Romance, BlackBerry style

The New York Times' Jennifer 8. Lee offers a fascinating case study in how technology is transforming social interactions -- and how those inside the Beltway really do live in a different world:

In the high-tempo, socially incestuous world of Washington politics, where more than 60 percent of Congressional staff members are single, the BlackBerry — a wireless e-mail device introduced five years ago by Research in Motion, a Canadian company — has become indispensable to social life. Thanks to the lobbying firms, political campaigns and government agencies that issue BlackBerries, a critical mass of wireless-enabled romantics can now boldly clip them to their belts or discreetly tuck them away in purses in preparation for the evening's adventures. The chipmunklike thumb action associated with "Berrying" is now as readily observed in smoky bars on late nights as it is in Congressional hearings.

"Once the Hill staffers got the Berries, the social dating scene was revolutionized," said Jano Cabrera, the spokesman for the Democratic National Committee. "Suddenly they have gone from earnest policy wonks and flacks who leave at the end of the day to mini-keyboard Lotharios."

Something's phishy

"Bank robbery with an electronic twist" is how the Wall Street Journal's Jeremy Wagstaff describes the current threat posed by phishing scams as spammers, virus writers and con artists cooperate to steal access to victim's online accounts:

Security consultants and law-enforcement officers say members of the three groups have joined to steal hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of dollars using a scam known as "phishing" -- the art of duping computer users into revealing their passwords and other private data.

The Anti-Phishing Working Group, a U.S. industry association, counted 1,125 such attacks in April, up 180% over March. MessageLabs, a U.S. e-mail security company, reported an 800-fold increase in such attacks in the past six months. "This is a huge increase," says Dan Maier of the Anti-Phising Working Group. "Each unique attack sends out anywhere from 50,000 to 10 million spam/phishing e-mails."

But while most attention has focused on e-mails that try to lure the unwary by imitating respected financial institutions, the "phishing" scam -- pronounced "fishing," and named for its technique of luring prey with convincing bait -- has already mutated into something more dangerous, security experts say. Such attacks now sometimes include code that hides on a user's computer to capture log-in names and passwords, which means even careful computer users could have their information stolen.

One recent attack was able to take snapshots of a user's screen when they logged onto their banking Web site, security experts said.

Fingerprinting fiasco

Did the FBI's arrest of Portland lawyer Brandon Mayfield based on an erroneous fingerprint match shake your faith in the reliability of fingerprinting? If not, it should, says public defender David Feige. In a Slate piece, Printing Problems -- The inexact science of fingerprint analysis, he argues that the century-old forensic standard is more subjective pseudoscience than irrefutable evidence.

The Zambian hen affair

OK, this takes the cake for the weirdest news story of the week. In fact, I'm not even going to bother looking for any others:  
Man commits suicide after having sex with hen.