Month: July 2013

Never a fear of tyranny – from a citizen of America

Has anyone else noticed that with the failure of trying to make the Zimmerman case about race, the liberal media is now running a significantly higher number of stories about gun violence in an attempt to capitalize on fears of the uninformed american people.

Remember when the British tried to disarm us?

It was Noah Webster in a letter to Benjamin Franklin who once said:

“A people can never be deprived of their liberties, while they retain in their own hands, a power superior to any other power in the state… Before standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any preten[c]e, raised in the United States (Webster, 1787).”

 

References

Webster, N. (1787). An examination into the leading principles of the federal constitution proposed by the late convention held at philadelphia: With answers to the principal objections that have been raised against the system. Prichard & Hall, in Market Street, the second door above Laetitia Court. Retrieved from Google Scholar.

 

No it is not ok to email me my Credit Card Number…

This is a copy of an actual email I had to send today…  I guess there are still a lot of people out there that do not understand the perils of the internet.

[Name removed] –

Good evening.  Thank you for emailing the rental confirmation:  however, I am surprised and disappointed that the image attached to the confirmation email contained the credit card number we used to book the rental property.  By trade, I am an information security technologist – I protect computer systems and data assets from digital theft.

Your email to my wife provided everything necessary for a digital thief to not only commit fraud against my credit card company, in my name, but it also encourages identity theft, as you included personally identifiable information and financial information within the attached image.

Unless very specific precautions are taken, email is an insecure medium and it should be assumed that the contents of email are made publicly available on the internet.

As a secondary example to underline the importance of discouraging the emailing of sensitive information, you accidentally misaddressed the email (sent to *******@******.com rather than ******@*****.com).  While the email was still redirected to a domain I have ownership in, because of my specific configuration, the email could have just as easily, sans my configuration, resulted in a scenario where my credit card was sent to some random person somewhere out on the internet.

As a necessary precaution, I now have to cancel my credit card, get a new card reissued, and go through the long and time consuming process of updating all my billing relationships – a set of tasks I had not planned on spending my evening completing.

I would recommend, in the future, that the practice of emailing sensitive information (such as credit card numbers) be eliminated from HOA procedures.

Thank you.

[Signed]