Misguided security procedures-and what's going on in Iraq I wasn't going to Atlanta for Supercomm.  But at the last minute discovered that Delta Airline (DL) offered he same rate without a Saturday overnight.  So - went from Salt Lake on Monday.  Security examined every brass button on my Levi's shirt and pants. Aside from the new Convention Center entrance being way to hell and gone from the downtown hotels and the buses not running for four of the noon hours, the exhibits were good. Devoted all day Tuesday and Wednesday morning to the show.  Motorola's Canopy line is a winner! One show floor rumor of interest.  Seems the Baghdad central office switch was working fine when US troops captured it and moved on.  A day or so later - the brass got to investigating why the phones were not working.  Seems every inch of copper wire in the building had been stripped out.  Going to take time and several mil to replace.   Thus, the unforeseen promise of unusual counterattacks turned out to be scorched earth country-wide destruction of Iraqi utility infrastructure.  I got this CO story verified by three sources. Guys from Alcatel, the dominant equipment vendor in Iraq, refused to talk.  That, in itself, spoke loudly.    MARTA to the airport for a Wednesday 6 p.m. departure.  As DL has ATL - SLC  flights all day, I inquired at the check-in that DL has for us unwashed MARTA riders – "Is there any benefit to DL to put me on an earlier flight?"  She replied with the canned speech that it would cost hundreds more to change a ticket, etc.  Having hours to enjoy a spirited conversation, I repeated my query.  She repeated her speech. She never did understand I had not asked her the question she answered.   To top it off, she could not get her machine to confirm my e-ticket data or my printout.  Told me to go stand in the big "get your ticket here" line.  I refused.  Finally one of the more experienced guys pushed her aside and got the machine to print me a boarding card.   I won't be going to Supercomm in Chicago. Maybe it's spiteful, but any city that tears down a major city airport as Chicago Mayor Daley did in the dark of night, doesn't need our dollars spent there.  Acronym LIDB means "line information database."  A large database that associates your number with a name. When you call someone, the selected name will be pulled from the LIDB for display on caller ID equipment.  For years my Beehive Tel couldn't send the calling number using Feature Group C so we didn't bother putting names in the LIDB.  But now we are Feature Group D, and LIDB is important.  Qwest administers the LIDB for me.  For a week we have been trying to get into Qwest's super secure dial up (private IP, HTML-based, SecurID card-protected) system to add and edit LIDB entries.  OK, fine.  Put in a dial up networking connection to the computer.  It dials, and connects, but always rejects our username and password.  After multiple calls and hours on the phone to the Qwest wholesale systems security administrator, they change our password and tell us to start from scratch.  Ten times.  Never connects.  (We are positive it is a PPP/ PAP problem). Spinning wheels. The people who administer the LIDB are different from security.  But security administers the connection.  We believe LIDB folk know way more than security - but are scared to tell (Barney Fife?) security how to do its job. Suggestion -  can you spell VPN via the Internet?   SNET does credit card validation that way!  Is LIDB security more important than credit card numbers?  And ooh -  LIDB still accepts faxed changes.  How secure is that?  Copyright 2003 by A. W. Brothers and Americas Network magazine. All rights reserved.   © Beehive Telephone Co.