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Public and private sector organisations considering rolling out biometric-based authentication technologies for customers received a boost this week with the findings of the latest Security Index report from IT services provider Unisys.

The research, which surveyed 13,000 people in 13 countries, found that 57 per cent of UK adults are afraid of identity theft, while 63 per cent are concerned about credit and debit card fraud.

With this backdrop, it appears that UK consumers are becoming more receptive to the idea of biometric authentication. Three-quarters of respondents would be willing to use fingerprint scans to verify their identity with banks, government agencies or other organisations.

Somebody needs to explain the public the concept of “key revocation”.

Wouldn’t the sentence “I want to insert a hyphen between the words Fish and And and And and Chips in my Fish And Chips sign” have been clearer if quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and Chips — and after Chips?

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According to a new report released by the Centers for Disease Control, fewer Americans are smoking cigarettes than at any time in modern history.

The number of U.S. adults who smoke has dropped below 20 percent for the first time on record, Reuters reported. This is less than half the percentage (42 percent) of Americans who smoked cigarettes during the 1960s.

Imagine that; in the past 40 years tens of millions of Americans have voluntarily quit smoking a legal, yet highly addictive intoxicant. Millions of others have refused to initiate the habit. And they’ve all made this decision without ever once being threatened with criminal prosecution and arrest, imprisonment, probation, and drug testing.

By contrast, during this same period of time, state and local police have arrested some 20 million Americans for pot law violations ‹ primarily for violations no greater than simple possession. And yet marijuana use among the public has skyrocketed from an annual rate of 0.6 million new users in 1965 to some 2.5 annual new users today.

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Convicts who can’t afford an attorney — and there aren’t many who can — know the odds are stacked against them if they file an appeal.

It is not unknown for inmates to have a legitimate grievance and for jailhouse lawyers to advance cogent and well-researched arguments on their behalf. But most “pro se” briefs are probably frivolous and nonsensical, and it is only natural that judges should tend to look askance as they buckle down to the task of reading them.

The judges weren’t looking askance over at the state Court of Appeal in Gretna, however, because they weren’t looking at all. For 13 years, the court ignored the lucubrations of all convicts who appealed on their own account.

This immoral and apparently illegal policy was in place until Jerrold Peterson, the staffer charged with implementing it, blew his brains out in May of last year. Peterson was driven to it in part, his suicide note suggested, by guilt over the nefarious tasks the judges made him perform.

In his note Peterson explained how the court gave indigent appellants the bum’s rush.

Although every criminal writ application is supposed to be reviewed by three judges, he was deputed to winnow out any that had been filed pro se and arrange for their automatic rejection.

Thus were an estimated 2,500 appeals deep-sixed without any judicial consideration whatsoever.

That was not the only aspect of life at the Fifth Circuit that stuck in Peterson’s craw. In his suicide note to the judges, he asked, “How many of you have called and asked me to ‘handle’ traffic tickets or to get someone out of jail without bond or to clear up contempt charges pending against friends? Never once have I declined to help someone you sent to me or refused to solve some problem you had.”

Oh, and Happy 85th Birthday as well..