From a recent survey:
Nearly half of U.S. voters say they don’t shop online because they fear identity thieves may capture their bank-account information, according to a survey released on Wednesday by a technology-industry trade group.
These fears are heightened because of the rash of security breaches in recent months. I previously posted about these breaches here and here.
A Washington Post article discusses the growing use of biometric identification, which involves authenticating identity by using immutable characteristics of the human body. Some methods include fingerprint readers, iris scanners, and facial recognition systems. According to the article:
There is still more interesting grist from the national telephone survey by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. The report has an extensive discussion of price discrimination – offering different prices for the same product or service to different customers based on behavioral profiling.
This practice is already happening. Supermarket discount cards are an example of price discrimination. The report notes: “[B]eing a loyal customer doesn’t automatically mean getting the lowest prices. Computer analyses of shopping histories might determine that a person’s allegiance to some products means he or she would buy them even without the discounts, or with smaller discounts than others might get for the same items at the same time.”
More interesting results from a recent national telephone survey by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. The report states:
The survey further reveals that the majority of adults who use the internet do not know where to turn for help if their personal information is used illegally online or offline. The study’s findings suggest a complex mix of ignorance and knowledge, fear and bravado, realism and idealism that leaves most internet-using adult American shoppers open to financial exploitation by retailers.
Why do we keep getting that Nigerian money scam email? Who could possibly fall for it? One would think that by now, the gig wouldn’t work – people would be on to it – and those pesky spammers would move on to another scam. But alas, somebody out there must be falling for it. A recent national telephone survey by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania reveals some startling statistics about gullibility in all its splendor:
49% could not detect illegal “phishing”—the activity where crooks posing as banks send emails to consumers that ask them to click on a link wanting them to verify their account. And now the FBI warns iPhone & Android text messages could pose a risk.
Déjà vu. All over again. And again. Yet another data security break, as if the scores of breaches announced earlier weren’t already enough. A short while ago, I posted about a tally of the security breaches indicating that the personal data of over 5 million people had been leaked or improperly accessed. Now this, from the AP [link no longer available]:
If you’re a professor, want to make a quick buck? Apparently, some professors have joined the ranks of identity thieves. A community college professor stole the identities of three of his students and used them to fill out credit card applications in the students’ names. According to a CNN story [link no longer available]:
Brian Tamanaha (law, St. John’s), has written a provocative article called The Perils of Pervasive Legal Instrumenalism. He observes that “[a]n instrumental view of law–the idea that law is an instrument to achieve ends–is taken for granted in the United States, almost a part of the air we breathe.” Such a view, however, creates a serious problem:
[I]n situations of sharp disagreement over the social good, if law is perceived as an instrument, individuals and groups within society will endeavor to seize the law, and fill in, interpret, and apply the law, to serve their own ends. What results is a contest over law itself, a contest in which all sides seek to enlist the power of law on their behalf, spawning a Hobbsean conflict of all against all carried on within and through the legal order.
I received many thoughtful comments on my earlier post about abolishing the Bar Exam. Most of the arguments for retaining the Bar Exam involve the need for erecting a barrier to attorneys being licensed.
Despite my enjoyment of the Bar Exam as a work of jurisprudence, I believe that the Bar Exam should be abolished. It prevents mobility among lawyers, making it cumbersome and time consuming to move to different states. It does not test on actual law used in legal practice, but on esoteric legal rules, many of which are obsolete, and most of which are of absolutely no value to a practicing attorney or to anyone for that matter. In short, the Bar Exam is an unproductive waste of time.
My guess is most all lawyers would agree. So why does the Bar Exam persist?