By Robert MacMillan
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Thursday, June 23, 2005 10:24 AM

I presented comments from frustrated flight attendants and prickly passengers earlier this week who begged the Federal Communications Commission to scrap any plans it might have to lift its ban on in-flight cell phone use.

Before the commissioners make any ruling, they should think about how the big boss a few blocks uptown feels.

President Bush might like to listen to iPods, but his irritation with cell phone ringers is well known among the White House press corps. At a question-and-answer session earlier this week at the Oval Office with Vietnamese Prime Minister Phan Van Khai, Bush lost no time in schooling the uninformed.

"Cell phone went off while the [prime minister] was speaking. The president stared straight ahead," wrote Ann McFeatters, a correspondent for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Toledo Blade who was in charge of filing the pool report for the other journalists. "Another cell phone went off in a second event later in the [Old Executive Office Building] and Bush later made a point of mentioning to an aide that he was irked. The aide told the sound technician with the offending device that cell phones not on vibrate are rude."

Other noisy technologies irk the commander-in-chief, as Julie Mason reported in the Houston Chronicle. The article centers on the tale of a wire correspondent's loosened tie, but also illustrates the president's attitude toward intrusive tweedles and beeps:

"Bush once famously needled Adam Entous of Reuters for entering the Oval Office with a loosened tie. 'You look fine today, Adam. The tie,' Bush told Entous, during a brief audience for reporters with the prime minister of the Netherlands. Bush, who rates sartorial lapses only slightly below pagers and cell phones going off during his speeches, was being sarcastic. He really didn't think the loose tie was fine. 'It's not as bad as a beeper violation. But it's getting close,' Bush said." (Thanks to Wonkette.com for highlighting these stories.)

Bush can't stand the ringtones, but for people unprotected from their neighbors by a wall of Secret Service agents, it's the talking that drives them nuts.

A survey out this week suggests that people are sick of cell phone conversations on the ground as well as six miles in the sky. No big surprise there, but what conversation! Almost half of a random online sample of about 1,200 Americans aged 18 to 69 reported overhearing things they would rather not have, and half of those conversations were about sex. Among the comments: "I heard a man having phone sex with his girlfriend" and "A man talking to his lover in the checkout line and making negative references about his wife."

The results come from Directions Research Inc., a marketing firm whose president, Randy Brooks, was inspired by a woman who sat next to him on an airplane.

"Quiet would have been welcome, but no such luck as each of the seven other passengers boarded with cell phone affixed to an ear," Brooks wrote in the pitch accompanying the survey. "While I can usually tune out these conversations, one stunned me. The woman in the seat next to me was discussing new product introductions planned by her company. Mind-blowing details of pricing, packaging and flavors -- the kind of stuff no firm wants competitors to know -- filled my ears. The reason I was stunned? My firm does all of the market research for her largest competitor."

Curious about what happened next, I called Brooks, who told me he that at first he said nothing. But he couldn't let her go on, he said. She looked annoyed, but when he told her whom he worked for, she thanked him for interrupting her. They didn't exchange another word for the rest of the flight.

Brooks says modern society needs CPR, or cell phone reform. According to the survey, the treatment is long overdue. Among the places people said they witnessed their use are churches, movies, behind the wheel, in business meetings at school functions and in sit-down restaurants. About 80 percent of the respondents said that cell phone users should turn off their juice in those locations or save them for emergencies -- whatever those are.

I have an emergency: I need to hear your cell phone horror stories. Better yet, why not confess your cell phone crimes? About half the nation, if not more, has a cell phone, according to industry and government statistics. That means that some of us who complain about them are giving others cause to complain. I know you're out there, so write to me.

The Defense Department's battle to keep kids signing up for military service is taking a step forward. The Washington Post reported that the Pentagon is working with Wakefield, Mass., firm BeNow Inc. to create a database of high school students aged 16 to 18 to identify possible recruits.

"The program is provoking a furor among privacy advocates. The new database will include personal information including birth dates, Social Security numbers, e-mail addresses, grade-point averages, ethnicity and what subjects the students are studying," the Post reported. "Under the new system, additional data will be collected from commercial data brokers, state drivers' license records and other sources, including information already held by the military. ... The system also gives the Pentagon the right, without notifying citizens, to share the data for numerous uses outside the military, including with law enforcement, state tax authorities and Congress."

Meanwhile, Congress wasn't joking when it came up with the name "No Child Left Behind." The law is drawing fire from school systems and parents around the nation because it allows military recruiters to use personal information to, among other things, contact students at home: "School systems that fail to provide that information risk losing federal funds, although individual parents or students can withhold information that would be transferred to the military by their districts."

A recent rash of data breaches, rising amounts of identity theft and other personal information malfeasance are keeping the nation's news outlets busy during the slow summer season.

A Dallas Morning News story out today notes that "the question isn't where consumer information is vulnerable, but where it isn't." Here's more: "Data breaches occur nearly every day, from a variety of institutions in a variety of ways. In the last four months, 45 cases of exposed data have had the potential to affect about 50 million consumers, according to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. ... 'What unfortunately happens, time and time again, is employee error,' said Kimberly Elting, a privacy and health care lawyer at Jones Day in Dallas. 'Laptops get lost, computers stolen out of Dumpsters. Even packages go missing in the mail.'"

The Boston Globe discovered that plenty of the information required to steal someone's identity sits around in public: "Tax liens, mortgage papers, deeds, and other real estate-related documents are publicly available in online databases run by registries of deeds across the state. The Globe found documents in free databases of all but three Massachusetts counties containing the names and Social Security numbers of Massachusetts residents. Public documents that sometimes contain names and Social Security numbers include state and federal tax liens, Massachusetts Health liens, child support liens, and, less frequently, mortgages, said registers of deeds."

Still, MasterCard International's admission last week that 40 million card holders might be exposed to fraud because of a security hole is the latest in a long string of goofs that's prompting Congress to try to fix the problem on its own. USA Today weighed in: "'It's the Wild West out there,' Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), one of several lawmakers pursuing identity-theft prevention legislation, said Saturday. 'The handling of electronic data is weighed so heavily to the convenience of the corporate world at the expense of consumers.'"

Fellow Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.) wants to give the Federal Trade Commission the power to set national standards for companies handling sensitive data, the paper said.

The San Francisco Chronicle ran a lengthy story about how fears of fraud are offsetting the rising popularity of online banking: "In general, banks are quick to stress that far more fraud stems from stolen bank statements and ATM cards -- often perpetrated by deceptive relatives, friends and co-workers -- than originates through purely online channels. However, that's not the impression created by millions of fraudulent phishing e-mails that flood e-mail in-boxes every day, often in the guise of a message from a bank, urgently demanding recipients' confidential account numbers, passwords and Social Security numbers. Experts caution that criminals are always looking for growth opportunities, and that as more banking customers move online to manage their checking accounts and pay bills, the opportunity for fraud increases."

When I was in middle school, my mother and I went to the B. Dalton bookstore at the Cherry Hill Mall. She paid for our haul with a credit card, then asked the clerk for the carbon sheet that he used to make copies of the receipt. Once in her hands, she tore it into little pieces and handed them back to the clerk to throw away. We both looked at her like she was crazy. But now I get it.

In the Internet age, the shredder lady is Deb Boogaard. The job search consultant and resident of Folsom, Calif., could be the "poster lady" for people who show the rest of us what serious identity theft prevention methods are all about, the Sacramento Bee reported.

"She shreds. She freezes her credit. She opts out of junk-mail lists. And she says no to just about anyone who requests her Social Security number," the article said. "Most recently, Boogaard tangled with her doctor's office after being handed a lab slip with her Social Security number on it. 'I thought wait a minute. The lab doesn't need my number,' she said. 'They have my name, my address, my date of birth. It's ridiculous.'"

Not everyone has the time to be Deb Boogaard, but the Bee offers a list of tips against identity theft that could prove useful to anyone.