Now I was suspicious, especially since there’s nothing but a login box at cdlounge.com (Strike #1 in my book). So I started digging around a bit.

BMG Music Service’s FAQ section states:

Q. How do I know an email is from BMG Music Service?
A. BMG Music Service will send you emails about your orders and account as well as special sales and promotions, and these emails will come from bmgmusic@bmgmusicservice.com. Occasionally you may receive a fraudulent email that appears to be from BMG Music Service but is actually an attempt to trick you into providing personal information that can be used for identity theft. These emails are often called spoof or phishing emails.

BMG Music Service will never ask you to confirm account information like passwords or credit card information through email. If you receive suspicious email, please forward it to us immediately at emailspoof@bmgdirect.com and we will investigate it.

The e-mail I received says it came from cs@bmgmusic.com, so that’s Strike #2 (it should be coming from bmgmusic@bmgmusicservice.com, according to the FAQ). I looked at the questionable e-mail’s headers, and its Return-Path is soneill@103637-litigation1.yourmusic.com—Strike #3 (Yourmusic.com looks as if it may be owned by BMG Music Service, but like CDLounge.com, it could just as easily be a competitor).

I tried to forward the e-mail to emailspoof@bmgdirect.com like they said, but it failed in a “this account does not exist” sort of way. So I’ve forwarded the thing to bmgmusic@bmgmusicdirect.com now, and I’m waiting to hear from them. If this isn’t an instance of phishing, the folks at BMG really need to get their act together. You just don’t tell people that you’re one site on the logo (BMGMusicService.com) but link it to another site (CDLounge.com) and have your e-mail originate from yet another site (YourMusic.com). So it’s either really fishy or really tacky.

UPDATE: Looks like it’s legit. See my recent update for more details.

“I think the really interesting question here is the morality of our relationships with avatars and artificial lifeforms. If we seem to forge emotional bonds with artificial life—even against our will, even when we know the bots aren’t real—what does it mean when we torture and abuse them?” — collision detection: Scientists remount Milgram “shock” experiment using 3D avatars

Kudos to the many brave souls blowing the whistle on the U.S. Government’s illegal domestic spying programs! Some of the more recent examples include:

• Daily Kos: All About NSA’s and AT&T’s Big Brother Machine, the Narus 6400
• Wired News: Wiretap Whistle-Blower’s Account (excerpt from this is below:)

In 2002, when I was working in an AT&T office in San Francisco, the site manager told me to expect a visit from a National Security Agency agent, who was to interview a management-level technician for a special job. The agent came, and by chance I met him and directed him to the appropriate people.

In January 2003, I, along with others, toured the AT&T central office on Folsom Street in San Francisco — actually three floors of an SBC building. There I saw a new room being built adjacent to the 4ESS switch room where the public’s phone calls are routed. I learned that the person whom the NSA interviewed for the secret job was the person working to install equipment in this room. The regular technician work force was not allowed in the room.

In October 2003, the company transferred me to the San Francisco building to oversee the Worldnet Internet room, which included large routers, racks of modems for customers’ dial-in services, and other equipment. I was responsible for troubleshooting problems on the fiber optic circuits and installing new circuits.

While doing my job, I learned that fiber optic cables from the secret room were tapping into the Worldnet circuits by splitting off a portion of the light signal. I saw this in a design document available to me, entitled “Study Group 3, LGX/Splitter Wiring, San Francisco” dated Dec. 10, 2002. I also saw design documents dated Jan. 13, 2004 and Jan. 24, 2003, which instructed technicians on connecting some of the already in-service circuits to the “splitter” cabinet, which diverts some of the light signal to the secret room. The circuits listed were the Peering Links, which connect Worldnet with other networks and hence the whole country, as well as the rest of the world.

One of the documents listed the equipment installed in the secret room, and this list included a Narus STA 6400, which is a “Semantic Traffic Analyzer”. The Narus STA technology is known to be used particularly by government intelligence agencies because of its ability to sift through large amounts of data looking for preprogrammed targets. The company’s advertising boasts that its technology “captures comprehensive customer usage data … and transforms it into actionable information…. (It) provides complete visibility for all internet applications.”

My job required me to connect new circuits to the “splitter” cabinet and get them up and running. While working on a particularly difficult one with a technician back East, I learned that other such “splitter” cabinets were being installed in other cities, including Seattle, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego.

(HT: Aaron at TheNotSoFreeState, for one…)

UPDATE: Ooh! Here’s another, from The New Yorker:

But the point, obviously, was to identify terrorists. �After you hit something, you have to figure out what to do with it,� the Administration intelligence official told me. The next step, theoretically, could have been to get a suspect�s name and go to the fisa court for a warrant to listen in. One problem, however, was the volume and the ambiguity of the data that had already been generated. (�There�s too many calls and not enough judges in the world,� the former senior intelligence official said.) The agency would also have had to reveal how far it had gone, and how many Americans were involved. And there was a risk that the court could shut down the program.

Instead, the N.S.A. began, in some cases, to eavesdrop on callers (often using computers to listen for key words) or to investigate them using traditional police methods. A government consultant told me that tens of thousands of Americans had had their calls monitored in one way or the other. �In the old days, you needed probable cause to listen in,� the consultant explained. �But you could not listen in to generate probable cause. What they�re doing is a violation of the spirit of the law.� One C.I.A. officer told me that the Administration, by not approaching the FISA court early on, had made it much harder to go to the court later.

From The Evening Sun: “Man shot during robbery attempt near Gettysburg“

An attempted robbery and shooting in a Gettysburg-area gun shop Saturday morning ended when the two juvenile suspects were apprehended following a short chase.

According to state police in Gettysburg, two juveniles brandishing weapons and wearing military-type clothing entered Lincoln Trading Post, 1895A York Road, in Straban Township, at 11:30 a.m. and ordered everybody on the floor.

One man was shot multiple times before the suspects fled the scene.

Do you know where the Lincoln Trading Post is? No? I’m not surprised; it’s a few miles away from the sleepy little town of Gettysburg, PA. (Sure, the place was a hotspot in the 1860s, but these days its busiest moments are school field trips and the annual “Battle of Gettysburg” re-enactments that take place July 1-3.)

This is one of those rare moments (for small-town folk) where the abstract news hits home. Case in point: my little brother and sister knew one of the attackers (16 year old Elliot Miller). That’s just… strange.

Maybe a robbery/shooting by a minor isn’t a big deal where you live (or where I live for that matter; I’m just a few miles north of Baltimore!), but for the Sleepy Little Town of Gettysburg, this is a shock.

Sarah passed me a link for video of WHTM’s report, but it takes me forever to get it to load in IE, and I think it caused a crash with Firefox.