosecuted, or accept exile to Costa Rica. It is reported that he chose exile, though Zelaya denies these claims. Zelaya was voted out of office the same day, and the next in line of succession (via the Constitution), Roberto Michelleti, was sworn in as interim President.

While the above citation represents the Roman Catholic Church, the summary is completely consistent with what reporting is indexed by Google News in the U.S.

(After accounting for reporting bias of all sources, and undeleting facts actively deleted by either of the secular pro-Zelaya or secular pro-Michelleti news reporting. All of U.S.-centric normal-media, EU-centric normal-media, and Venezuelan parastatal media are oozing pro-Zelaya bias currently. It is not possible to get a decent secular view without reading both far-left and far-right extremist media.)

Or we could consider the abstraction relayed by the Huffington Post:

The military removed Zelaya under orders from the Supreme Court and with the support of Congress, which is controlled by Zelaya's Liberal Party — though nearly all members had turned against him. Lawmakers unanimously installed as president congressional leader Roberto Micheletti, who says he will serve out Zelaya's term and oversee November elections to choose a successor.

At issue was a referendum Zelaya planned to hold the day of the coup, asking voters if they would support a subsequent vote to modify the constitution. Critics feared he would use it to do away with term limits and run again — something Chavez and other Latin American leftist leaders have succeeded in doing. Supporters of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, a conservative U.S. ally, also have proposed extending term limits to allow him to run again.

Meanwhile, Chavez and his allies have taken to ruling by plebiscite, or referendum, sidestepping congress and the courts that are designed to check executive powers and taking issues directly to voters. After Chavez lost one referendum to eliminate term limits, he held a second one little more than a year later and won. The Venezuelan Congress and courts are filled with Chavez's supporters.

Zelaya denied that he was following that model. But he modified the ballot language at the last minute from a vote on whether to hold a separate referendum on revamping the constitution to one asking if the public wanted to convoke "a national constitutional assembly."

The Honduran constitution has no provision for an assembly like the one suggested in the final version of Zelaya's referendum question. Congress can modify nearly all the Honduran constitution. But certain clauses — including those limiting presidents to one, four-year term — cannot be changed.

No wonder the current regime wants to drop out of the OAS. (As I am not a lawyer, I will not opinine on whether the current regime's declaration of dropping out is valid.)

I think the real question is whether the OAS members have a treaty obligation to reinstall Zelaya. That would at least coerce the Obama administration stance to choose between reinstalling Zelaya, and dropping out of the OAS.

It's Independence Day in the U.S. May all readers enjoy it regardless of whether it is a holiday locally.

(Much as that may be difficult in some parts of the world, e.g. portions of Honduras where procedures strictly analogous to the U.S. Insurrection Act of 1807 have gone off.)

Because you never know who else has leased a server in the same building:

According to the owner of one co-location facility, Crydon Technology, which was raided on March 12, FBI agents seized about 220 servers belonging to him and his customers, as well as routers, switches, cabinets for storing servers and even power strips. Authorities also raided his home, where they seized eight iPods, some belonging to his three children, five XBoxes, a PlayStation3 system and a Wii gaming console, among other equipment. Agents also seized about $200,000 from the owner's business accounts, $1,000 from his teenage daughter's account and more than $10,000 in a personal bank account belonging to the elderly mother of his former comptroller.

---

"Our Residential DSL users, authenticate via PPPoE, using a RADIUS server we have hosted with Core IP," says Brent Waldrep, owner of Lightning Bolt Technologies. "Yesterday morning, around 7am, it was brought to our attention a few of our residential customers could not authenticate, and after some quick troubleshooting, we found our RADIUS server was not online," he says. According to Waldrep, a call to Core IP alerted them to the FBI raid.

"We sent out an email to all our residential DSL users, about 20% of our client base, informing them of the authentication issue," he says. He notes that users who were currently authenticated are still able to use their connection, though any users needing to re-authenticate, are not able to do so. Waldrep says he's giving impacted users a free upgrade to SOHO packages, which don't use the residential RADIUS server.

The DEA precedents are ugly. Note that any servers on which evidential data are found, aren't going to be returned until after the trial.

There are some not-so-firm references to about 50 businesses disrupted as collateral damage, such as disabled 911 service and derailed startup plans for a credit card processor. (Whose PCI certification¹ was dependent on a server confiscated by implementing this search warrant.)

I could use a more definitive source for the affadavit responsible for the search warrant.

---

¹I thought about writing Congress about whether there were adequate legal remedies for bogus PCI certification on the part of MasterCard and VISA. Heartland's public relations response to their Dec. 2008-discovered compromise immediately documented that their PCI certification used false representations of near-realtime forensic data analysis; their certification was revoked three months later.

Latest poll results from Quinnipiac:

Asked which public official is most to blame for the AIG bonuses:

• 28 percent blame former President George W. Bush;
• 27 percent blame Dodd;
• 20 percent blame Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner;
• 7 percent blame President Barack Obama.

Of these four, Dodd is both obviously involved in creating insufficiently punitive AIG bailout conditions and in office. (Negative spin from other sources includes both organizing the AIG bailout, and taking quantitatively impressive campaign donations from AIG.) Nothing like a predicted loss 5:4 to a Republican candidate that 80% of the pollees admit to having no opinion about [former ambassador Tom Foley], to suggest that systematic image damage control is necessary.

[sarcasm]Too bad most the positive public relations about Diebold, and other provably unauditable voting machines, was from the Republican Party.[/sarcasm] (I prefer the only nonracist, non-discriminatory against low education voting record technology out there: optical scanners. As measured by spoiled ballot rate.)

---

The Atlantic's overview of the crime rate trends of Memphis, Tennessee since the 1960's through mid-2008 is instructive reading. (Relayed from prester_scott.)

How artistic of the crackers:

The Far Polo L1 satellite, placed in geostationary orbit to broadcast TV programs to a global audience, appears to have been infected by a virus known as W32/Shatner. Under the control of sci-fi obsessed hackers, the Shatner virus is embedding subliminal images related to Star Trek into popular television programs such as "The Simpsons", "Friends" and "Doogie Howser MD" as they are beamed down to viewers on Earth.

....

Subliminal images placed into the TV programs include images of legendary Star Trek villains the Klingons and actor William Shatner, with the message

"This is W32/Shatner. All your TV are belong to us".

At the moment the hackers can only embed images for a split second, but if they manage to take complete control over TV broadcasts they could begin to advertise to hundreds of millions of people worldwide.

Getting positive information on the satellite is tricky. A fan site mentions a Marcopolo communications satellite targeting the U.K., but nothing else is really obviously coming up.

But it is happening:

There are 18 listings in Flint, Mich., for under $3,000, according to Realtor.com. There are 22 in Indianapolis, 46 in Cleveland and a whopping 709 in Detroit. All of these communities have been hit hard by foreclosures, and most of these homes are being sold by the lenders that repossessed them.

....

In Detroit for instance, Century 21 Villa owner Randy Eissa has a three-bedroom, one-bath bungalow of about 1,000 square feet listed at just $500. It's a nice place with lots of light, but it needs a total rehabilitation inside, which Eissa estimates will cost between $15,000 and $20,000. But that's not bad, considering that the home last sold for $72,000 in late 2007, according to Zillow.com.

....

These houses are almost always small fixer-uppers. Wiring, plumbing and heating systems have to be replaced, walls and ceilings sheet-rocked, plumbing and light fixtures installed and new kitchen cabinets and counters put in. Few come with working appliances.

Often buyers are legally required to rehab these homes to bring them up to code. In Detroit, buyers are required to sign Affidavits of Compliance Responsibility, which obligates them to make repairs outlined in an inspection report. Only after that can a certificate of occupancy will be issued, which makes the house legal to live in.

....

Most of these $1,000 homes can be renovated relatively inexpensively, and buyers can actually get government help to finance these repairs. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has a special loan program for just such purchases.

Its rehabilitation mortgage insurance, available through FHA-approved lenders, was designed to encourage banks to issue a single, long-term loan to buyers that covers both the acquisition and rehabilitation of a property, according to HUD spokesman Brian Sullivan.

Regrettably, I suspect that even at these prices said homes may not be that much of a bargain.

WANTED: Diplomat cross-trained in non-Aristolean logic, object to break ceasefire agreement out of Gehenna. Ceasefire should be mutually acceptable and reasonable (it neither requires Hamas to heretically renege on its charter, nor enables continued rocket fire endangering former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg), but contains "A and not-A" paradoxes.

---

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg was touring this rocket-battered town [Sderot] on Sunday when a public-address system warned of a fresh attack. Chairs were knocked over and frantic shouts — “Get inside now! Move!” — could be heard in Hebrew and English as the mayor was whisked by Israeli guards and his own security detail into a protected room.

The rocket, and a second one, missed the town. ....

Calm but somber as he emerged from the safe room, Mr. Bloomberg played down the moment of panic. “I feel exactly the same way I do when I’m in New York City,” he said. “You are worried about it, you turn to the professionals, and I think what is obvious is that the Israelis are as well trained as the N.Y.P.D.,” he said.

“Let’s not overstate the risks to me,” he added. “The risks are to the people of Sderot, on the ground in their homes, in their businesses.”

---

As for where the raw sewage reported in some of the streets of Gaza is coming from: perhaps it is backflow?

Each day of electricity cuts increases the prospect that Palestinian Water Authority engineer Saadi Ali's nightmare will come true. Ali, in charge of the North Gaza Emergency Sewage Treatment Project, lives in constant fear of a recurrence of the calamity that took place in March 2007 when the dirt embankments surrounding a temporary infiltration pond of sewage water collapsed, and the effluent water that flooded the nearby Bedouin village of Umm al-Nasser led to the drowning deaths of five people. About 1,000 people were evacuated from their homes, animals died and considerable damage was caused to property and crops.

....

In the local jargon, the delay-plagued emergency project is dubbed the Tony Blair Project - a tag that is catchier and shorter than the official name of the two-stage project, the North Gaza Emergency Sewage Treatment Project, as phase A, and the North Gaza Wastewater Treatment Plant, the final phase. Blair has been honored with his name being attached to the project because, as an envoy of the Quartet (the Middle East peacemaking forum consisting of representatives from the United States, Russia, the United Nations and the European Union), he prodded donor states to the PA in 2007 to allocate additional resources for the continued financing of this project, which is estimated to ultimately cost a total of $100 million.

However, the two-stage project is unique for another, and much more important, reason: Out of dozens of vital infrastructure projects, including those for sewage treatment, the drainage of rainwater, and the replacement of water pipes, this is the only one whose implementation Israel has permitted for the entire Gaza Strip. NGEST and NGWWTP is the only project Israel has defined as humanitarian, life-saving and one to which its policy on the shutting down of border crossings does not apply. The other projects have been filed under "development."

May the upcoming year go well for all my readers.

8AM Dec. 25 2008: 15F
8AM Dec. 26 2008: 60F
3PM Dec. 26 2008: 68F

10:30PM Dec 26 2008:

TORNADO WATCH 955 IS IN EFFECT UNTIL 500 AM CST FOR THE
FOLLOWING LOCATIONS

( including most of the east edge of Kansas. )

This is followed by a non-zero plausibility of freezing rain.

Winter does not approve of this incursion of Spring.

We're heading into the last few days before the Twelve Days of Christmas. May the next few days give much cause for cheer to my readers, regardless of what else may be happening.

Cf. Carolina Journal:

RALEIGH — Democrats in the U.S. House have been conducting hearings on proposals to confiscate workers’ personal retirement accounts — including 401(k)s and IRAs — and convert them to accounts managed by the Social Security Administration.

....

The testimony of Teresa Ghilarducci, professor of economic policy analysis at the New School for Social Research in New York, in hearings Oct. 7 drew the most attention and criticism. Testifying for the House Committee on Education and Labor, Ghilarducci proposed that the government eliminate tax breaks for 401(k) and similar retirement accounts, such as IRAs, and confiscate workers’ retirement plan accounts and convert them to universal Guaranteed Retirement Accounts (GRAs) managed by the Social Security Administration.

There's also an Argentina reference further down, but most of the article beyond the quote is Fear, Uncertainity, Doubt. These hearings, of course, have the implicit rallying cry "Choices must be unreal and consequence-free!"

The problem is that ultimately, any sort of tax-deferred/tax-advantaged spending account relies on the stability of government promises. For an Archer Health Savings Account, this isn't such a big deal -- after all, the policy only has to hold for one year at a time.

An IRA relies on policy being reasonably stable for decades -- and furthermore is conceptually based on flouting "most money is dumb money". Some days, it even seems that most dumb money isn't even self-awarely dumb money. It's not a bad idea, but one's planning for forced retirement by disability (age or otherwise) deserves more diversification when possible.

We had almost the most irresponsible reporting on the U.S. elections ever, last night. (The most irresponsible reporting ever is held by 1948: openly announcing the transparent falsity of Dewey's winning the Presidency and Truman's defeat.)

Having brazenly called 40 of 50 states on no data at all, it would have been completely appropriate for one of those calls to have been wrong (just as in 2000). As it is, they are merely feeding the voting machine conspiracy theorists.

...consider waiting for the server loading to be low enough for that email form page to actually arrive. Master indexing from www.house.gov was less than operational as well.

The corresponding contact-by-email forms for Senators (and the master indexing from www.senate.gov ) were working when I used them.

The "destroy the U.S., early Christmas gift to the banks" U.S.$700 billion [sarcasm]bailout[/sarcasm] bill met its demise, 228-205. It appears that a reincarnation will not be scheduled until after Rosh Hoshana (tomorrow).

It would be too much to actually expect Congress to consider a bill that fixes anything. (Considering things that the current bipartisan socialist U.S. government could pass: why not tinker with the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 to legalize making loan decisions based on credit history and ability to repay? Or perhaps, adjusting the qualifying loan limits for Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac based on the current ratio of cost of ownership to cost of renting, thus actively crushing housing prices when they are proportionately excessive?)

I'd guess circa six feet or so of (electrically conductive) DNA for the neutrophil. A slow-motion animation for the eosinophil version would be fascinating to watch at least once.

Previous research has shown that eosinophils secrete toxic granule proteins during parasite infections and that these granule proteins kill bacteria. Simon, Gleich, and their colleagues found that when eosinophils are stimulated by infection, such as E. coli, they rapidly secrete mitochondrial DNA. This DNA binds to the granule proteins and forms a net that is able to trap and kill bacteria. The researchers also found higher levels of eosinophils were linked to improved survival and lower numbers of bacteria in the blood of mice with widespread bacterial infections.

....

Earlier studies suggested another type of white blood cell - the neutrophil - also expels DNA and granule proteins to kill bacteria. However, this DNA comes from the nucleus and its release causes the neutrophil to die. The eosinophil is able to survive after expelling its mitochondrial DNA.

...although former Hurricane Fey's Fay's remnants after U.S. landfall #4 officially (National Hurricane Center) appear likely to try to flood my area out again, much like Dolly's did.

The spaghetti map is less confidence-inspiring. (Unstable link, but should point "somewhere" after Fay is off the forecast loop.)

That said, I am not a political savant; I do not expect to do better at proposing proper political crisis management for Russia vs. Georgia with less than 10% of the information available to the actual heads of state. Collating things across U.S.-centric and EU-centric normal-media, and all of Radio Sweden, Radio Netherlands, and Radio Japan:

• Georgia's President, and advising team...had a serious calculational mishap. Having been told that they would get get no military assistance for actively violating Russia's supervision of an autonomous zone (South Ossetia and Az...): no reason existed not to ditch those campaign promises to retake control of South Ossetia. Having directly attacked Russian peacekeeping troops, and attempted genocide on ethnic Ossetians: don't expect things to stop anywhen before being completely routed (that much is completely within Geneva conventions), and do expect counter-genocide attempts on ethnic Georgians. Starting this on the first day of the Olympics doesn't help, thanks to the implicit hostage situation in Beijing.
• It looks like there are two or three national governments in Moscow. As such, the Russian President's signature doesn't mean anything (as the government he represents isn't the one in charge of the military operations). There is no rational expectation for the Russian army to return to pre-conflict posts on any timetable, as they have systematically violated the terms of the ceasefire since Sunday (August 17 2008) (assuming chain-of-command lag accounts for the Saturday violations.)
• As the Russian PR statements are not referencing the blindingly obvious Geneva-convention way to rationalize violating Georgian sovereignty, we may assume no interest in appearances.

(Yes, I finally ended up purchasing a low-end shortwave radio a couple of weeks back. The daytime programming is not that well-rounded in the U.S. [the Visible Church and inverse-Voice of America dominate], but the aforementioned shortwave programs are all reasonable listening. No decision yet on whether to actually try to minimally learn both spoken Swedish and spoken Japanese.

Regrettably, shortwave coverage of both BBC and Voice of America in the U.S. is none at all.

Aside: any idea what makes Florida almost uniquely feasible for whole-Earth shortwave broadcasting? Is it just the legal climate?)

... renaming the states according to which foreign countries have similiar GDPs.

Kansas is renamed as Malaysia, for instance. [This also is a legitimate political analogy in some quarters. Malaysia's intentionally imposing sharia law only on Muslims, looks as un-mainstream as repeatedly trying to fill the KS state education board with intelligent design advocates.]

Suggesting a power grab [cf. Bloomberg]

``Despite the complexities of designing a resolution regime for securities firms, I believe it is worth the effort,'' Bernanke said today. ``In particular, by setting a high bar for such actions, the adverse effects on market discipline could be minimized.''

Bernanke endorsed several ways for the Fed and other U.S. agencies to gain more oversight of investment banks and financial markets. Congress should legislate ``consolidated supervision'' of investment banks and other big securities firms, with the unspecified regulator having authority over capital, liquidity holdings and risk management, he said.

The Fed itself should also get ``explicit oversight authority'' over payment and settlement systems, putting the Fed on par with counterparts from around the world, Bernanke said.

It was already appropriate to plan when and how to firewall your identity from your purchases over a decade ago. This just adds a little imminency to the exercise.

[Think back to the reporting of passenger lists to the TSA. Internally perfectly legitimate, but the knock-on effect of trivializing capturing CEOs of online gambling firms was noxious. So, in retrospect, the UBS clampdown on air travel to the U.S. probably was a legitimate reaction to "unexpected government risk".

Actually implementing this suggestion will pose similar risks for traceable politically incorrect purchases.]

Medicare Cannot Win [cf. Forbes]

The program [Medicare Advantage] with the somewhat Orwellian name allows Medicare beneficiaries to opt for an HMO over the government plan. Though it's counterintuitive that a senior citizen would dump all-you-can-eat coverage from the government for an HMO that can deny or limit care--more than one in five beneficiaries have done just that.

The reason: Medicare HMOs have more money to spend because they get 12% more per member than the government pays under its conventional plan. ....

But while Senators John McCain and Barack Obama would have likely targeted the program next year, Medicare Advantage may lose its most-favored health policy status even before the election. That is, if doctors groups and Democrats in Congress get what they want. The Senate returns to session today to consider scrapping a scheduled 10.6% cut on doctors' Medicare reimbursements. To restore those cuts, and keep doctors from abandoning the program, room must be made in the budget. ....

Considering the current and historical willingness of Congress to implicitly require monetizing U.S. Treasuries in the future, "finding room in the budget" is not convincing. [The practical issue is that there are only so many licensed medical care providers, so some attention must be paid to both the real value, and liquidity, of the Medicare payouts.]

The Democrats and the American Medical Association hope to restore the cuts by raiding Medicare Advantage. Managed care companies do typically keep 15 cents or more of every dollar they receive in premiums, which they spend on marketing, overhead, executive compensation, taxes and shareholder profits.

The bill that passed the House and is now being considered again by the Senate would cut some Medicare Advantage payments and make it harder to start new plans or build a network of physicians.

Reading the actual bill would be in order to make informed commentary, but the reported strategy is unlikely to create material change in any direction.