P.S.: because he doesn't know you exist.

Ominous voice: " . . . yet."

Nor does he you. What's your point?

It's an argument that he shouldn't have the job he has now, much less be promoted into a job with access to even more sensitive information about us.

Because he had a good personal reason to abuse his access and did so thinking he would never have been caught makes him the perfect man for the job? I disagree--he demonstrated a willingness to misuse a public trust for personal gain that I doubt the passage of time has magically cured so much as made him better at covering his tracks.

I suspect folks with that kind of access who misuse it at least on occasion are far more common than those who don't. What surprises me here, actually, is that there were any checks that resulted in him having been caught in the first place.

I do remember, but they're common as dirt now, so the example is just fine--you are erring comparing the future to the past. And they were never really all that scarce for people that had more than one or two friends who were in the circle of enthusiasts.

. . . but someone should have to fall on his or her sword over this. If those field agents acted on their own, it would be they; if not, then whoever they worked for that authorized the tactics should be holding a sign saying "WILL WAND YOUR CROTCH FOR FOOD."

Just a marketing gimmick to make people feel elite. Invites will be about as scarce as Gmail invites.

If someone buys the phone with the subsidy then subsequently leaves T-mo and pays the ETF, will T-mo unlock the phone? Also, is the ETF prorated? In any case, it seems that the combination of a cheap phone for voice and a netbook/laptop + WiFi or if ubiquitous access is necessary a data stick are a better deal for the money.

Precisely. Calling barbarians barbarians is racist now. Rights are human rights, not subject to "cultural norms," and we are perfectly justified imposing those rights on the ignorant--by force, if necessary.

Not that much I imagine, but Franklin sold a whole lot more Aces than Psystar sold commodity machines running Mac OS X.

I think we know how this one's going to turn out for our convicted murderers, [redacted] and [redacted].

The FTC didn't set it up. The big three set it up to comply with the FACT Act (Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act). Although I agree that a .gov would have been much more apropos.

If you destroy evidence, make sure you destroy the backups, too.

Tracfone has a brand, Straight Talk (I have no affiliation and that's not a referral link), with phones available at WalMart with unlimited voice and text plus 30 MB data for $45/30 days. Prepaid being only for low-usage folks is a bygone idea.