Progress to investigate utility pole vandalism

Another missing grounding wire

I reached out to a contact I have at Progress Energy about the thefts of copper wiring from my neighborhood’s utility poles. Marty Clayton, Community Relations Manager, called me back today and told me the utility has had other reports of this crime and would send someone out to evaluate the damage in my area. He said these thieves are taking their lives into their own hands with these thefts, going so far as to break into live substations.

I spent some time today before and after work, tagging some of the damaged poles with red marker tape. I’m finding that about one out of every two poles I check has its copper missing, and some of the missing pieces are only two feet long.

Why would someone put themselves and surrounding neighbors at risk just to steal five bucks of metal? I just don’t get it.

Google redirected me to Lithuania?

I was surfing the Internets at work today, searching for info on solar panels. I put in a phone number for a Google search and got four results. Clicking on the first one, I expected to see the contact page of Westinghouse Solar. Instead I got redirected to the following URL:

http://39008.peachtreepropainters.info/url?sa=X&source=web&cd=1&ved=0IrIEbA43&url=http://www.westinghousesolar.com/index.php/contact-us&ei=2ZEufKTL5qizrI2OzlM08Z21oQ==&usg=z-CCthkp93j-2o-7wI1SJZ&sig2=yIZHjyHJ17arcqFVojVX4B

Now, I know Google usually tracks which search results I click on, and hides this tracking using Javascript. That’s been the case for years and I’m used to it. However, I’m stumped as to why the above URL says 39008.peachtreepropainters.info instead of www.google.com. The IP address for 39008.peachetreepropainters.info routes to Lithuania:
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Copper thieves targeting Raleigh utility poles

This pole on Edmund Street is not protected against shorts and lightning due to a clipped grounding wire (lower left).

I happened to take a glance at the utility poles my dog was peeing on this morning and was aghast to see that many of them were missing their copper grounding wires! I’ve blogged about lightning protection before, and during last summer’s thunderstorm season I had read about how important these grounding wires are to the safety of our homes and the safety of the linemen who work on the electrical gear. Here were a half-dozen poles on this short street that were missing the first six feet of their grounds.

I sent out an email to the neighborhood, urging folks to call in any other broken poles they saw. While I didn’t hear back from my neighbors, I did check the poles on Glascock as I drove to the grocery store this afternoon and saw many poles in the same sad condition.

I don’t know when these thefts took place but it makes me angry that some metal-thieving asshat is jeopardizing the safety of my family just to make a few measly bucks. If lightning hits a utility pole within a few blocks, my home could burn down because of these missing grounding wires.

This is a serious safety issue and there’s no telling how hard Raleigh has been hit. I’m hoping these get discovered before people find out the hard way that their homes are sitting ducks for lightning.

(As pure coincidence, WRAL ran a story today about these utility pole copper thefts occurring in Wayne county.)

High-Tech Border Checks Will Blow Spies’ Cover

Wired has an absolutely fascinating story about how the U.S.’s border security paranoia has unwittingly made it very difficult for spies to use false identities. With biometric checking in effect, the days of a spy entering a country on a false passport are quickly coming to an end.

The increasing deployment of iris scanners and biometric passports at worldwide airports, hotels and business headquarters, designed to catch terrorists and criminals, are playing havoc with operations that require CIA spies to travel under false identities.

Busy spy crossroads such as Dubai, Jordan, India and many E.U. points of entry are employing iris scanners to link eyeballs irrevocably to a particular name. Likewise, the increasing use of biometric passports, which are embedded with microchips containing a person’s face, sex, fingerprints, date and place of birth, and other personal data, are increasingly replacing the old paper ones. For a clandestine field operative, flying under a false name could be a one-way ticket to a headquarters desk, since they’re irrevocably chained to whatever name and passport they used.

“If you go to one of those countries under an alias, you can’t go again under another name,” explains a career spook, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he remains an agency consultant. ”So it’s a one-time thing — one and done. The biometric data on your passport, and maybe your iris, too, has been linked forever to whatever name was on your passport the first time. You can’t show up again under a different name with the same data.”

via CIA’s Secret Fear: High-Tech Border Checks Will Blow Spies’ Cover | Danger Room | Wired.com.

Tony Shin taken to task

It seems that Earle Holland, Ohio State University’s assistant vice president for research communications, also got one of the mysterious Tony Shin Infographics, only Holland didn’t simply post it to his blog unquestioned. Instead, Holland took the time to thoroughly review the infographic, pointing out its numerous errors. [PDF]

Holland writes on his blog:

“Infographics,” first popularized by the coming of the USAToday newspaper, are a quick and easy way of conveying information. Sadly, however, they’re equally useful in simplifying data to the point of misrepresentation. Science as a subject is all too often seen by the public as too complicated to understand. It’s a normal tendency for people to reach out for, and maintain, simpler notions that require less work.
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Red Hat’s OpenSource.Com gets infographic-ed

Looks like Red Hat’s OpenSource.com has been infographic-ed. An infographic from “Education News” was posted today with the following comment:

We often talk about the higher education bubble and it being on the verge of bursting but what does that really look like? How does a “bubble” form and what causes it to burst? The following two part infographic does a great job explaining just that by showing where higher education has been, where we are, and without change where we will be. To me, it further highlights why open source technology and open source principles have such an important role in education reform from lowering costs to demonstrating a better way for educating our youth in the 21st century and beyond.

I’m betting the ubiquitous Tony Shin emailed OpenSource.com and personally asked them to post it.

USPS postage labels receipt scam

Got another phishing email, this one with the title “USPS postage labels receipt.” It comes from the lovely and talented “Alma Parks.”

From: “Alma Parks”
Subject: USPS postage labels receipt.
Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2012 15:59:59 +0100

Acct #: 3199501

Dear client:

This is an email confirmation for your order of 3 online shipping label(s) with postage. We will charge you the following amount:

Transaction Number: #1148147
Print Date/Time: 03/16/2012 02:30 PM CST
Postage Amount: $28.32
Credit Card Number: XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX
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“Your USPS shipment postage labels receipt” scam

I got this creative phishing email scam in my inbox today. The links go to a phishing website where the crooks collect your payment information. Don’t be fooled!

Return-Path: USPS_Shipping_Alert@usps.com
From: “Royce Erickson” USPS_Shipping_Alert@usps.com
To: mister cool guy at markturner.net
Subject: Your USPS shipment postage labels receipt.
Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2012 11:14:02 -0300

Acct #: 0341903

Dear client:

This is an email confirmation for your order of 3 online shipping label(s) with postage. We will charge you the following amount:

Transaction ID: #6924766
Print Date/Time: 03/12/2012 02:30 AM CST
Postage Amount: $47.65
Credit Card Number: XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX

Priority Mail Regional Rate Box B # 0697 5722 3716 9279 1176 (Sequence Number 1 of 1)
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Yet another infographic

An Internet acquaintance forwarded to me this email he received from our infographic-making friend Tony Shin:

From: Tony Shin imtinytony@gmail.com
Date: Sat, Mar 17, 2012 at 1:17 AM
Subject: A graphic on the ethics of the wealthy
To: blah blah blah at gmail.com

Dear Editor,

While I was searching for blogs and posts that have talked about social psychology, I came across your site and wanted to reach out to see if I could get your readership’s feedback on a graphic my team and I designed, which focuses on the studies found on how those socially and financially well-off behave unethically compared to the lower ladder.

If you’re interested, let’s connect.

Thanks! =)

—
Tony Shin
@ohtinytony

The infographic in question can be viewed here.

Google search turns up many infographic mentions

This Google search on “infographic my team built” seems to find many of these spam emails posted on various websites.

Look closely and you’ll find a few sent by our friend Tony Shin, too. Here’s another, and another, and another.

Here’s a whole blog post of Tony Shin’s infographics. Here’s another.

Here’s another from Peter Kim. It was taken from the HackCollege.com website, which is (surprise!) also registered through Moniker:
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