“Identity theft” has become a well-known term in the new century, the subject of news reports and talk shows. Its specter worries consumers as they use their credit cards, write checks, show a driver’s license to a store clerk or order merchandise online.

The conventional wisdom is that just about everybody is vulnerable to identity theft. Furthermore, after it occurs the remedies are both painful and unsatisfactory. The book’s title itself -Zero Day Threat - is scary when translated into common parlance. A zero day threat, as defined by the authors, is “a hazard so new that no viable protection against it yet exists.”

Despite the currency of the subject, nobody has written a book about identity theft quite the way Byron Acohido and Jon Swartz have done. Both technology reporters for USA TODAY, Acohido and Swartz have ferreted out scandal within the identity-theft realm that is bound to lead to reader outrage. Whether the revelations will lead to meaningful reform by Congress and federal regulatory agencies remains to be seen.

Surprisingly, the real villains in Zero Day Threat are not the identity thieves themselves, despite their unsavory lives of crime. Rather, the villains are supposed pillars of communities: bankers, credit-bureau managers and computer makers who enable the burglars, and who could ameliorate the identify-theft crisis but, instead, look away in the name of larger corporate profit.

Blockbuster Inc. said Monday it has offered to pay more than $1 billion for struggling Circuit City Stores Inc., but the nation’s second biggest consumer electronics chain questioned whether the movie-rental company can finance the deal.

Blockbuster Chief Executive James Keyes said combining the companies would create a chain that could sell portable devices and entertainment for them, much like Apple Inc.’s stores.

Keyes said the offer is supported by Blockbuster board member Carl Icahn, who could be a source of financing for the deal.

Undersea telecom cable operator Reliance Globalcom was able to use satellite images to identify two ships that dropped anchor in the wrong place, damaging submarine cables and knocking Middle East nations offline in early February. The company used satellite images to study the movements of the two ships, and shared the information with officials in Dubai, who impounded the two vessels. The NANOG list has a discussion of where Reliance might have obtained satellite images to provide that level of detail.