TOPIC: Stop Glamorizing Guns and Their Use in Popular Culture
Article from christiansunite.com
Morality in Media President Robert Peters had the following comments in response to the many news stories pointing a finger at the availability of guns as the underlying cause of the Virginia Tech and similar senseless shootings:

• "Growing up in the 1950s and 1960s in North Central Illinois I often felt left out when friends went hunting for rabbits, squirrels, pheasants, deer and more.

• "My dad never took us hunting, even though his father had hunted and even though we had a rifle in the home that he taught us how to use when I was in grade school. After my grandfather passed away when I was in college, we also had a shotgun and handgun in the home.

• "Fist fighting among kids was common, but never once did any of us (or our parents) use a gun to shoot someone else. To my knowledge, the community I grew up in was not atypical.

• "Not surprising, my own growing up experience makes me wary of those that point a finger at the availability of guns as the underlying cause of the dramatic increase in gun-related murders.

• "The depiction of guns back then in films and TV also had an impact on us. I still have a picture of my older brother and I with our cowboy six guns and holsters; and I still have fond memories of playing war in the woods with our toy rifles and my favorite gun, a plastic carbine.
  

• "But I think I am on safe ground in saying that we didn't grow up fantasizing about shooting other human beings in real life just for the sake of shooting them or for exacting revenge.
  

• "How then do we explain why so many young people today use guns unlawfully?
  

• "One obvious part of the explanation is the decline of religion and, along with that, the decline of morality. There is nothing more basic to morality than, 'You shall not kill.'
  

• "I think another part of the explanation was the abandonment in the 1960s of the Hays Code that governed the film industry for three decades. Among the Code provisions was one that regulated the depiction of murder. Murder was to be presented in a way that would not inspire imitation. Brutal killings were not to be presented in detail. Revenge was not to be justified.
  

• "Broadcast television helped further desensitize youth to criminal violence; and the advent of cable TV and home videos brought the unedited, amoral deadly violence of Hollywood directly into home. Hardcore rap lyrics also extol criminal violence, including use of guns.
  

• "And today, video games provide youth with on-hands instruction in how to kill.
  

• "Without question, the increased availability of weapons designed to take human life has contributed to the increase in mayhem, but typically supply follows demand, and what has helped create the demand for such weapons is a popular culture that glamorizes their use.
  

• "All this is not to say that society shouldn't restrict the sale of guns and perhaps prohibit the sale of some guns altogether. Even assuming that the 2nd Amendment protects the right of citizens to keep weapons (as I believe it does), reasonable regulation should still be permissible.
  

• "It is to say that we would have much less to fear from the availability of guns, if we would stop glamorizing their use in popular culture. On the latter point, I recall seeing a statistic that less than 5% of New York City police officers ever fire their guns. You'd never know that from popular culture depictions of life as a major city law enforcement officer."

Based in New York City, Morality in Media works to promote standards of decency in media.

TOPIC: Privacy Is A Thing Of The Past
The following article reminds me that I have NO privacy any more, and should no longer have a high expectation of privacy. As the system administrator for my company's network, I have the task of monitoring security. Part of that job is reading security bulletins, etc. Every week, I receive security newsletters with short blurbs about this company or that university losing laptops with umpteen thousand names and other assorted personal data on them. That's bad enough. BUT, when the FBI -- the Federal Bureau of Investigation -- loses more than 150 laptops into "the great abyss", I realize that privacy is a thing of the past.

FBI lost 160 laptops in last 44 months
by Nate Anderson
How many laptops does the FBI lose? The Office of the Inspector General (or OIG; it's a part of the Department of Justice) sought to find out back in 2001, when it did an initial audit of the Bureau's losses of both weapons and laptops. The findings of that first audit were bad enough that the OIG began a follow-up on it, the results of which have just been released. The good news is that losses are dropping. The bad news is that they're still happening, and the FBI doesn't know if secure information is entering the wild. When the initial audit was completed in 2002, the FBI was losing 3.82 functional weapons a month (training weapons were going missing at an even higher rate of 5.07 each month). [That's an avg of 54 FBI weapons hitting the streets EVERY year.] Laptop losses were even worse, with 10.71 disappearing every thirty days. [That's 129 laptops lost per year.]
The new audit shows significantly better numbers: only 1.09 functional weapons and 2.64 laptops were lost each month, and losses of training weapons dropped all the way to 0.41. While the OIG applauds the work that the Bureau has done so far, they still raise questions about the loss rate and about the FBI's procedures for handling such events.
Losing guns isn't a good thing, but losing laptops can be just as bad, especially when they contain classified information. Unfortunately, the OIG determined that the FBI doesn't even know which of its computers contain such information. "Perhaps most troubling," says the report, "the FBI could not determine in many cases whether the lost or stolen laptop computers contained sensitive or classified information. Such information may include case information, personal identifying information, or classified information on FBI operations." Laptops can also contain goodies like the software that the FBI uses to make its identification badges, a copy of which was installed on a laptop stolen from the Boston Field Office in July 2002.
In the 44 months that it took to complete the new audit, the FBI lost 160 weapons and 160 laptop computers—a massive improvement over the 354 weapons and 317 laptops lost during the first 28-month-long audit. In any organization the size of the FBI, equipment is going to be lost, misplaced, or stolen, so perfection is not to be expected. [Says who?] The substantial progress made by the Bureau is encouraging, but the OIG still claims that the FBI "has not taken sufficient corrective action on several recommendations contained in our 2002 audit report."
To help them fix the problems, the OIG has thoughtfully offered 13 more suggestions. For example, the FBI has to make sure that a form FD-500 is filled out that describes the contents of every laptop computer, and it needs to do a better job of making sure that employees leaving the agency return FBI property.

A couple of pointers. IF you have a company laptop, make sure to encrypt the files. Also, take a moment to put your laptop bag in the trunk of your car. It's an easy target sitting in the backseat, even in a backpack or case. And for goodness sake, DON'T have automatic login set for ANY computer you use. I realize passwords aren't a huge block for hackers, BUT they do provide some protection for prying eyes and the crackheads that steal anything for a fix.