You can never start too young.
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/stories/2007/05/16/0517meshrecords.html
Security breach involves recent births
Parents' personal, medical information improperly discarded
By GAYLE WHITE The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Published on: 05/17/07
State officials are warning parents of 140,000 Georgia babies that a security lapse has exposed some of their personal and medical information to the risk of fraud.
The Georgia Department of Human Resources mailed letters Wednesday to all parents of infants born in Georgia between April 1, 2006, and March 16, 2007, saying that paper records containing their Social Security numbers and information about their medical histories were improperly discarded.
... The forms are supposed to be shredded after the information is entered into a computer for public health analysis, but he said amid staff turnover, the shredding was not done.
Staff at the state vital records facility at 1600 Skyland Drive N.E., Atlanta, discovered the breach in March after a television investigative reporter raised questions, Brown said. But, he said, his office was not notified until Tuesday.
Failure to consider security?
http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070517/LOCAL18/705170491
IPS student data exposed
Confidential info about thousands of students was available online
By Andy Gammill andy.gammill@indystar.com 3:22 AM May 17, 2007
In what appears to be one of the broadest online school security failures ever in the U.S., thousands of confidential Indianapolis Public Schools student records were available to the public through Google searches.
An Indianapolis Star reporter using Google found information on at least 7,500 students and some staff members, including phone numbers, birth dates, medical information and Social Security numbers. Such student information is required to be kept private under federal law.
Internet security experts said the inadvertent release of information resulted from a network setup that was sloppy. It appears that teachers and students unwittingly posted the files to the Web when they tried to save their work on the system.
... "We will protect this information in the future," Superintendent Eugene White said. "This matter has received the highest priority of the district, and the IT department has made the necessary changes."
He also said the district would continue to investigate what went wrong.
Yet, in an example of the complexities of the Internet, copies of the records may remain accessible on other computers for some time. Wednesday night, duplicate versions remained up on Google.
... The district could face a state or federal inquiry if parents file complaints and could face lawsuits if any of the information was misused.
... The records reveal medical details, such as diagnoses of special education students. Others are rosters of students that include names, addresses, home phone numbers, birth dates and other information.
A suspension list from Donnan Middle School and all the locker combinations at Marshall Middle School were among the files.
... It was unclear Wednesday whether the software IPS uses, ANGEL Learning Management Suite developed by Indianapolis-based ANGEL Learning, played a role in the security failure.
The company's chief executive officer, Christopher Clapp, said he didn't have enough information to make that determination.
We can, therefore we must... (First Alzheimer's patients, then Democrats!)
Plan to 'chip' Alzheimer's patients causes protest
19 May 2007 Celeste Biever New Scientist Print Edition.
... The battle lines are being drawn in a quiet corner of West Palm Beach, Florida. On 12 May, some 30 protesters held an inter-faith prayer vigil (pictured above) outside Alzheimer's Community Care, a day-care facility for people with dementia. At issue is the facility's plan to implant 200 patients with microchips manufactured and donated by VeriChip of nearby Delray Beach.
“We will get to that, as soon as we finish counting the chad...” New ad campaign: “Visit Florida, Still the best place for ID Thieves”
Florida extends deadline for redacting data from online records -- again
Jaikumar Vijayan
May 16, 2007 (Computerworld) County clerks in Florida have been given more time by state lawmakers to remove Social Security numbers, bank account details, credit card numbers and other personal data from images of public records posted on their Web sites.
The state Senate early this month voted 40-0 for a bill (download document) that gives court clerks until Jan. 1, 2011, to redact personally identifiable data from images of title deeds, tax liens, court papers and other public records filed with their offices. Until then, individuals in the state who want personal data removed from their online public records must specifically ask for it to be redacted. [That procedure will no doubt add a huge workload to the court clerks... Bob]
... This is the third time the deadline has been extended.
... "The whole thing is just stupid," said B.J. Ostergren, a Virginia-based privacy advocate who runs a Web-site called The Virginia Watchdog to highlight the problem. "I can't understand why they are giving clerks three more years to remove Social Security numbers off those records," when other counties in Florida have already completed their redactions or are well on their way to doing so, she said.
... In Texas, an association of county and court clerks earlier this year succeeded in getting state lawmakers to approve a bill that essentially exempts them from liability when they disclose "in the ordinary course of business" Social Security numbers contained in documents held by their offices.
... Florida's Orange County, for instance, completed an 18-month redaction effort last October in which it reviewed more than 30 million pages in more than 12 million public records for personal data. In the end, 777,635 documents, about 2.5% of the total reviewed, were found to contain personal data that needed to be redacted.
Will this catch on? Probably. Interesting business model in any case...
http://techdirt.com/articles/20070516/120756.shtml
Visa, MasterCard, AmEx... Driver's Licenses?
from the no-cash dept
Credit-card processing fees continue to be a growing burden for retailers, particularly in low-margin operations like grocery stores and gas stations. This is fuelling a lot of interest in alternative payment systems that seek to cut out credit-card companies, though they face formidable competition in the form of the cards' ubiquity and convenience. One company is seeking to overcome that by turning people's driver's licenses into debit cards (via Payments News). Users link their bank account to their driver's license number, and make purchases at participating retailers using the license and a PIN code. The service is already being used by some gas stations, who are very happy with it since the company charges a flat 15 cents per transaction, rather than a variable percentage, as credit cards do. The main sticking point is, of course, security -- with plenty of people hesitant to start using their drivers' license for payments, and authorities saying they don't endorse the idea. This may not be a perfect solution, but it does indicate the sort of system that will be needed to meet the demand for a payment alternative to credit cards. Since this change will be retailer-driven -- as the costs of payment processing are generally invisible to consumers -- any viable solution will have to offer benefits to consumers that are at least equal to those offered by existing payment mechanisms.
Attention Spring graduates!
http://techdirt.com/articles/20070516/071022.shtml
Why Monster Isn't The Monster It Once Was
from the long-tail-of-jobs dept
Microsoft's recently acquired stake in Careerbuilder has brought renewed interest to online job sites, like Monster.com, which some now see as a takeover candidate. But despite the initial promise that online job boards would make the process of hiring and finding a job much more efficient, many have felt that they've never really lived up to the hype. The flood of useless resumes that companies receive often means that posting a job to a major site is more trouble than it's worth. The industry is now starting to iron out its kinks, but in a way that's not to the benefit of the major sites, like Careerbuilder and Monster.com. While their traffic sags, business is booming at niche sites (via alarm:clock), like GovernmentJobs.com, which only lists public sector jobs. The benefits to to employee and employer are clear, as these sites allow for a more targeted search. So while companies like Microsoft (and maybe Google) look to get into this space, this trend emphasizes the fact that they should build platforms for third parties to do job search, rather than simply trying to buy the market leaders.
Yet they continue to insist that DRM works!
http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/17/newest-aacs-circumvented-the-matrix-trilogy-set-free/
Newest AACS circumvented: The Matrix Trilogy set free
Posted May 17th 2007 2:59AM by Thomas Ricker
Just in case you didn't already piece it together, many (if not all) of the new HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc titles set for release on May 22nd will feature the latest revisions to AACS. Right, the update hinted at by those forced user updates to the WinDVD and PowerDVD software. Yeah, well no worries... it's cracked. That's right, a week before the disks have even hit the shops, the kids over at Slysoft have already released AnyDVD HD 6.1.5.1 (beta) which kicks AACS MKB v3 swiftly to the curb. Thus you can continue to rip all your newly purchased HD DVD and BD flicks for playback any damn way you like. The update has already been demonstrated to work with an early-shipped release of The Matrix Trilogy on HD DVD and will likely work for Pirates of the Caribbean - Dead Man's Chest when it arrives on Blu-ray. Come on AACS LA, you're gonna have to at least try. Better yet, why not just give up this silly charade.
What kind of France is this?
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1742&source=rss
Presidential Politics: What to Expect from France's Nicolas Sarkozy
Published: May 16, 2007 in Knowledge@Wharton
... Sarkozy is depicted as a friend, but also a critic, of the U.S.; as a supporter, to some degree, of the European Union; and as a reformer bent on changing France's burdensome labor laws, but also willing to meet with union leaders.
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