Charged up?  Late last month, book retailer Barnes & Noble
acknowledged that 63 of its stores, including three in
Massachusetts, had been victims of a carefully orchestrated
identity theft scheme that compromised the information of
customers in nine states.  In some ways, the bookseller's case
is nothing new; computer hackers have long targeted large
businesses and their extensive customer databases, trolling
around for important personal information that could be used to
steal patrons' identities. But in other ways, this latest effort
may reveal a new, and perhaps more frightening, aspect of the
dangers of identity theft.  Unlike in previous cases where
hackers pulled up information that retailers had on file, some
suspect that this scheme involved infecting individual personal
identification number, or PIN, pad machines. Barnes & Noble has
declined to explain just how their machines became infected, but
some believe that criminal agents swiped a bogus credit or debit
card, transmitting a harmful program, or