Time passes on, but is it really for the better? Or, I wanna make a phone call!

The Illinois General Assembly is considering a change in law that I’m sure some people are going to think is long overdue – the “phone company,” so to speak, wouldn’t have to give you the option of a real-live telephone in your home.
 

This 'phone' would definitely freak out the kiddies

As in the landline, the one that’s actually hooked up to cables and theoretically provides your phone calls with a sense of security that our cellphones don’t.

SERIOUSLY, THE LEGISLATURE is considering a request that the laws obligating AT&T to make landline phone service available to everybody in Illinois should be abolished.

The entity we used to jokingly refer to as “Ma Bell” (a reference that may, in and of itself, age me) says so many people now rely on cellphones exclusively for their phone service that the old requirement is a financial burden because it requires them to maintain an infrastructure of cables that is no longer necessary for people to speak to each other via the “telephone.”

Now before I proceed, I probably should point out that I gave up a landline about one year ago. I rely exclusively on the “smart phone” (which often makes me feel dumb) for the ability to make calls, and also keep up with the work-related e-mails I get from people who think the best way to get my attention is to tap out a few characters of the English alphabet, then hit the “send” key.

Yes, I get those e-mails, but I often am astounded at how atrocious their spelling and grammar is. I also have to admit that many of the e-mails I get wind up being deleted unread – particularly the ones that are blatant appeals for me to donate money to yet another political gasbag of a candidate.

Confounding telecommunications?!?

BUT I HAVE to admit that even though I gave up a landline (I found that the people who were calling me were overwhelmingly using my cellphone number), I miss it. Particularly when I see other people who use the “freedom” of not having a phone cord to deal with to become so meandering and thoughtless that they lose track of what is going on around them.

Besides, I also wonder what it is with our contemporary society that they don’t fully appreciate how much of their privacy they give up when they do away with a cord. Because the reality is that there is no assurance that people aren’t listening in on all our cellphone calls, or reading every single e-mail sent to us through that “phone.”

Doing away with landline requirements might be accepting a certain reality, but it also means our reality is getting a little less logical.

Just trying paying a phone bill in this box!

Then again, I’m becoming an old man, and I know watching younger people, particularly my teenage niece Meira. I could go on and on about all the stupid, trivial things she looks at (mostly video snippets of people doing pointless things) when using her phone.

BUT THE CONCEPT that most catches my attention is that she seems to resent it whenever anyone actually “calls” her and expects to have a traditional phone conversation.

She and her friends don’t even bother to pick up on those calls, and ignore the messages that get left. Although they don’t seem to mind having conversations where they can look into their “phones” and see each other – usually in such close-up that their facial features become freakish and unrecognizable.

The “phone” truly has become a toy, one used for video games and watching video snippets and, occasionally, to talk to each other. I’m sure the loss of the cables that maintain “real” phone service won’t be missed.

Except by those cranks such as myself – the kind of people who looked at the Tuesday morning news reports in absolute astonishment that the Chicago White Sox signed their shortstop, Tim Anderson, to a contract providing $25 million during the next six seasons.

The high price of competence

I’M OLD ENOUGH to remember when a salary in the millions was considered unthinkable, then something reserved only for the elite of professional baseball. Not for the journeyman who barely meets the league average!

Although I suppose there are those people who will say I ought to take my out-of-date complaints and make them to someone with a landline phone so we can rant and rage about how the world has gone amok.

  -30-

Gaining respect for Mr. Speaker

I carry a Nokia Lumia smartphone these days, and will admit it comes in useful when it comes to work.

MADIGAN: No phone?!?

I’m not anchored to a desk with a landline waiting to hear from people. Yes, there literally have been times when someone returned my call, and I conducted an interview with a “source” while standing in an aisle of a supermarket.

BUT I HAVE to admit there are times I yearn for the days when I didn’t carry any type of telephone on my person. It wasn’t that long ago. I was a hold-out for many years!

I have to confess to feeling a little bit of admiration these days for Michael Madigan. The almighty and powerful “Mr. Speaker” of the Illinois House of Representatives has gained attention for the fact that he allegedly does not have his own personal cellphone.

The issue came up when Gov. Pat Quinn was to meet Tuesday with the leaders of the Illinois Senate and House of Representatives to try to figure out what can be done to resolve the problems confronting state government when it comes to funding pension programs.

Madigan didn’t bother to show up.

THERE HAD BEEN some hope that Madigan, who had a prior commitment at the time that Quinn wanted to meet in his office at the Thompson Center state government building, could somehow “call in” to the meeting and participate in that way.

Except that he doesn’t have a cellphone, and apparently decided that nothing of significance was going to take place at such a gathering. So he was just a no-show.



SORVINO: Could he play Madigan in movie?

The tidbit from Quinn that Madigan doesn’t have a cellphone has triggered countless criticism from the people who spend way too much of their time on the Internet posting their views to other peoples’ opinions.

It’s a generational thing, particularly from people who can’t conceive of life without having some sort of gadget on their person. How can anyone possibly think they can exist in our times without having a phone that makes them completely accessible to all at virtually every moment of the day?

I HAVE READ people who compare Madigan to the “Paulie Cicero” character from the film Goodfellas – played by actor Paul Sorvino, he was the gangster boss who refused to have a telephone placed in his own home and instead had all his calls received by other people who then had to pass messages along to him.

Heck, in the novel The Godfather, it is explained that Don Corleone didn’t like to talk on telephones because he feared someone would listen in and somehow “rearrange” his words to be used as evidence against him.

Madigan the “mob” boss of the Illinois House “family” is the image that some people are trying to put on him, just because Madigan doesn’t have a phone on him – preferring to borrow a phone from someone around him if he has an absolute need to make a quick call!

That just sounds way too over the top to be believable.

BESIDES, LIKE I already stated, a part of me remembers with some fondness the days when I didn’t carry a cellphone with me. I also remember a former work colleague who once tossed a pager into the Chicago River, claiming, “It beeped one too many …… times.”

There’s a certain sanity to the idea of focusing one’s attention on the here-and-now and what we’re supposed to be doing – instead of being available to anybody who thinks they can suddenly snatch away our attention with their phone calls.



QUINN: Needs to lead on pension problem

Particularly when those calls are usually just their efforts to impose their trivialities into our lives. Yes, I would think much more of modern communications technology if I didn’t see the trivial messages it often is used to deliver. So to the degree that Madigan is actively trying to maintain his privacy and avoid the trivialities, I can respect him.

Now if only he and Quinn and Senate President John Cullerton, D-Chicago, could take their heads out of their collective behind and address the pension funding issue that threatens to bankrupt Illinois, then I’d have real respect for our officials. Because right now, I fear that the special session Quinn called for on June 19 is going to amount to a whole lot of nothing.

  -30-

How public is our cellphone use?

The whole point of cellular telephones being so readily accessible  is that we’re supposed to be capable of using them from anywhere at a moment’s notice.

So a part of me wonders how the whole concept of restricting the cellphone access at the buildings that serve as courthouses in Cook County is going to work.

FOR THE PAST month, there have been big signs at the entrances to those courthouses – telling us of all the types of items that people will no longer be able to bring inside the buildings with them.

Those include portable telephones. And the signs have told us that the restrictions will take effect as of Monday.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported this weekend that there will be some leeway used during the next few weeks – a grace-period during which people will be allowed to keep their phones on them provided they keep them turned off.

Which ought to be the common-sense approach to handling this particular issue.

EXCEPT THAT THERE are always those who will figure some people can be pushed around at will. Including many of the people who are among those who have business at the courthouses.

For many of them are criminals – in that they have committed some act worthy of a criminal charge that they may well plead guilty toward in the near future.

Yet too much of this is being done by people who seem to think their lives are lacking unless there’s someone whom they can abuse.

If it means they think they can pick on people by taking away their telephones, it just strikes me as an act of bullying by our county court system.

ALTHOUGH I DON’T doubt there is some semblance of a problem that court officials are trying to take care of.

For the stated reason for the tougher regulations is that some people are persisting in using the camera functions on their cellphones in order to take pictures during court hearings.

In some cases, these pictures are being posted as ways of publicly identifying those who have the temerity to testify in court against people who have street gang connections.

In others, they are being put on the Internet as ways of trying to embarrass judges for their professional conduct. Be honest, any video clip can be edited into something that can make someone else stupid!

SO YES, COURT officials may have a legitimate beef with the way people are using their cellphones.

But I’m all for allowing the sheriff’s deputies stationed inside each court room to rule over their domain with an iron fist on this issue. Let them confiscate the phones of people who can’t use them properly.

Let those people who get caught have to face the prospect of a serious criminal charge! It would be totally appropriate.

The hassle, however, that will be caused by banning them from the buildings outright is just ridiculous – particularly since the logical expectation of not permitting people to bring their phones into the building is that there will be some place where people can store them.

AND I’M VERY sure that there’s no way the sheriff’s police (who patrol all these buildings) want to be responsible in any way for someone else’s portable phone.

I do know that other court systems restrict the public from bringing phones in to the building – in Will County court in Joliet, only people who purchase a special license (a couple of hundred bucks for the year) from the county can have their phones.

Which means attorneys who work there can walk around with their phones, while everyone else gives them the “evil eye” of resentment. Is that really what we want at the Criminal Courts building – giving those defendants yet another reason to think they’re being “abused” in life.

The cellphone restrictions just strike me as being petty and vindictive – and I’m sure there will be many outbursts in coming weeks at the courthouses both in Chicago or the surrounding suburbs.

  -30-

Does “Sox Park” need a new name?

U.S. Cellular is destined to become that big, bulky building where the Chicago White Sox play, rather than an actual business entity with a strong Chicago presence.

Will the name atop the scoreboard change  soon?



For it seems that the company is cutting back its Chicago operations significantly. Crain’s Chicago Business used its website Wednesday to report that while the corporate headquarters will remain within our city limits, there won’t be much else here.

THE COMPANY IS selling off its customers in several markets, including Chicago, to Sprint Nextel Corp. About 980 jobs will be cut, including 640 in the Chicago area.

Which makes me wonder how the White Sox feel at this moment – knowing they’re playing in a stadium that has been branded with the “U.S. Cellular” name. Because the Chicago Tribune reported that the name is going to remain in place, for the time being.

Now I comprehend in an intellectual sense how it doesn’t matter that the stadium is named for a company that is cutting back its local presence (not that I ever used U.S. Cellular to subscribe for cellphone service).

But it could be a matter of perception, and one in which the name becomes one of those unfortunate labels that people wish could go away.

WHAT AMUSES ME is that I remember back to 2003 when U.S. Cellular paid many millions of dollars for the rights to put their corporate identity on the building then known as New Comiskey Park.

That money was used by White Sox and state Sports Facilities Authority officials to pay for various cosmetic changes to the building that supposedly gave it more character than it had when it originally opened for the 1991 season.

Of course, it gave the building a rather “blah” kind of name. Then again, “U.S. Cellular Field” is less awkward than many of the corporate names that adorn sports stadiums these days.

It also helps that the White Sox situation hasn’t deteriorated to the point where the building name seems to change every couple of seasons. We’ve had a decade’s worth of games at U.S. Cellular Field (a.k.a., the Cell). It has kind of become a part of the ballclub’s character.

AND NOW THAT character is going to be associated with a company that isn’t interested in picking up any more business in Chicago, and is going to wind up laying off some local residents.

How many White Sox fans are going to feel a touch of repulsion at the thought of going to ballgames at a building named for the company they no longer work for? If only they could ensure that the layoffs were restricted solely to employees who root for the Chicago Cubs.

They could go chew Wrigley-brand gum while filling out forms at the state Employment Security department to collect unemployment benefits.

Nah! I don’t really mean that. Because I can’t really joke in a convincing manner about the idea of people being put out of work – particularly when the reason for making the layoffs is a corporate interest wishing to make its bottom line just a tad bit better.

BUT BACK TO the stadium identity.

While I can’t stand the idea of stadiums whose names change every few seasons (I still think of it as “Enron Field” in Houston – even though that name is ancient history, buried beyond several subsequent names), maybe it’s time for a new name for the building at 35^th Street and Shields Avenue.

I always thought the “Comiskey Park” name should have been retired with the old building that was torn down following the 1990 season. So I don’t want that one brought back.

Yet a part of me wonders if we ought to make official the long-time informal reference to the stadiums. I recall as a kid many people who would say the Cubs played at “Cubs Park” and the White Sox at “Sox Park.”

MAYBE IT’S TIME to put that moniker on the marquee of the current stadium. Make it official.

White Sox Park. Or maybe, because of the building’s scale, White Sox Stadium. It has a nice “ring” to it.

  -30-

And here I just got a new smart phone that supposedly has a quality camera

On the one hand, I happen to believe that anybody who feels the need to whip out their portable phone to use the built-in camera to take pictures of anything that happens to capture their fancy is engaging in pretty insipid behavior.

My new 'toy,' and soon I'll have a restriction



Then again, I do believe people have a right to act in ways that are stupid. It’s their choice.

WHICH IS WHY I can’t help but think that a bill now pending before Gov. Pat Quinn is such a gross overreaction. I don’t see the need to codify the fact that anybody who feels the need to pull out their portable camera and take pictures of an accident scene is being insipid.

The bill in question got its final vote of approval in the General Assembly on Monday. The Illinois House backed a measure making it illegal for any automobile driver to make a call with their portable phone within 500 feet of an auto accident scene where emergency vehicles have flashing lights.

It also would be illegal for people to send pictures and video messages while driving their cars – regardless of whether there’s an auto accident occurring nearby.

In theory, there is an exemption that allows someone in a car to pull out their cell phone and make a call to report the emergency situation. But I can’t help but think that if there are ambulances and police squad cars around the area with their lights flashing, it means they’re already aware of the accident.

SO WHERE’S THE real exemption?

Personally, I would never feel compelled to whip out my phone to snap a picture of an auto accident I happened to drive past – even though the Nokia Lumia smart phone I got just last week (my old Blackberry completely died) supposedly has as one of its selling points a higher-quality camera than most hand-held phones have.

Whenever I see people walking down the street feeling the need to suddenly snap a picture of something that they randomly encountered in life, all too often I can’t help but think it’s such a waste of time.

I usually don’t think to say anything, figuring it’s their business what they do – or what they choose to clutter up their phones’ memory with. So I can sort of see the idea of a law addressing these situations.

IT’S JUST THAT this bill seems like such overkill – even if its backers claim their concern is reducing the chance of someone causing yet a second accident because they were paying too much attention to the first one they were trying to shoot pictures of.

Besides, a part of me can’t help but wonder if this is someone trying to come up with yet another law making it a sordid act to take pictures of police in action.

We already have those laws that make video without police permission a potential felony, and it is a good thing that the courts have shown themselves to be hostile toward the idea of enforcing the letter of that law!

Does somebody really fear that somebody is going to capture a moment on digital that might make law enforcement conduct at an accident scene look less than honorable? An embarrassing moment caught for posterity (or at least until the camera owner gets bored with the shot and deletes it)!

WE HAVE SERIOUS problems confronting our state Legislature. I’d like to see some effort put by our politicians into addressing them.

So while I understand that our legislators are capable of addressing many issues at once, I can’t help but wonder how much brain matter that could have gone into balancing a budget or properly funding Medicaid or pensions got put into addressing the “scourge” of those handheld phone cameras snapping shots of police milling around an accident scene?

  -30-

We’re in for generational warfare, and I’m on the side of the ‘old farts’

Talking on a phone in the car has come a long way

I’m not a kid anymore.

That concept got reinforced on Tuesday when I learned that Illinois state Senate President John Cullerton, D-Chicago, talked of the chances of banning cellular telephones outright in automobiles.

FOR THE RECORD, Cullerton says he does not expect that to happen anytime soon. Although he won’t be surprised if it is an issue that the Illinois General Assembly will someday take up.

When it does, we’re in for a serious battle of the generations. I couldn’t help but notice in the couple of hours after stories started cropping up on the Internet about Cullerton’s comments, one anonymous person went so far as to characterize a ban on cellphones while driving as being the same as banning breathing while driving.

To me, that is pure nonsense.

In fact, to me, the idea of not using a cellphone while in the car makes all the sense in the world – particularly since I have noticed the number of times that drivers who were busy yakking away on their hand-held communications devices weren’t paying attention and would have hit me had I not managed to engage in a sudden maneuver.

AS FAR AS I’m concerned, I actually have one of those devices in my own car that lets me talk on my cellular telephone without holding it in my hands (it was a birthday gift from my brother a couple of years ago).

Yet I rarely use it, preferring to ignore most calls to me while driving (I call them back once I get to where I’m going).

CULLERTON: Predicting cellphone fate?

On those rare occasions when it is someone whom I do need to talk to, right there and then, I pull over to the side of the road and stop (which led to one recent story I reported, in part, for an area newspaper from the side of Interstate 80 just outside of Joliet), then talk.

In short, I will have no problem complying with the idea that using a cellular phone in the car is absurd.

BUT I CAN also tell that this will be a generational thing. There will be the younger crowd that just won’t get it. They’re going to be prepared to fight and shout and scream that it is their “constitutional right” to talk on the phone, or use it to send text messages, or whatever, at whenever the urge strikes them.

It is something I have noticed with my oldest nephew, who is 17. That kid spends a lot of his time locked up in his bedroom. If one didn’t know better, they’d think he was some sort of anti-social, serial killer-the-making, plotting some diabolical scheme all by himself.

Actually, he’s texting constantly with his friends, who are all scattered at their own homes. They’re in constant contact with each other at all times, able to engage in friendly banter and sarcastic wisecracking – just like we all do in groups of REAL people.

I’ve even noticed on those occasions when he comes out of the room, with the texting still going. He even texts during meals. Or tries to, anyway.

IT SEEMS LIKE holiday celebrations lately have turned into my father (my nephew’s grandfather) berating him for texting while eating.

My point is that I doubt my nephew is alone. There are going to be a lot of people who are going to think that this is some sort of serious intrusion on their personal lives by telling them where their cellular telephones can (and cannot) be used.

Even though personally, I consider the cellular telephone itself to be the serious intrusion on my own personal life. As though some people think they have the right to speak to me whenever it is to their convenience.

It’s not like we haven’t had similar situations in the past.

I CAN RECALL just over a decade ago when the Illinois General Assembly passed bills that placed restrictions on where, in public, people can use laser pointers.

We got to hear legislators get all indignant about people imposing their own warped  sensibilities on all of us (I still remember the tale of a person who was using his pointer in a movie theater to show his friends all the traces of nipples and genitalia on the screen).

Then later, I got to hear from people who said that laser pointers are “fun” and that someone who can’t stand having a private part or two pointed out should learn to “lighten up.” I will be curious to see how this issue (which has been recommended nationally by the National Transportation Safety Board) plays out in coming years, although nine states already have such cellphone bans.

Are we going to hear some variation on “lighten up” in defense of cellphones in the cars? Have I really become the grouchy old man because I can side with such a ban?

  -30-

When is a recording an intrusion?

I’m not sure what to think of all these devices people carry that are more than capable of recording those innocent and trivial moments that, if excepted in a certain way, can come across as incriminating – or embarrassing.

I was pleased to learn that a jury in Cook County on Wednesday rejected the idea that a woman who recorded the activity of police officers trying to intimidate her was the one who actually committed a crime – one that could have gotten her up to a 15-year prison sentence.

BUT THERE’S ALSO this commercial that is popping up on television a lot these days – for the HTC Status phone. That’s the device that comes with special buttons and functions that make it easy for people to take pictures with their mobile phone, then instantly post them to their Facebook accounts more easily than they already can do with their current portable phones.

In my mind, I have dubbed this device the “phone for idiots” and would definitely not want to buy one – because the commercial shows a couple of snickering morons who seem to have nothing better to do than to take pictures of their so-called friend while he sleeps; then post them onto Facebook for public consumption so they can embarrass him.

Somewhere along the line, we’re going to have to figure out some sort of legal standard for what is appropriate behavior for those people who feel compelled to whip out their phone and make recordings of what everybody around them is doing.

What’s the matter? Aren’t these people the least bit interesting, in and of themselves?

APPARENTLY NOT!

But then we run into the other extreme, which is what came up in that case against Tiawanda Moore. She’s the Indiana resident who thought that a Chicago police officer treated her in a way that constituted sexual harassment.

She did what any person is supposed to do if they believe that a police officer in Chicago has misbehaved professionally – she took it to Internal Affairs, the division that investigates such complaints and decides if the bad conduct rises to the level of criminal charges, or just professional punishment.

Of course, Internal Affairs has developed a reputation (not always justified) for being more interested in covering up complaints, rather than finding police wrong-doing. In Moore’s case, she believes the two officers were more interested in intimidating her into dropping her complaint.

THAT IS WHEN she grabbed her BlackBerry, pushed the buttons that allow for audio recording, and managed to capture a few minutes of their questioning of her for posterity.

That is what got her in legal trouble, since Illinois law not only makes it wrong for people to record the words of others without their knowledge, it makes it a  criminal act to record the police.

Law enforcement officials say their concern is that people will record the police either on audio or in moving pictures, then will selectively edit the audio and/or video in ways that would support whatever complaints they would want to file against the Police Department.

Which probably does fit into the mentality of those people who believe that the real “crime” when it comes to Rodney King being beaten by the Los Angeles police back in the early 1990s was that someone who lived nearby pulled out his video camera and recorded the beating without the police knowledge.

GROUPS SUCH AS the American Civil Liberties Union say they think the law is meant to cover up anyone who might catch the police behaving improperly, and they have a lawsuit pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago to challenge it.

Meanwhile, an attorney for another defendant facing charges similar to Moore told the Chicago Tribune that laws restricting personal video or audio recordings are “antiquated” in an age when so many people carry miniature devices that are capable of making such recordings.

Which is a statement that I have some personal qualms about.

I’d hate to think that the idea of respecting someone’s privacy is “antiquated.” Then again, I’d hate to think that the police-desired standard is truly acceptable.

WHICH IS WHY I was pleased to learn that it took a jury just about one hour to make their ruling in favor of Moore, with one juror telling the Chicago Tribune that they listened to the audio and actually agreed with Moore’s perception that the Internal Affairs investigators were “intimidating and insensitive” and that charges against Moore were, “a waste of time.”

Of course, I’m sure those people who support such a law think that the jury overstepped their boundaries in making  such a judgment call – and should have accepted the existence of a four-minute audio snippet of police officers without their knowledge as being improper, in-and-of itself.

But the fact that some people would try to defend this law with a “Letter of the Law” defense instead of claiming that the merits of the law are proper ought to be evidence enough that we in Illinois have a flawed law in need of revamping.

Because somehow, we in Illinois need to find that middle ground between thinking that some people being recorded is a felony offense and thinking that everybody being recorded (with silly pictures all over Facebook) is somehow proper.

  -30-

Quinn heads for telephone trouble

It amazes me to learn when government officials use private resources to conduct official business. Are they that gullible?

The conspiracy-theory types are convinced the only reason for doing so is to get around requirements that they disclose their activity – after all, a privately-owned phone is nobody else’s business, even if it belongs to a government official.

THAT IS THE situation Gov. Pat Quinn is in these days. The Associated Press took it upon themselves to check out the telephone records for the cell phone assigned to Quinn, but paid for by the State of Illinois.

It turns out, the wire service found, that he hardly ever uses it. Some months, there are no minutes logged to it at all. Instead, the governor is one of those guys with a Blackberry, one which is his personal property and which he pays the bill for himself.

So he’s not about to disclose the records of how many calls he has received on it, although by his own admission he has conducted calls with people who were talking to him about official business.

And also by his own admission, he’s not one of those guys who sends tons of text messages. No e-mails sent out en masse to government employees, telling them to quit playing Solitaire on their office computers.

FOR HIM, A Blackberry is an alternative to a cellular telephone.

I’m almost inclined to believe him when he says there’s nothing particularly suspicious about his conduct. Quinn has been a “good government” type for so long that it would be unheard of for him to be caught up in some sort of unseemly activity.

Then again, nobody ever would have thought one-time Alderman Larry Bloom would ever do anything that would catch the attention of federal prosecutors.

As much as I’m inclined to give Quinn the benefit of the doubt that he’s using a Blackberry to cover up evidence of some tainted government deal, I’m surprised he’s not more aware of the need to keep that strict separation between a government phone and a personal phone.

I REALIZE THAT some people are going to get that personal number and are going to use it to try to contact him to talk government business (which is Quinn’s excuse, by the way. He can’t control who calls him, and isn’t going to turn someone away just because they should have called him on the other telephone line).

But this is going to be the wave of the political future, with it becoming increasingly common for people to have more than one telephone number to be reached at – and often more than one mobile phone line that they carry on them.

I guess we’re going to have to start becoming very aware of the concept of the work phone line and the personal phone line.

Political people who don’t pay attention to that distinction are the ones who are going to have the potential for trouble in their professional (and possibly personal) lives.

IT’S ALMOST LIKE we got a taste of this a few months ago from now-former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

Remember when it came out that she was using a Yahoo! account designed for personal e-mail use to send messages related to official Alaska government business?

Trouble started when someone managed to hack their way into that e-mail account and started committing mischief at her political expense.

She learned the hard way that the security measures for those personal services aren’t anywhere near the level that they need to be for someone conducting government business.

AFTER ALL, PEOPLE doing business with a government expect that their personal information is not being disclosed to just anybody.

Yet that is what came about with Palin, as some of those messages she was sending out contained significant data that could be used against her or against Alaska government or against the companies that wanted to do business with that state.

I’m surprised Quinn would be willing to let his Blackberry become the focus of so much government business. Is he really that naïve about how it could put both himself and the state of Illinois at risk, particularly since it ought to be clear to everybody these days that calls made on cellular telephones are far from secure?

Some people may think the wire service is triggering a political scandal now by disclosing that the governor is not all that particularly about maintaining a separation between his personal and his work-related telephone calls.

BUT TO ME, the real scandal would be if someone were to hack their way into the governor’s calls and start using the details they overhear for their own personal benefit.

It would be rather pathetic if people wound up suffering just because Pat Quinn didn’t have enough sense to refuse to take a government-related call on his personal phone.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is part of the confusion that can arise from having to juggle about (http://nwitimes.com/news/local/illinois/article_2c635850-fdea-548a-ad5e-aa76fe89b473.html) so many telephone lines.