Interesting what gets released on a Friday...
http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/24/0853236&from=rss
DHS's 'Secure Flight' Program Proven Insecure
Posted by Zonk on Sunday December 24, @06:14AM from the i-trust-the-government-as-far-as-i-can-throw-it dept.
News.com is reporting the somewhat unsurprising news that a government program we were assured was 'perfectly safe', has actually been proven to be a privacy nightmare. The 'Secure Flight' program matched air traveler information with commercial databases in the interests of national security. The charter for the program specifically forbade the TSA from accessing this information; the organization got their hands on it anyway. The Department of Homeland Security has released a report, detailing these findings and analyzing the situation. The News.com piece makes it clear the report was released on Friday in an attempt to obscure it from public notice; it was only linked to from a DHS subsite, and has not shown up on the DHS or TSA main pages.
From the article: "The report from the Homeland Security privacy office takes pains to say that the privacy compromises over Secure Flight were 'not intentional,' [Of course they were. What they were not is well considered! Bob] and includes a list of seven recommendations to avoid similar mishaps in the future. Those include explaining to the public exactly what's going on and creating a 'data flow map' to ensure information is handled in compliance with the 1974 Privacy Act. This isn't the first report to take issue with Secure Flight. Last year, auditors at the U.S. Government Accountability Office reported that the program violated the Privacy Act."
[Report (PDF) http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/privacy/privacy-secure-flight-122006.pdf Bob]
...and this
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/013358.html
December 22, 2006
DHS Privacy Office Report on MATRIX Project
MATRIX Report, December 2006 (PDF, 9 pages): DHS Privacy Office Report to the Public Concerning the Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange (MATRIX) Pilot Project.
No doubt Big Brother will tell you everything.
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/013356.html
December 22, 2006
DHS Provides RSS Fees for News, Press Releases, Speeches and Testimony
Links to the RSS feeds are as follows:
Remember, it is always safe to talk to a lawyer...
http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20061223092420797
Huge law firm's records handed over to government
Saturday, December 23 2006 @ 09:24 AM CST - Contributed by: anonadmin - Businesses & Privacy
Brobeck was a 900 lawyer firm, one of the most well known for tech companies and IPO’s. It was a hugely profitable and successful law firm. They expanded too fast, racked up loads of debt, had some internal issues and dissolved in 2003. Now their former customers are being informed, three years hence, that if they take no action, their records will be turned over to the Library of Congress’s National Digital Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP), in parternship with the University of Maryland. Why? To “memoralize the Dot Com Era by preserving the Brobeck Digital Records…that will be established upon closure of the bankruptcy estate.”
Source - Truston (blog)
Why would any group funded by taxpayers choose to do otherwise?
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/23/2041202&from=rss
Librarians Stake Their Future on OSS
Posted by Zonk on Saturday December 23, @04:26PM from the wish-we-had-that-here dept. Software Linux
Systems Librarian writes "Linux.com is running a story entitled 'Librarians stake their future on open source'. It details a group of librarians at the Georgia Public Library Service that have developed an open source, enterprise-class library management system that may revolutionize the way large-scale libraries are run. The system is Evergreen. The element of this project that has the participants especially excited is the speed. Previously, if users wanted changes to their systems, they'd be put into an 'enhancement queue'. Now, some features are implemented overnight. From the article: 'In fact, the catalog has many features and innovations that are lacking in non-free systems. It does on-the-fly spellcheck and gives search suggestions and adds additional content, such as book covers, reviews, and excerpts. The Shelf Browser shows items ordered along a virtual shelf built out of the holdings of the entire system. Patrons can create bookbags, which are lists that contain a selected collection of annotated titles. Bookbags can be kept private or shared as a regular Web page or as Atom or RSS feeds.'"
Linux.com and Slashdot are both owned by OSTG.
Isn't this obvious? Is there an assumption out there that because you have owned computers you know everything there is to know about them?
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/24/0452253&from=rss
College Freshmen Struggle With Tech Literacy
Posted by Zonk on Sunday December 24, @12:33AM from the gotta-grow-up-nerd-to-get-ahead dept.
snow_man writes to mention an article on the E-Commerce News site about techno-literacy problems with incoming college freshmen. Some schools, like CSU, are planning on including a technology comprehension test alongside their English and Math evaluations for new students.
From the article: "Not all of Generation M can synthesize the loads of information they're accessing, educators say. 'They're geeky, but they don't know what to do with their geekdom,' said Barbara O'Connor, a Sacramento State communications studies professor involved in a nationwide effort to hone students' computer-research skills. On a recent nationwide test to measure their technological 'literacy' -- their ability to use the Internet to complete class assignments -- only 49 percent of the test-takers correctly evaluated a set of Web sites for objectivity, authority and timeliness. Only 35 percent could correctly narrow an overly broad Internet search."
Are they describing a place for ad hoc conspiracy? (Might be very handy within an organization...)
http://www.technewsworld.com/rsstory/54876.html
Illumio Connects Like-Minded People Online
By Elise Ackerman San Jose Mercury News 12/24/06 4:00 AM PT
Unlike similar services such as Yahoo Answers and LinkedIn, Illumio allows people to connect in private. [already suspicious, J. Edgar] "What we are trying to do is create mutually consensual connections [abomination! Pat Robertson] among people who would never find each other otherwise," said David Gilmour, Tacit Software's founder and chief executive. "It's like Google meets IM."
Imagine if you could search through the information in your colleagues' heads and uncover unknown areas of expertise and serendipitous connections -- like a mutual interest in organic gardening or open source Latest News about open source databases.
That's not a search you can do on Google. However, it is one you can do with a free application called Illumio, developed by Tacit Software.
Social Search Engine
Illumio, which was released last month, is a new approach to the challenge of "social search," finding information that other people know but haven't uploaded to a Web page.
... In fact, Illumio borrows the desktop search technology that was first released by Google -- and subsequently by competitors -- to discover what a person cares about. It analyzes e-mail Email Marketing Software - Free Demo, Web searches and documents stored on a computer's hard drive and uses a mathematical formula to match that information with requests submitted by other Illumio users.
... Illumio allows members to manually create profiles that list their areas of expertise, but Gilmour said the analysis of a person's hard drive has proven to be more useful because it can capture areas of knowledge a person might overlook.
Research tool?
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/013342.html
December 21, 2006
UK Statute Law Database Now Online
Via Ruth Bird, Bodleian Law Librarian, the UK Statute Law Database was released to the public on December 20. The content of SLD is available for viewing and private use free of charge. "The UK Statute Law Database (SLD) is the official revised edition of the primary legislation of the United Kingdom made available online."
No comments:
Post a Comment