Tuesday, April 10, 2007

What duty to check your potential employees? (Don't editors even read these stories? They left out “is missing and believed stolen.”)

http://cbs4.com/topstories/local_story_099223111.html

Apr 9, 2007 10:39 pm US/Eastern

Sensitive Info Is Stolen From Adoption Agency

(CBS4) FT. LAUDERDALE The highly confidential information on children and their adoptive parents is at stake in a criminal case being investigated by Ft. Lauderdale Police.

Detectives went to the Childnet office located at 1400 Commercial Blvd. on Friday, when they discovered that a sensitive database containing the information of 12,000 adoptive parents and the placement of adoptive children...... Police do not believe the suspects were after the information to harm children, but rather to commit id theft and fraud.

Two employees who work for security at the company have been suspended as they are the center of the investigation. Ironically these suspects have criminal records that span from manslaughter to burglary.

Chief Operating Officer Barbara Moss says she has not comment.

Childnet is a non-profit contractor that works for the Department of Children and families, helping abused, neglected and abandoned children. A spokesperson for the Department of Children and Family says that they are working with Childnet and law enforcement to help solve the case.



Oops

http://www.wrcbtv.com/news/index.cfm?sid=7473

Turbo Tax Error

Play video

A Nebraska woman recently discovered a shocking flaw with a website thousands of people use to prepare their taxes. Instead of taking advantage of this potential gold mine for identity thieves, she is calling attention to it to protect other taxpayers.

In her laptop, Jennifer discovered a key to the backdoor of some tax returns filed on line through Turbo Tax.

A Turbo Tax customer herself, Jennifer attempted to access some past filings and the route she took online opened returns for several others with the same last name, but different first initials.

For security reasons we're not revealing the common last name or how Jennifer inadvertently gained access to three other Turbo Tax accounts.

She was able to access tax returns for three Turbo Tax customers she never met in different parts of the country.

There on her screen, everything needed for electronic filing from bank account to routing digits and of course social security numbers.

An Omaha based official with the Turbo Tax parent company says the inadvertent access to some tax files came as a shock.

"We think it was a quirk, an individual circumstance as far as we know. [Must be an interesting program if it has “individual quirks” Bob] So what we did is we took that link down in the product for now until we can fully investigate to make sure the issue won't happen again to anybody else," says Gordon Whitten.

Jennifer wouldn't want an internet stranger peeking into her tax filings so she'll delete any information that opened the back door to others with the same last name.

This does not involve the Turbo Tax software, only the website that allows taxpayers to create an account and do their taxes there.

Company officials say the inadvertent window of opportunity for potential thieves has been closed. Turbo Tax has not received any reports of customer accounts being accessed by identity thieves, and says it is grateful the Nebraska customer brought it to the company's attention.



Perhaps we could start a business that specializes in closing barn doors. We could advertise “Call us right after your horses run off!”

http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/04/10/HNirslaptopsencrypted_1.html?source=rss&url=http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/04/10/HNirslaptopsencrypted_1.html

IRS head: All laptops to be encrypted within weeks

Commissioner says serious problems in the agency's handling of sensitive data are being corrected

By Robert McMillan, IDG News Service April 10, 2007

After an auditor found serious security problems in the way it handled sensitive data on laptops, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service said it will have all laptops encrypted within the next few weeks. [...and I'll win the lottery! Bob]

Speaking in an interview with National Public Radio over the weekend, Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Mark Everson said his organization was making the effort following a recently released audit that found unencrypted data on a large percentage of IRS laptop computers.

"What the report showed, which was correct, was that we weren't taking the proper steps to protect some laptops," Everson said. "We've worked to encrypt all of the laptops and that's just about done. We've got a couple dozen more we've got to finish up in the next few weeks."

Auditors tested 100 laptop computers used by IRS employees and found that 44 of them contained "unencrypted sensitive data, including taxpayer data and employee personnel data."

... A 2003 audit found similar problems within the IRS.



That'll teach you to do your legal research on the web...

http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/014500.html

April 09, 2007

AALL State-by-State Report on Authentication of Online

Press release: "How trustworthy are state-level primary legal resources on the Web? The American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) is pleased to announce the publication of the State-by-State Report on Authentication of Online Legal Resources that answers this very important and timely question. The comprehensive report examines the results of a state survey that investigated whether government-hosted legal resources on the Web are official and capable of being considered authentic."

State-by-State Report on Authentication of Online Legal Resources Report (254 pages, PDF)



The question is: Who have they tapped that hasn't detected them?

http://news.com.com/2100-1043_3-6174704.html?part=rss&tag=2547-1_3-0-5&subj=news

No end in sight to hacking of 'WoW' accounts

By Daniel Terdiman Story last modified Tue Apr 10 04:00:02 PDT 2007

If you're a World of Warcraft player using Windows, beware.

For months, hackers--most likely in China and Russia, according to security watchers--have been surreptitiously installing keylogging software on WoW players' Windows computers, hijacking their accounts and selling off their often valuable in-game assets.

And the problem doesn't show any signs of going away.

The gangs perpetrating the hacking are "incredibly active, and it's a good exploit," said Roger Thompson, CTO of security software developer LinkScanner. "It's probably a conservative estimate to say that there's tens of thousands of victims."

... For its part, Blizzard said it's addressing the problem by informing players that they should ensure their computers are safe against malware.

... There are more than 8 million WoW players, so even if tens of thousands are finding their accounts compromised, that's still a very small percentage of the total.

But for the hackers, the rewards can be substantial. That's because many players hoard gold, weapons, spells or armor worth a lot of money on the open market. Even though Blizzard doesn't officially allow players to buy or sell those goods, there is a thriving market for them (and that's in spite of the fact that eBay, one of the most popular venues for such transactions, recently decided to ban them).



Isn't it nice that our kids are getting involved in politics at an early age?

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/MYSPACE_FREE_SPEECH?SITE=VALYD&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Court: MySpace Postings Are Free Speech

By CHARLES WILSON Associated Press Writer Apr 10, 12:47 AM EDT

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) -- A judge violated a juvenile's free-speech rights when he placed her on probation for posting an expletive-laden entry on MySpace criticizing a school principal, the Indiana Court of Appeals ruled.

The three-judge panel on Monday ordered the Putnam Circuit Court to set aside its penalty against the girl, referred to only as A.B. in court records.

"While we have little regard for A.B.'s use of vulgar epithets, we conclude that her overall message constitutes political speech," Judge Patricia Riley wrote in the 10-page opinion.

In February 2006, Greencastle Middle School Principal Shawn Gobert discovered a Web page on MySpace purportedly created by him. A.B., who did not create the page, made derogatory postings on it concerning the school's policy on body piercings.

The state filed a delinquency petition in March alleging that A.B.'s acts would have been harassment, identity deception and identity theft if committed by an adult. The juvenile court dropped most of the charges but in June found A.B. to be a delinquent child and placed her on nine months of probation. The judge ruled the comments were obscene.

A.B. appealed, arguing that her comments were protected political speech under both the state and federal constitutions because they dealt with school policy.

The Court of Appeals found that the comments were protected and that the juvenile court had unconstitutionally restricted her right of free expression.



Attention copyright lawyers! A whole industry needs your help! (Non-digital rights management?)

http://techdirt.com/articles/20070405/194853.shtml

More Research Shows How The Fashion Industry Is Helped By The Lack Of Intellectual Property Rights

from the keep-it-coming dept

Back in 2003, we mentioned an article that compared the entertainment industry to the fashion industry, noting that even though there was no intellectual property protections over clothing design and copying was rampant, the fashion industry was thriving. This shouldn't come as a surprise, really. After all, without the artificial protectionism, the fashion designers are forced to continually compete by continually innovating and always trying to come out with the latest and greatest design. Even though others copy, there's tremendous value in being the first, or being the "big name" in the industry. The article included this fantastic quote: "Ideas arise, evolve through collaboration, gain currency through exposure, mutate in new directions, and diffuse through imitation. The constant borrowing, repurposing, and transformation of prior work are as integral to creativity in music and film as they are to fashion." In 2005, the NY Times wrote a similar article, but warned that the fashion industry was moving in the wrong direction, as lazy designers who didn't want to compete and wanted to rest on their laurels had started pushing for new intellectual property over their designs. Late last year, the calls for such protectionism grew even stronger -- though, the reasoning doesn't make any sense. The entire point of intellectual property protections is to create incentives for a market. If that market is already thriving, why do you need to add new incentives? The real reason is that it's not to provide incentives. It's a way for successful players to keep making money without continuing to innovate -- which is simply bad for society.

The NY Times is taking another look at this issue, this time in a piece written by well-known economist Hal Varian, who points to a recent study that doesn't just note that the fashion industry has thrived without intellectual property protection, but notes that a big part of the reason it has thrived is because of the lack of IP. In other words, if those pushing for those new IP rights get them, the end result will likely be harmful to the overall fashion industry. Again, this shouldn't be surprising, as removing protectionist policies tends to increase competition and the size of the addressable market, but it's certainly a good example to point to when people insist that things like the music industry wouldn't exist without copyright protection.



Don't tell Al Gore, he's happy in his fantasy world. (Then again, perhaps sunspots are herds of SUVs?)

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/10/0058248&from=rss

Sunspots Reach 1000-Year Peak

Posted by CowboyNeal on Monday April 09, @11:16PM from the radio-signals-cringing dept. Space Science

rlp writes "Researchers at the Institute for Astronomy in Zurich are reporting that solar sunspot activity is at a 1000-year peak. Records of sunspots have been kept since 1610. The period between 1645 and 1715 (known as the Maunder Minimum) was a period of very few sunspots.[AKA: The “little ice age” Bob] Researchers extended the record by measuring isotopes of beryllium (created by cosmic rays) in Greenland ice cores. Based on both observations and ice core records, we are now at a sunspot peak exceeding solar activity for any time in the past thousand years."



Just consider it another way to find companies you never heard of...

http://valleywag.com/tech/the-chart/hottest-startups-250874.php

Hottest Startups

In two threads -- one on Linked In, the other on Venture Beat -- commenters are nominating the hottest startups of Silicon Valley. We totted up the mentions on both threads. Facebook, the college social network, scores highest; with Admob, the mobile ad network, following up.



Sometimes, technology just goes too far...

http://news.com.com/2061-10802_3-6174659.html?part=rss&tag=2547-1_3-0-5&subj=news

Picture perfect emoticons

April 9, 2007 4:18 PM PDT

A former University of Pittsburgh doctoral student and professor have devised a way to turn photos of people's faces into emoticons for use in e-mails, mobile text messages and other communications. Basically, they take a single expressionless photo, slice it into pieces and alter the slices to create separate images of the six basic facial expressions representing happiness, sadness, anger, surprise, disgust and fear, according to an article in Physorg.com. The program, called FaceAlive, was developed by Xin Li, who now works at Google, and his computer science adviser, Shi-Kuo Chang. No word on when they'll be creating the popular "wink" or "hug" emoticons.



The next big thing?

http://www.educause.edu/Browse/645?PARENT_ID=822

ESI and E-Discovery

20 Resources In This Topic - Last Updated: 4/6/2007

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