Technically Incorrect

I was sent this link Tuesday night by the venerable sports radio personality and onetime host of the E! Entertainment TV show "Digital Turf," Patrick Mauro.

The article, from World Net Daily, suggests that, sooner than some might wish, we might all have driver's licenses that are embedded with a very clever chip. Clever in the kind of way Heath Ledger's Joker is.

It's an article with many words, some of them technical and some political. The gist, however, seems to be that your driver's license could soon be adorned by a radio frequency identification, or RFID, chip. This might have some advantages, but I'm not quite sure what those might be just at this rainy moment.

However, as I understand it, anyone with the appropriate reading unit will be able to scan your personal information, even though your license is tucked into your wallet, your jeans, or that secret pocket near your chest area, just by passing you by.

So you could be at your favorite mass event--the synagogue, the Daytona 500, the peace rally, Hooters--and someone from law enforcement or the KGB or the Sopranos could wander through the crowd and identify everyone in it.

Apparently, the powers-that-are remain clear that no important personal information will be divulged.

At the same time, the Department of Homeland Security suggests that when you get one of these so-called enhanced driver's licenses, which are already being offered (but not mandated) in New York state, you will also receive "information on how to use, carry, and protect your license, and a shielded container that will prevent anyone from reading your license."

I am constantly being told by those in the technological future that there is no such thing as privacy. But at the most basic aesthetic level, do I need a shielded container to carry my license and protect my vital statistics? I have been known to mislay shielded containers on a regular basis.

And, well, please, technological experts and futurists out there, comment, could you? This all seems a little odd to me.

Thanks to Google, they know where you live. Thanks to Twitter, they know when you floss your teeth.

Now a devious, perhaps ludicrously insane, hacker has taken it further. He (must be a 'he.' Women can spell and are never rude) found his way into the twitterdom of celebrities and tinkered with their tweets.

For example, he attempted to suggest to twitterers of Britney Spears foul words that would surely never have emerged from her imagination. He implied to followers of Rick Sanchez that the CNN anchor partakes of scientifically concocted substances, surely a (free)baseless lie.

Even the President-elect's updates were allegedly downgraded to the level of a sad shock jock. On the other hand, Bill O'Reilly's falsified twittering, while misspelled, was, to some, rather touching.

But may I be the first to ask the important question: What about the other 29? Twitter declared that 33 accounts were blessed with messages whose genesis may well, indeed, have been a bottle.

I can find only meager evidence of what these other 29 might have been. The Huffington Post was one. But there could have been more celebrities in this twitternapping. So I am concerned that the spoilsports at Twitter found these celebrity tweenage alterations before the unwashed followers were brainwashed and removed them.

Could it be that the hacker managed to improve on the deep tweeting of Tyler Perry (the chap who brought you, oh, every movie with 'Tyler Perry' in front of it)?

Real Tyler Perry sample: "Our goal is to truly maximize the presence of the Tyler Perry brand via Twitter--Make it a point to tell your networks to follow in."

Possible Hacked Tyler Perry sample: "I am sitting on my sofa. Hey, could I turn this into a movie?"

Could it be that he hacked into the everyday movements of NBA legend Shaquille O'Neal?

Real Shaquille O'Neal sample: "Even the aliens no me, da ones real far, i speak to em like ibadablaa, Jigamagla, bockeraaa."

Possible Hacked Shaquille O'Neal sample: "Sippin' some Earl Grey tea, Placido Domingo lappin' at my ears."

And is it possible he paraphrased musician Dave Matthews?

Real Dave Matthews sample: "Snow in Seattle. Snow still snowing. A day late and better better better. Snow snow. Snow. Doughnuts and coffee."
Possible Hacked Dave Matthews sample: "Dull, dull music. Music still musing. Dull, dull. Dull. Ten beers and massive bag of taco chips. Just to get through it."

So, please, Twitter, we need to know about all the victims. This is the tech equivalent of rubbernecking. Which, in a way, is what Twitter is all about.

When power is given to those who routinely post online pictures of themselves wearing nothing but a garland of ivy and a beer stain, bad things must follow.

I am moved to the point of jiggery by a report authored by the esteemed Sir Edmund Bunton (in the UK, only Sirs or Ladys can author reports).

Sir Edward, no relation, as far as I can tell, to Emma 'Baby Spice' Bunton, is the Chairman of the Information Advisory Council. And his problem is that he fears he has hired a bunch of Facebook-forward netwackos into the UK's Ministry of Defense.

Apparently these netwackos are dripping in a culture of "rapid and often uninhibited exchange of information."

Well, naturally. How else are you going to pick a member of your target sex up online? I mean, Sir Edward, you no doubt met girls (or 'gels' as a stiff upper lip would have them) at the Conservative Party's rather aptly named Blue Ball.

But, just as with admission to Sirhood, Blue Ball entry is not open to everyone.

So the rest of us expose ourselves online in the hope that someone will want to be seen with us. Virtually or otherwise.

Sir Edmund's logic is a little on the fanciful side, if I may be so bold.

He believes that the greater openness exhibited by dangerous young people online leads them to leave Ministry of Defense laptops in their cars overnight.

You see, there appear to be fifty-five laptops in the United Kingdom containing sensitive Ministry of Defense information.

Four have been nicked, as they say over there, from parked cars.

One assumes each of these cars belonged to a young Ministry employee.

I suspect that you might have already come to the same conclusion as I. Why on earth were these presumably junior employees given terribly important laptops?

Could it be that no one over thirty in the Ministry knows, um, how to turn one on?

Perhaps the Ministry has not availed itself of MacAirs, so their darned PCs are too heavy to be carried by someone of senior rank and golfswing lumbago.

Truly, is there any evidence that prolonged and repeated exposure to Facebook leads you to become less security conscious?

I find everyone pretty neurotic on the subject these days, but that might reflect the sad circles within which I travel socially.

Sir Edmund, bypassing the thought that he is simply hiring substandard specimens, is convinced something needs to be done.

While lamenting the passing of the Cold War (I am not kidding), because in those days we really understood the meaning of security, he has a solution for the troubling Facebook Generation laptop-losing, secrets-abusing phenomenon.

He wants to create "a coherent system of censure and punishment."

Quite right.

It is my strong belief that the Ministry of Defense should force these dreadful miscreants to undress and be photographed in repeated humiliating positions (with and without laptop).

These photographs should then be posted online for the whole world to see. On the Ministry's new site, FaceTheMusicBook.com.

Oh, wait. Getting folks to undress and be photographed in humiliating positions? It sounds good. But it's not really worked for the military folks up till now.

And, well, those Facebook netwackos, well, they're weird. They might like it.

Which just leaves lashes with the cat o' nine tails, I suppose. That, they are bound to understand.