BUSINESS
Eileen Ambrose | May 1, 2012
You can be dead and still be a victim in this world. A new report by ID Analytics find that thieves target the dead, using their Social Security numbers to get credit cards, cellphones and other services. The company says it compared the names, Social Security numbers and birth date on 100 million credit applications in the first quarter of last year with Social Security's Death Master File to find out if applicants were using the information of the dead. The findings: - 132,000 applications had some deliberate manipulations of Social Security numbers - 66,000 were straight up-and-up ID theft of the dead - the person had died months before the application was made.
NEWS
By Jonah Goldberg | April 30, 2012
With the Supreme Court taking up Arizona's "show me your papers" immigration law, we're once again thrust into a useful debate over the role of the government and the obligations of the citizen -- and non-citizen. Rather than come at it from the usual angle, I thought I'd try something different. If there were one thing I could impress upon people about the nature of the state, it's that governments by their very nature want to make their citizens "legible. " I borrow that word from James C. Scott, whose book "Seeing Like a State" left a lasting impression on me. Mr. Scott studied why the state has always seen "people who move around" to be the enemy.
SPORTS
By Katie Carrera, The Washington Post | April 24, 2012
As the Washington Capitals sat in the dressing room at their Arlington, Va., practice facility ahead of a flight to Boston for a final showdown with the Boston Bruins in this Eastern Conference quarterfinal series, the mood was noticeably loose. Players lobbed well-intended jabs at one another, exchanged jokes with reporters and seemed relaxed to the point that an uninformed observer might not have believed the team will be fighting to keep its season alive tonight in Game 7 at TDGarden.
ENTERTAINMENT
By Erik Maza and The Baltimore Sun | April 24, 2012
A traveling EDM festival might have seemed like a far-fetched notion, but Live Nation's IDentity is returning this year, with a show planned at Jiffy Lube Live again. The festival, which last year attracted big-timer Kaskade, back when when he didn't headline arenas, and Hercules and Love Affair, consists of genre stars - this year it's Wolfgang Gartner, Nero, and Paul Van Dyk, among others - taking turns at the turntables for several hours before an arena crowd. Kaskade, presumably, was busy with his own arena tour . Live Nation did not disclose last year's attendance numbers with Billboard, which ran the press release . Nice detail: "IDENTITY's sponsors include Rockstar Energy Drink, Emazing Lights, Slurpee, TIGI Bedhead, and Lifestyle Condoms.
BUSINESS
By Eileen Ambrose, The Baltimore Sun | April 23, 2012
Let's turn to baseball to sum up the Maryland legislative session's impact on consumers: It had a few singles but no home runs. "We made a lot of progress on some really critical issues," says Marceline White, executive director of the Maryland Consumer Rights Coalition. "But there is a lot of work left to do and in some places we had some setbacks. " Last year's legislative session was strong on consumer protections, with Marylanders still reeling from the foreclosure crisis and weak economy, White says.
NEWS
The Baltimore Sun | April 21, 2012
A state business group has invited members of the public to bring their sensitive documents Saturday to "Shred Day" identity theft prevention events in Baltimore and Anne Arundel counties. The events, hosted by the Better Business Bureau of Greater Maryland, will send trucks to Arundel Mills (behind hhgregg) and The Avenue in White Marsh (behind the AMC Lowes), and will accept documents until noon. Each truck is capable of shredding up to 8,000 pounds of personal information.