Vietnam vs. Afghanistan...

Vietnam War Hearings

Madison, Wisconsin

30-31 July 1965

What follows is the testimony of Louise Smalley,  a housewife at the hearings -

After hearing about the hearings, I felt it my duty to speak out my concerns. I have four children and am a housewife. I have never done anything political, other than voting, and I am not particularly interested in politics, but I do read the papers and I am confused by the news. I talk to people and I don’t like what I hear.

If this war is so unpredictable and goes on for six  years, seven years, decades, my children can be drawn into this horror.

I have read and heard about some of the atrocities and it is unbearable for me to know that our boys are taught and made to use napalm and phosphorous bombs.

I try to teach my children the value of individual human worth and I don’t want this destroyed by my country.

I do not have a solution to the war, but I do want a solution and I want you to find it.

The War at Home

(Vietnam)

1979

This statement is significant for several reasons:

Since 1965, mothers have gone from thinking that war is a ‘horror’ and that they don’t want their children to be made to participate in it to a minimum age for recruitment into the army of 17*, with parental consent, and 18 without.** (Regular Army/Army Reserve Enlistment: Must be at least 17 years old... Page 2, 2011-2012 Pocket Recruiter Guide, issued by the US Army. Available for viewing here.)

We now have military recruiting in public schools. ROTC, (Reserve Officer Training Corp), has returned to our institutions of higher education. (ROTC returned to Harvard after the repeal of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’) We now recruit enlistees from foreign countries. 

In other words, the American military recruit just about anybody with a pulse, regardless of their age. Even if they are child soldiers , which the United Nations called “An affront to humanity.” 

Forty-six years after the initial escalation of the Vietnam war, the 17 year olds signing up for the military in 2011 are not hindered by parents who don’t want their children involved in the ‘horror’ of war and who don’t mind the government ‘destroying’ their teachings of the “value of individual human worth.” (If the recruits' parents have even taught them of the value of the lives of people who do share their politics, color, ethnicity or religion.)

We have fallen from a moral nation to an immoral nation that kills people over natural resources and bizarre political beliefs. An immoral nation that continues to recruit 17 and 18 year olds to kill people because war profiteers in our country will lose money if we stop.  A nation that gladly signs over their children, the cream of our current generation, to kill others - an atrocity - for money to go to college.

What does this say about us, as a nation? That we value natural resources and forcing people to believe and behave like us over the lives of our children? That war mongers and war profiteers are more important than all lives in conflict areas - including American?

In 1965, Mrs. Smalley believed the Vietnam War could go on for 6-7 years or decades. 

It is difficult to peg how long the Vietnam War lasted. American intervention in Vietnam started very early in the 1960’s; some say as early as 1954. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was issued in August of 1967.  American involvement in the Vietnam was ended in 1973 by the Paris Peace Accords. The war continued until the fall of South Vietnam in April of 1975. By that time, although we maintained a presence in Vietnam, (like we do in Iraq, despite the fact that war is ‘over’.), we were not - officially - involved.

It was six years - 1967 to 1973 - from the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution to the Paris Peace Accords. We were clearly involved in ground combat in Vietnam before then. The 1/7th Air Cavalry was ordered to Vietnam in 1966 and stayed there until 1971. This meant the Vietnam War was, arguably, 7 years long.

A seven year war was unacceptable to Mrs. Smalley. A ten year war in Afghanistan is, apparently, acceptable to parents who sign their children up, or allow their children to sign up, to kill Afghanis for money to go to college.

Mrs. Smalley didn’t have a solution to the Vietnam War and she wanted the government to find it. 

It took the US government and the government of North Vietnam until 1973 to find a “solution” to the war in Vietnam. And then it wasn’t a real solution, it was a way to withdraw Americans from ground combat and aerial operations. (See references to the Paris Peace Accords, above. The Accords, supposedly, brought 'peace with honor')

The US government has not gotten any better at solving conflicts since 1973 - over 30 years ago. In fact, it has gotten worse. 


Apparently, there is widespread acceptance - among republicans and democrats - in Washington of the ‘long war.’ A war in which we will engage our ‘enemies’, (whether, in fact, they are our ‘enemies’), on multiple fronts, in multiple countries, with no plans to prevail and, most certainly, no exit strategy from any of these conflicts. A war where the military industrial complex is getting rich feeding our children into the meat grinders in Afghanistan and, to a lesser extent, Iraq.

Perhaps an incursion into Afghanistan was necessary after 9/11. I know it wasn’t, but let’s look at what has happened in the ensuing 10 years...

We went to Afghanistan to ‘get’ Osama Bin Laden. Except we weren’t very good at it. It took us ten years and billions of dollars. Ten years. And then we found him living openly in Pakistan. After Bin Laden was captured, instead of bringing him to justice, giving him the due process guaranteed by the US Constitution,*** we killed him and, supposedly, dumped his body in the ocean.

Despite the fact our stated reason for going into Afghanistan was to find Bin Laden, we have made no plans to withdraw from Afghanistan since his capture and death. In fact, we are making preparations to spend billions of dollars more to continue the ‘long war’ in Afghanistan. 


This leads me to believe that the focus, after 9/11, shifted from finding Bin Laden to something else. Who knows what the focus of the US government shifted to - because they have articulated no strategic goal and have no exit strategy.

Mrs. Smalley would be appalled at the length of our war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Appalled at the use of child soldiers. She would, also, be asking the government to find a ‘solution’ to getting us out of the war in Afghanistan. Fat chance.

Things have changed, dramatically, since Mrs. Smalley testified before the hearings on the Vietnam war in Madison, WI in 1967. They have gotten markedly worse.

And there is no end in sight.

*Unbelievably, the British recruit children as young as 16 into their military. This is barbaric.

**The age for the draft, (conscription), during Vietnam varied. In 1951, the Universal Military Training and Service Act reduced the age for the draft to 18 1/2 years. The Military Selective Service Act of 1967 further lowered the age for registration for the draft, and induction into the army, to 18. Subsequently, during the Vietnam War, a child had to be either 18 1/2 or 18 to be drafted, depending upon whether they were drafted before or after 1967.

***Some say it would have been impossible to bring Bin Laden to justice. I say, “bullshit.” 

In 1960, the Israelis, arguably, committed what was, essentially, an act of war against Argentina when they inserted covert Mossad operators into the country who captured Adolf Eichmann, questioned him extensively and then spirited him out of the country.

They took Eichmann back to Israel, where he received due process - a fair trial - and was convicted. Then they executed Eichmann, cremated him and dumped his ashes in the Mediterranean Sea with the full knowledge of the citizens of Israel and the world.

Eichmann was responsible for carrying out Reinhard Heydrich’s “final solution to the Jewish problem” formulated by Nazi Germany at the Wannsee Conference in 1942. Eichmann is directly responsible for the murder of 6 million Jews and 5 million others in the Holocaust. Compared to Eichmann, Bin Laden is an amateur. 

The Israelis captured Eichmann in a matter of months after locating him. Without killing thousands of citizens of Argentina and spending billions of dollars. Was the Mossad more capable in the 1960 than the CIA is today? I’d say they are.

If the Israelis could try a monster like Eichmann; 68 years later why couldn't the US government try a lesser monster, Osama Bin Laden?

Let's Get to the Real Debate

 Bin Laden's dead. Should we get out of Afghanistan?


I am commenting on an article written by Fred Kaplan, a columnist at Slate.com. Mr. Kaplan is known as a hawk. 


Now, to the article…


“…the war in Afghanistan has never been entirely about killing or capturing Bin Laden."


It wasn't? Bush lied about something else?


"It's a big deal that he's been killed. Al-Qaida has lost not merely a figurehead but its political and spiritual leader, the seemingly invincible embodiment of its whole mythic narrative. But the organization and its dream aren't dead; its franchise managers, however splintered and paranoid, can still wreak much damage.”


Before people like you came along, OBL was a loser hiding out in a cave in Tora Bora. But, people like you had to invest him with such tripe as, "...not merely a figurehead but its political and spiritual leader."


While nimrods like you have been investing heavily in the fear mongering trade, OBL has gone from hanging out in caves to a 'compound' in Abbottabad where he watched porn flicks. This is who you describe as the "invincible embodiment" of the whole myth. Your 'invincible embodiment' was sitting on his ass, on his mud floor studying for his next jihad by screening 'Debbie Does Kandahar" over and over again, just to make sure he got a good look at her technique.


OBL's death isn’t a big deal. Some people refuse to believe that OBL’s role in anything that Al Qaeda has done since 9/11 has been pretty much limited to making ant-American videos and shouting ‘Death to America.’ He was a nobody that the west clung to so as to justify starting two wars in the Middle East. OBL was much more important in the creation of the “National security” state, simply because he was an unknown.


As an unknown it was possible for the government to do anything they wanted, while pointing to the specter of OBL. I am not sure what they are going to do now that their scapegoat is no longer an unknown.


“More to the point, Afghanistan, in its current state, would very likely tumble into anarchy or civil war without the binding presence (however tenuous) of U.S. and NATO troops—and thus serve, again, as a sanctuary for terrorists.”

And we should care about this, why?


You invest OBL with powers of a 'super-terrorist' and then you say nothing much is going to change since his death. The minor leaguers will just step up their game and it will back to business as usual. 


So, which is it - is he 'super-terrorist' who is the "...invincible embodiment..." or is he some old guy sitting on the floor, farting and watching porn? You can't have it both ways, but, somehow, I believe you are going to try. Fear mongering is like that.


You seem to believe that we can, somehow, force our way of life on the Afghanis, least the country become lousy with terrorists. If that is what we are doing, why aren’t we garrisoning most of the countries in the Middle-east and a few in Africa. They are, already, harboring "terrorists". So, why don’t we send a couple of cruise missiles over Jordan to get their attention? Better yet, why don’t we stop buying oil from the Saudis. That would really shut them up.

“Of particular concern here are the most-militant jihadists, who could turn the lawless terrain into a cross-border expanse from which to plan and execute their ambitions in nuclear-armed Pakistan.”


Okay, nice way you worked in "nuclear-armed Pakistan" into the whole doomsday scenario. Too bad what you said is just the wet dream of some guy who works for the CIA. In the basement. Emptying trash into the incinerator.


You are, sort, of like the Japanese before Pearl Harbor. Their entire doctrine, strategy and tactics were based on the belief that there would be one huge fleet encounter with American and Japanese navies engaged in a pitched battle, sending dump truck sized shells back and forth until one side was destroyed or withdrew in defeat. That's why they attacked Pearl Harbor, to kill battleships. Aircraft carriers were just a bonus; or not, because they weren't in port that day.


In your version of this nightmare, you are sure that a mass of Taliban are going to come running full-out towards an American base where they will be gunned down in an orderly, military manner. And afterwords, a gracious people will tolerate the occupation of their country and the senseless slaughter of their citizens. After all, we brought all the guns, so we get to make all the rules. And, of course, the Afghanis know how much to trust invading armies. It's always worked out so well for them in the past.


“The killing of Bin Laden would have momentous impact on the Afghan war—and on world politics—if some Pakistani leaders used the occasion to force systemic institutional reforms.”


Okay, so OBL wasn't important, it was that his death should have been used to "...force systemic institutional reforms." Yeah, that makes sense. OBL was just a blunt tool to force another ancient culture into adopting a world view the US/NATO can relate to.


"Many countries' leaders would be compelled to make vast changes if it were suddenly revealed that they'd been harboring the world's most wanted mass murderer for five years”


Where are these many countries you speak of?


The Mossad penetrated Argentina and kidnapped Adolf Eichmann in 1960. He had been living there since the end of WWII. He used false papers to enter and stay in the country. Eichmann collaborated with Reinhard Heydrich to solve the ‘Jewish question’ in Nazi Germany. This puts the blood of six million Jews on Eichmann’s hands. Eichmann was one of the most infamous mass murderers in history. 


So, why didn’t Argentina complain to the UN or to the Israeli government about what amounted to an act of war against a sovereign nation? Because they weren’t really interested in abetting an individual responsible for killing 6 million Jews.


And what did Argentina do after the Israelis kidnapped Eichmann? Nothing. 


The Pakistani government isn’t going to, all of the sudden, decide they have to be accountable to the rest of the world. They aren’t accountable. They have been harboring “terrorists” for a lot longer than OBL has been around. And they will go on harboring them now that OBL is dead. That is, if you define terrorism as one who has to be forced at the end of rifle to adopt your world view.


Pakistan didn't want to be responsible for what OBL did or what he stood for. Like Argentines, the Pakastanis weren't interested in hiding a mass murderer in their midst. So, the Pakistanis let the Americans solve their problem.


“—and that a foreign power can mount a military raid deep inside its borders without triggering the slightest detection, much less resistance.”


Look at map, Abbottabad isn't 'deep inside" Pakistan's border, it is right on the border.


What a bunch of BS. We BOUGHT our way into Pakistan. The Pakistani government knows who is giving it billions of dollars of aid. We could have detonated a tactical nuclear weapon in Abbottabad, killed everyone, turned the ground into radioactive glass and they wouldn’t have said anything. They know not to bite the hand that feeds them.


And it was not like Pakistan had any interest in saving OBL...


“…in just about any other country on earth, a leader would use this double embarrassment as an opportunity to clean house, chop heads, overhaul rival power networks.”


In other words, become more fascist. Isn’t this what Stalin did after WWII – purges and pogroms? Isn’t that what is happening in the US? This is desirable?


You seem to have trouble with the concept of ‘accountability’. Pakistan has none. They don’t think they need it. They don’t want it. And they sure as hell are not going to be accountable to a non-Muslim nation full of infidels.



“Should India invade (and there have been a few wars between the two countries since the 1947 partition), a friendly Afghanistan would be a strategic reserve. In the meantime, a strong Taliban helps counter India's efforts to create a presence in Afghanistan—in other words, helps to pre-empt India's encirclement of Pakistan.” 


Again, I have to ask why this should matter to the US? 


India and Pakistan and been fighting since Pakistan was created. It didn’t start when, or if, Al Qaeda showed up.


The Taliban are many things, but being an effective military force is not one of them. Most of them aren’t even sure what they are doing, besides joining in the chorus of “Death to America.” The leadership, if there is any, is completely decentralized and would be impossible to control. They have no articulable goals. By their very nature, they are tribal warlords who aren’t going to line up to fight any invaders on behalf of the Pakistanis, much less an Indian attempt to invade Pakistan.


They know that an insurgency will win every time over an army dedicated to direct confrontation. In other words, the Taliban - probably without reading it - understand the tenants of Sun Tzu's Art of War better than we do. They, like the North Vietnamese are in it for the long war. They know that they can drag any foreign army down by refusing to fight on their terms.


Maybe we should run your scenario by a couple of our guests at Camp X-ray and ask them if their ‘jihad’ was ultimately to serve as a fighting reserve for Pakistan.


Let’s make something perfectly clear. Power comes with having nuclear weapons, not using them. They act as a deterrent only as long as you have them. Use them and you are naked in the face of nuclear weapons from the other side – who you have just really pissed off.


Neither India nor Pakistan is going to throw away what they see as their ‘trump card’ over a border war that has been going for fifty years and will continue almost indefinitely into the future.


It does fit into your doomsday scenario, though.


It also begs the question: Pakistan is our ally. We don’t want them to be overrun by the Indians. And, according to you, the Taliban are serving as a strategic reserve against an Indian invasion of Pakistan. So, why are trying to kill the very people you claim are functioning as a reserve army for our ally?


“The death of Osama Bin Laden doesn't alter these factors.”


You’re right. This fantasy you have concocted is just that, a fantasy. A reason for us to stay and fight a non-existent enemy, living among a populace that doesn’t want us there. Who is tired of their friends and neighbors being killed in the effort to bring them a liberal democracy. They don’t like us, because they don’t want to adopt a world view that is consistent with ours. They, rightly, don’t think that it is just or humane for one group of people to make another group of people ‘hew the line’ just because it can.


“But if it matters to U.S. interests how the war ends—whither Afghanistan and its effects on the broader region—then it's a bad idea simply to walk away. And it's fairly clear that the outcome does matter to U.S. interests.”


Do you read history? Do you really believe the US can materially change what is going to happen in Afghanistan’s future? That we, finally, are the invading force that will save them from themselves and get them to embrace a way of life that they are willing to kill and die to avoid?


Whose interests are we talking about protecting? What you are saying is that this war, like every other war, isn’t about anything but RESOURCES. Business. Not political activism. Not humanitarianism. We just want their resources. All wars are about resources. War is just theft writ large.


Look around at your kids and your kids’ friends. Now, tell me that you think these human beings are worth sacrificing so Exxon-Mobil can make an extra ten million in profit?


“So we should exploit this situation, use it as leverage to get Karzai to step up reforms, especially to take meaningful steps toward ending corruption."


The Afghan people elected Karzai once. They let him steal another election with hardly a blink. The only people who were upset that Karzai stole the election were people not in Afghanistan.


Now, you expect Karzai to stop being a kleptocrat and start caring what the US thinks of him?


Where there is no accountability, there is no leverage. It is more beneficial for Karzai to maintain the status quo. The U.S. gives Afghanistan money and Karzai steals it and uses it to consolidate his power. Then he gets to play victim whenever NATO does something he doesn't like – and he, pretty much, doesn’t like anything NATO does. I see no upside for Karzai to quit being the head of a kleptocracy and to suddenly become accountable to his people or to a NATO, that seemingly goes around killing people at their leisure.


"At the same time, commanders and diplomats should exploit whatever fissures Bin Laden's death might have opened up—not just between the various Taliban factions but, more, between the insurgent commanders, who tend to lounge in the shelters of Pakistan, and the foot soldiers bleeding on the battlefields of Afghanistan. It's unclear at this point whether a diplomatic settlement is possible, or what it would look like—but it's time to start seriously crafting its foundations."

In the first part of this article, you claimed that OBL's death wouldn't be that significant. Now you are saying it can be leveraged to, somehow, force a diplomatic solution to a war without any goals and without an exit strategy.

Why would the 'minor leaguers' you describe as being below OBL agree to anything? They are prevailing. They are chasing NATO around Afghanistan, making NATO spend billions of dollars and gallons of blood just to achieve some kind of weird status quo.

They know, for certain, that we do not have the political will to stomach another [insert number of years] in Afghanistan. We have already announced that fact by saying we will start a draw-down of troops this summer and will be gone by 2013.

These people aren't idiots - mostly - they will not agree to a diplomatic solution when they are already winning.


Even if there were to be a diplomatic solution, who would we join with to provide it? That guy who showed up at NATO's doorstep, claiming to be a representative of some of the leaders of the Taliban, but was really just a scam artist?

To posit that killing OBL will influence other Al Qaeda leaders to surface and agree to a diplomatic solution is ludicrous. All the Afghanis have to do is sit around their TVs, watch video porn and complain about the west's decadence. And wait for NATO leave.

They know they can put the west, especially, the US into a panic by not blowing things - i.e.; the Times Square bomb. Why risk direct action against a highly technical and sophisticated army, when you can get rich guys who are losing their homes to foreclosure to do stupid things and take all the heat?


There is no evidence of any discord among the leaders of the Taliban. Why would they give up now, if we are going to be gone in two years? All they have to do is wait us out. And they know that means waiting two years. Would you negotiate a political solution to a war that you are winning?


Let’s take a minute here to reflection how well this whole “peace with honor” thing has worked out. Kissinger negotiated the Paris Peace Accords and ended American involovement in the  Vietnam war. We – including the government of N. Vietnam – more or less agreed to maintain the status quo until a referendum was held to decide about the partitioning of the country.


And, of course, the N. Vietnamese stopped fighting. After all they had agreed to not keep fighting. Why wouldn’t keep their word? Because they didn’t have to. They weren’t accountable to anyone. They could do whatever they wanted – and they wanted to be on tanks that rolled into Saigon and forced the evacuation of hundreds of people from the roof of the American Embassy in Saigon.


I may be cynical, but I really can’t see where the Taliban would be anymore pre-disposed to honor their commitment to a diplomatic solution than the North Vietnamese were.


In fact, I can’t see any upside in it for them. So, why do it?


“…and we will have no leverage if everyone thinks we're getting out quickly.”


Everyone doesn’t just think we are getting out quickly. They know we are getting out quickly. How can a force that will disappear after 2 years leverage anything?


“There are two alternatives to this approach: keep doing what we've been doing and stay there forever while the regional politics continue to stagnate—or just get out and watch it all crumble.”


The ‘crumbling’ of the current corrupt government and the substitution of an Islamic leader is already pre-determined. Once we get out, they will stop making even the most facile attempts to do what they promised to do.


They will revert back to what they have known for thousands of years – inter-tribal warfare, theocracy and corruption on such as massive scale it will dwarf what is happening now.


It appears that Mr. Kaplan lives in an alternate universe where people act exactly as he predicts they will. No matter how unreasonable he is.


He still believes that we can force our world view on the Afghanis by display of military force. He still believes the government of Afghanistan can be bribed or scared into doing the “right thing” by an omnipotent US that, in ten years, has failed to make any sustainable change in Afghanistan.


He still believes that might makes right and everyone who possesses a world view inconsistent with his will fall, if we just ‘rattle our sabers’ loud enough.


Unfortunately for the American/NATO soldiers, sailors and airmen who have died in the fruitless effort to achieve any kind of permanent change, we are not omnipotent.


We have no leverage. We cannot use foreign aid to force a conclusion that we like. We are completely and utterly irrelevant to what Afghanistan will be like after we leave. What little influence we have we have because we bought it.


There is no way for us to influence what will happen in the future. If we stay we will just see more Americans die. And watch billions of dollars of taxpayer’s money circle the drain and disappear into never neverland.


And hawks like Mr. Kaplan need to learn to accept that. Before any more Americans die and before billions of dollars disappear down the rabbit hole.

Identity Theft

You never think it will happen to you. The data you sent to buy that whiz-bang new application over the Internet will never come back to haunt you. You’ve dealt with reputable company. All critical information was transferred through a page under HTTPS protocols.

All’s well and good. 

Or you think all is good. Until ‘the’ call comes. Some unknown voice wanting to ‘confirm’ the personal information you sent to the software company. And the caller identifies themselves as a representative of the software company you just did business with.

You refuse to give them the info they request. They get angry and demand that you provide them with your personal information. This, not being you first rodeo, you refuse to provide the caller with the information he wants and, abruptly, he hangs up.

Then, coincidentally, you go to your online banking webpage and try to log in. The password doesn’t worth. It doesn’t even recognize your login name.

By now, you are starting to put two and two together and coming up with five. The call was an attempted ‘social engineering’ call. Or, as many states call it, a felony. It’s when someone contacts another by phone or other telephone device using a false pretense to get information out of them they are not entitled to.

Of course, this happened on a week-end, so I couldn’t call the bank to cancel credit or debit cards. Or find out if they had hit my credit card accounts.

Monday approaches with some degree of anxiety. First thing I did is call the bank to discuss what happened.

I bank with a relatively small, local bank. They farm out the actual server hosting and online banking software management from another firm, that shall remain nameless.  I never thought about how secure the bank’s online security was. Like most people I know, I just took it for granted without really thinking about it.

When this happened, I started to wonder exactly how well their security would protect my money.

Apparently, pretty well. There had been three attempts at getting into my account. After the third incorrect attempt, the bank’s software locked them out and wouldn’t let them back in. 

I am betting that whomever was attempting to get into my account didn’t realize that the only way to unlock the account was to call the bank and go through some pretty thorough authentication before they would even talk about passwords or unlocking my account.

Then we spent about half an hour looking for any unusual transactions. [I seldom write checks for this very reason.] And figuring out what the account balance was, etc.

After going through all this, both the bank and I were satisfied that the people who had called me, hadn’t managed to get past their security. 

I consider myself a pretty savvy computer users. I have run very large computer networks. I made tons of money certifying that the large network installations I was running were “Y2K” compliant. I’ve read a pelthora of books about online security. I know about people trying ‘social engineering’ by calling people and asking them to confirm information they had no right to have in the first place. 

So, I didn’t give them any information. My bank had a much more robust security system than I thought it did. Even if had told them what they wanted to know, they still wouldn’t have been able to get into the bank’s system.

Changing everything after this attempt was a complete pain in the butt. But, I guess that is life in the 21^st century.

The rules that are out there about computer security tend to be taken pretty lightly – Passwords get written a sticky note and stuck to the bezel of your monitor for everyone to see. You use the same password for multiple accounts. You go years between changing your passwords. You use your birthday, address or telephone numbers for passwords.

And, despite our somewhat lacks attitude about security, most of the time, we get away with it.

I have about a dozen accounts I use on various different systems. All highly secure passwords that get changed often. All written down and stored separately from the computers – then encrypted with PGP.

So, nothing really happened because the bank’s security system kept them out and I wouldn’t answer any questions about my personal data to help them figure out my password at the bank.

But, it was a wakeup call. You can’t afford to get complacent with your passwords and/or to give out your personal data to strangers that call you out of the blue, on a weekend and casually ask you to confirm ‘some details”. (They know, if they can get into the account before Monday, the legitimate card holder can’t tell anyone that their identity might have been stolen. And they have the rest of the weekend to drain your account.)

It isn’t that the bank wouldn’t absorb the loss. They would have. But, even without anyone getting into my bank’s computer, it cost me about 8 hours on the phone. Plus cancelling all my plastic money. I cannot image how long it would have taken to deal with this, if they had gotten in and stole everything.

The moral of the story is that you should take everything your IT gal/guy says about security seriously. If s/he says change passwords, every month and don’t use your dog’s name as your password, s/he isn’t just flapping her/his jaws. In a networked system, where it could effect a large number of users, servers, etc any breach of security could cost thousands of dollars in lost time while your IT guy/gal goes through every component of the system to make sure none were penetrated.

I am not going to say what software company let my personal information get out in the wild. I will give them a chance to make it right and tell me how they are going to fix their system so it can’t get hacked, again. Or, I will stop buying stuff from them.

This is the same attitude any customer should take when dealing with a company, retailer, etc. that insists their system is “safe”.

Everybody’s site is safe, until it isn’t. And even though the bank will go after a hacker, if enough money is involved, it is better for you and your bank if you follow the rules your IT manager lays out. And follow them at home, as well as at work.

[1] The company I bought the software from is on the other side  of the world. They would not, casually, call me up and ask these questions. This was my first tip off that something was wrong. Here it was in the middle of the weekend, but there it was probably mid-day on Monday.

I worked with tech support to handle some problems on another brand of laptop. Their tech support was in the Philippines. The person I talked to was, clearly, not an native English speaker. He couldn’t answer my questions and, instead, explained to me how to set up my computer so he could control it from the Philippines.

Now, depending on how you look at it - this is very cool or very, very scary. 

It was clear the customer service rep in the Philippines had no idea what was going on. He just wandered around in the laptop for about a half an hour, seemingly clicking on whatever he encountered. When he did accidentally discover the reason the trackpad wasn’t working, he didn’t know how to fix it.

So, I took the laptop back and got back the money that paid for it.