Having Your ID Stolen Leads to Job Loss, Prosecution

ConfusedVorlon writes "The BBC reports on the sad case of Simon Bunce. Mr. Bunce had his identity stolen, and credit cards were made to capitalize on the theft. Some of those cards were used at sites offering child pornography, and as a result Mr. Bunce was swept up in Operation Ore. The poor man was prosecuted for his 'crime', and was eventually found innocent, but in the meantime he lost his job. It took him six months to find another at a quarter of the salary. 'The police's computer technicians take several months to examine [his computers and records], and Mr Bunce could not afford to wait to repair the damage done to his reputation. "I knew there'd been a fundamental mistake made and so I had to investigate it." Recent surveys suggest that as many as one in four Britons have been affected by it. In 2007 more than 185,000 cases of identity theft were identified by Cifas, the UK's fraud prevention service, an increase of almost 8% on 2006.'"

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[Anonymous Coward]

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Above: -1 OFFTOPIC

[Anonymous Coward]

Ceci n'est pas une soapbox.

Strange... you missed the whole thing.

[DaedalusHKX]

The same thing occurs in big cities, where people mingle all day long, yet many buildings use intercoms to filter out "undesirables".

I prefer being able to shoot bad guys that break into my home, or trick another user of the intercom into letting them into my "home" area.

Thus I prefer to live out towards the country, where the sheriffs tend to have less "city slicker" tendencies and enforce some bullshit regulation that says I should let someone rape my woman, kill my dog, steal my property, and that I should give him the keys to my truck and feed him too, ("give him what he wants") and maybe he'll go away and not come back next time.

I was merely pointing out that a gated community where many of my friends lived was not only secured (at the obvious entry points, the roadways) by private armed security but was also secured at the "home owner" level with the residents being more than willing to bag any crook if they ever tried to break in or steal what didn't belong to them... (think cheaper than blackwater and less gung ho, but just as professional, and that's no joke either, try to meet some of these folks and observe them before passing judgment). Also, roads were maintained privately. Most of the lines were laid privately (I'm not sure on electricity or commo, but I am fairly sure that most of those people were eccentrics, not just my friends... and well off eccentrics at that.)

Balkanize all you will. The Balkans were hell before America discovered them, they will be hell long after America changes its official language to Cantonese. I should know, I was born out there.

Re:Strange... you missed the whole thing.

[DaedalusHKX]

Wow, always use statistics... always. We know how accurate they are.

I prefer to talk individual examples. Mine, to be precise, and that of my friends, my associates and anyone else I've ever known to carry any sort of weapon.

According to your statistics, since I've had two incidents where I've had the option to defend myself, once with a sword and once with a gun, I should have at least 4 unintentionally shot members of my household, 7 murdered by thugs and 11 who shot themselves (after all, I was only armed with a gun for ONE of those incidents).

Hot damn... why have there been NO accidents despite a gun and live ammo being available? Oh wait. I know. I took out the mystery of the gun from everyone, even my dogs. EVERYONE has been to the range and shot my gun, as well as several of my friends guns. I took them to the range enough that they are TIRED of it. No mystery left, you put ammo into it, close it up, aim, squeeze the trigger and watermelons down range explode like water balloons... tell them flat out... "that's what happens to your friends if you point it at 'em." Its amazing how intelligent and well raised kids react when the mystery is removed.

I have another friend, NRA certified instructor. Has his kids clean all his guns when he comes back from competition. Supervised of course. They've gotten to where they hate it. 6 and 7 year olds and can clean his vintage M1 Garand better than I could.

Lots of training. They have been trained to be safe, they have experienced accidental fire at the range (one of the girls I took out as a group had her finger inside the guard of a loaded and cocked pistol, she turned to talk to me while her gun was aimed down range and she must've clenched her gun hand... and BAM, safely downrange... after that I've never had to illustrate "finger off the trigger until ready to shoot" since... an accident so to speak, in a perfectly controlled environment, and with enough witnesses to embarrass her for a LONG time.)

Wow, I'm ahead of the curve. I've had my home broken in twice by armed gang bangers (before I finally moved out of the big city) once when I was a bit of a hoplophobe (afraid of weapons, guns to be specific, kind of like you) and once afterwards. Neither resulted in a death, or rape, or anything else, but I should not have to jump out of my window of my own home, or hide or anything else. Especially when it is MY home. Any other animal, predator and many a grass eater (rhinoceros or cape buffalo anyone?) alike may have taken hostilities to defend its home.

Does that mean that 44 members of my family were shot in the process? Hot damn. I even had one member that played with a revolver I used to have... and cocked it. And then he put it down, barrel facing a brick wall (smart boy) and came RUNNING to me, and said "hey, I cocked that thing and uhhh, I'm afraid to mess with it." And he was just a GUEST in my home, imagine how I drill that training into the residents :)

BINGO... proper training averts those 44 accidental deaths that the NIH says must have occured for me to avoid being mugged or killed in my own home, not once, but TWICE... with no police anywhere in sight for hours, of course.

As for the kid with the pistol in question, he kept his finger off the trigger. His daddy taught him, and he put that training to use (course he shouldn't have handled the gun in the first place, I had that chat with his dad later, but its all very common sense stuff.)

Most people's training, with any tool, not just guns, is from what? HOLLYWOOD!! I'm sure the NIH would not ever suggest that TV watching has caused more deaths than all the privately held guns in North America, and possibly Europe. I wonder why axes are allowed in homes, since Hollywood decides to train most that axes and hammers are only tools for serial killers.... how about butcher knives? Claw Hammers? Meat cleavers?

Bingo.. train the family, train the lover, train the little cousins twice removed, hell, train the dog for all I care. When everyone knows what a tool does (power saw anyone?) they don't kill themselves with it.

Interestingly Freud seemed to think that "An often irrational fear of weapons signifies sexual immaturity." I wonder.