Someone (Or, more likely, some script) claiming to be Bob from TSA Blog left a comment on this post. It was a totally useless press release talking about the ineffective things TSA is planning to do about the lost (now found) laptop.

Despite the fact that it fits my definition of spam (It wasn't a response to the post, which "Bob" clearly didn't read, it was a monologue on the same subject with a link to the author's blog), I published it. But due to a little snafu with the back button and not paying attention, I accidentally deleted it.

So, sorry to censor your spam, TSA Bob. If you post again, I'll publish it again. But note well that spamming blogs that call out your stupidity and/or incompetence is not going to do a bit of good, and you might be better off finding something more useful to do with your time.

Edit to add: Here is the text of the propaganda, stolen from the original Boing Boing post's comments.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) continues to investigate the circumstances surrounding the loss of a Clear®- owned laptop computer on July 26 that contained unencrypted data of approximately 33,000 customers. TSA has verified that a laptop was discovered by Clear® officials yesterday at San Francisco International Airport (SFO). It was voluntarily surrendered to TSA officials for forensic examination.

TSA’s regulatory role in this matter is as follows: Every commercial airport is required to have an approved airport security plan. So Register Traveler is part of that comprehensive plan at the airports where it operates. Under the airport security plan, the sponsoring entity, (SFO in this case) is required to assure its vendors have an approved information security program. Because the computer at SFO was not encrypted it is in violation of the airport’s security plan.

TSA also has the ability to go directly to vendors when the plan is not being adhered to so TSA is conducting a broad review of all Registered Traveler providers’ information systems and data security processes to ensure compliance with security regulations.

Clear® needs to meet the information security requirements that they agreed to as part of the Register Traveler program before their enrollment privileges will be reinstated. Encryption is the wider issue as opposed to one incident with one laptop. So for now, Clear® enrollments remain curtailed.

Current customers will not experience any disruption when using Registered Traveler.

Bob

TSA EoS Blog Team

The worst part about this is that TSA's response to this seems to be a stern wag of the finger at the contractor. I feel safer already.

A 21-YEAR-OLD man has gone missing after a night out in a city
centre. Police are searching for Jonathan Jenkins who was last seen in
Wind Street in the centre of Swansea last Sunday evening. Mr Jenkins, of
Townhill, Swansea, was reported missing some time after he left a city
centre pub to have a cigarette. A spokesman for Swansea Police said, ?He
was in So Bar, in Wind Street, when he went for a cigarette outside at
about 9.30pm, and he has not been seen since.¦ There is safe variant to
have cigarettes from here:

This is the text of a spam comment I got on one of my older posts. It also included some links to buy cheap cigarettes online, which I won't include here.

It's interesting that the spammers are starting to tell little stories about what they're trying to sell you. This one is topical (More and more states, counties, and countries are banning smoking inside), pertinent (It talks about cigarettes, and then tries to sell them to me!), and slightly incoherent. I've never understood why they don't edit these things. If they had posted this with no grammatical mistakes and only one link, it probably would have gotten through my spam filter.

Anyway, just thought I'd share the comment before I deleted it.

Here's another.

Wednesday, 9am - A discarded cigarette caused a car to catch fire in
Great Ponton, near Grantham, last night. The owner of the BMW Z3
extinguished the fire with a powder extinguisher by the time
firefighters from Grantham arrived on the scene at around 6.15pm. The
engine compartment was damaged in the fire. Be careful while smoking!
Follow the smoking instruction here:

I was just looking through my Gmail spam folder, which I do from time to time to see if it caught anything it shouldn't have. I'm mostly curious - anything that gets caught in there is probably not worth reading anyway.

But one email jumped out at me - someone named Zane Gay (Not the author, that's Grey) sent me an email entitled, "Fondle all her internal nerve endings".

Maybe this guy should be an author, because he's got a way with the English language, I'll tell you. Maybe he should be a poet, instead. The rigid constraints of prose could never hold Zane Gay back.

I hope someone out there was sitting on his couch, thinking to himself, "Gosh, Jane sure is a great girl. I really want to fondle all her internal nerve endings, but HOW?". And then he happens to look in his inbox and see this gift from Zane Gay. That's the way the world should work.

The new site just got its first spam comments! That's so exciting. Akismet faithfully caught them, which makes it even better.

The post that received the comments is an old one, and the spambot found it through the old URL, so that means that redirection is completely successful.