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Show The Park Record A-18 Sat/Sun/MonVTues, November 27-30, 2010 MORE DOGS ON MAIN VOTED BEST STEAKHOUSE! The not-quite-blizzard of 2010 2 for 1ENTR Great Steak resh Seafood Extensive Wine List Park City's fine "entice from our ivear veteran staff : 2 N D ENTREE OF EQUAL OR LESSER VALUE. 18% ., GRATUITY ADDED PRIOR TO DISCOUNT. EXPIRES NOVEMBER 30th, 2010 Mike Rogers, Scotty T. &"Tj PEN WEDNESDAY - SUNDAY^ 5:30 435.655.9739 • 804 Main Street Directly across from the Town Lift ' IVs probably unfair to dismiss the "Blizzard of 2010" as a complete dud. The storm that caused all kinds of preemptive school closures and the like did meet expectations in the wind and cold categories. Freeways were closed by drifting snow, and there's no disputing the bitter cold out there. But in the snow department, it fizzled. Leading up to the storm, the National Weather Service forecast information was showing some pretty impressive snow totals. In the forecast for my immediate area, the estimated totals on Tuesday included things like "4 to 8 inches" on Tuesday afternoon, with "8 to 12" Tuesday night. I'm not great at math, but that would seem to be an expected range of 12 to 20 by Wednesday morning. It was enough that I got up in the middle of the night to check to see if I had to do some plowing. Twenty inches is about the limit of what my equipment can handle. If they got it wrong on the low side, and 20 inches turned into much more than that, I would be in trouble. The TV weather people, who had been delirious over the storm for a week, started to backpedal by the 10 p.m. reports on Tuesday. "We never said this was a big snow event," said Sterling Poulson of Channel 2. Yes you did. I have the tape. All week he was talking about 3 feet of new snow in the mountains. It just didn't happen. The power didn't even flicker at my house. A butterfly flapping its wings in China is enough to knock the power out in Woodland. Given the hoopla about the storm, I was getting ready for an evening in the dark; the woodstove was raging and the flashlights were out. But the lights stayed on, no trees fell across the driveway, the Yeti stayed deep in the woods, and there isn't enough snow to By Tom Clyde bother plowing. But it's very cold. Give them credit for getting that part right. The big news going into the holiday travel season is the new airport security system. You've heard it all - the new scanner that creates an x-ray vision view of you buck naked to see if you are packing explosives in your colostomy bag. The new scanners use a process that is perfectly safe, according to the people who make the machines (and if you The lights stayed on, no trees fell across the driveway, the Yeti stayed deep in the woods, and there isn't enough snow to bother plowing. But it's very cold. Give them credit for getting that part right" cant trust them, who can you trust?). My nephew spent about 12 years training to be a radiologist. The TSA people probably get nearly a week of training before they are irradiating people in airports. But it's perfectly safe. » If you are skeptical about the new machines and the long-term impact they might have if you fly a lot, you can opt out and get an enhanced pat down instead. The patdown process has been drawing all the attention because it is very invasive. It's a pretty thorough groping - enough so that the former Senator from Idaho is spending even more time hanging out in airports than before. I certainly don't want to put up with any of it. I dont want to be electronically scanned with an unproven machine, or have some stranger in rubber gloves groping me. I'm not carrying any explosives. On the other hand, I fully expect them to search you thoroughly to ensure my safety. Of course that's the problem. When they wrote the Constitution, the founding fathers were strangely silent on the rights of air travelers. It's not a fundamental right to fly. If you dont like it, ride your bike. It always looks like TSA is reacting to yesterday's issues and not looking ahead. We had an unsuccessful shoe bomber, and we now take our shoes off at airports. We had an unsuccessful shampoo-bottle bomber, and now we cant travel with containers larger than 3 ounces - but you can travel with a whole suitcase full of 3ounce bottles. An unsuccessful underpants bomber has us all showing our privates at the gate. So the next attempt will be something implanted, and we'will all get a CAT scan before boarding the plane. Is it a reasonable price to pay for safety, or a rude intrusion that doesnt really accomplish much? So far it is only at airports because of Al-Qaeda's obsession with airplanes. But what happens when an underpants bomber tries to blow up a subway, football stadium, or a shopping mall? Will there be full-body scanners at the base of every ski lift, or just Payday? Air travel has become cruel and unusual punishment under the best conditions. I'm quite happy to drive most places I travel. But I have a hard time looking at constantly changing and rather easily defeated airport security measures, and thinking that we have accomplished much. Tom Clyde practiced law in Park City for many years. He lives on a working ranch in Woodland, and has been writing this column for nearly 25 years. SUNDAY IN THE PARK Coming in from the cold THE THE PARK RECORD. . Also includes the Sunday Issue of the Salt Lake Tribune free with your paid in Summit County Park Record Subscription. Give a gift subscription now for $37.00 for a full year of The Park Record. Must mention this ad at the time of subscribing. Only valid for New in Summit County subscribers Call our office Monday thru Friday 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM ® 435-649-9014 and ask for the Circulation Department or you can email us directly at Circulation@parkrecord.com. It is that strange intersection where art imitates life, life imitates art, art is acted out, life is lived, and all the lines are seriously blurred. It started a few years ago when I attended an annual conference of thinky folks where strange and wonderful geeks, in their respective fields, spoke to a smallish group of about 300 people. One of the speakers was a hacker named Paulo. (I wonder now if that was a pseudonym for Albert Gonzalez, but I am ahead of my story.) This guy talked about hacking into the Department of Defense and NASA and even the Secret Service. Now he had stepped away from the Dark Side and was working with the government and big business and protecting people from folks such as himself. He asked if any of us had plugged into the hotel internet the evening before. This was three years ago, when wireless was much less available. We raised our hands almost to a person. He said that was a lousy idea, that hackers loved hotel systems. He picked a ran : dom person in the audience, we'll call him Bob, and he showed us how Bob had gone online and done some personal banking the night before in the "safety" of his hotel room. He then pulled up all the guy's personal banking accounts (with the key numbers blanked out) and showed us how he had drained Bob's bank accounts. (He did return the funds after the ashen-faced Bob went online to confirm all his money had disappeared.) It was scary. Paulo also explained a tool he had created that allowed him to walk up to folks carrying the (then) new chip embedded in their American Express cards and steal all the cardholders* information while their wallets remained in their pockets. The guy was good.. It was comforting to think he was now helping catch folks just like he used to be. . By Teri Orr Well, maybe. In the New York Times Magazine just two weeks ago there was a page-turning story entitled "The Great Cyberheist," about one Albert Gonzalez who had doublecrossed the government one too many times and had been sentenced for two concurrent 20-years terms in prison, the longest sentence ever given for a cyber crime. The story takes the reader all over the world, into chat rooms in Russia and a warehouse in New Jersey. There are deals and doublecrosses and the exposure of most every major brand and Paulo also explained a tool he had created that allowed him to walk up to folks carrying the (then) new chip embedded in their American Express cards and steal all the cardholders' information while their wallets remained in their pockets." Post, Los Angeles Times and yes, The New York Times. I feared the book might be a bit overhyped. But once I started the mystery, I couldnt put it down. I was grateful for the day of rain when I built a fire in the tiny corner fireplace and hunkered down with hot tea and store-bought brownies. I traveled all over the world in search of a brilliant, possibly criminal, mind. I thought I understood characters and motivations and I predicted outcomes in my head and I was wrong, incredibly wrong, about all of them. Which pleased me. And when I reached the ending, I # was breathless and the sun had come out and I walked along the river in Santa Fe and thought how those characters must be based on real people doing incredible, frightening criminal deeds. And then I came home, loaned the book out and went back to my life. T\vo weeks ago, when I read the piece in the Tunes, it was as if it was the outline for the book. The real life of Albert Gonzalez and his hidden identities and his relationships with cyber criminals all over the world made the lines between fact and fiction merge. It reminded me of what a cop said years ago, at the funeral of another cop. "Lou joined law enforcement because he knew he was going to end up on one side of it or the other and he wanted to be on the right one." What is it that makes us use our powers for good or evil? . Where is that thin blue line? I dont know, but I want to think about it more, maybe this very Sunday in the Park... retail giant as victims of cyber theft. It relates how, in his years working with the Secret Service, he would go out to small conferences of geeky people to explain his craft. And the article then showed how vulnerable our government is to a single, brilliant criminal mind. A few weeks before that article came out, I had picked up a novel, at the gentle urging of one of the Wonder Women at Dollyls Bookstore, to take on a trip. "Have you read any of Dan Chaon books?" I said Teri Orr is the director of the no. "Then try this one. It is a Park City Performing Arts page turner about identity Foundation that provides protheft and more." I was game. gramming for the George S. "Await Your Reply" is a and Do/ores Dori Eccles National Book Award finalist Center for the Performing Arts. with a fistful of glowing She is also a former editor of reviews from the Washington *The Park Record. |