Thursday, August 16, 2007

Listen to yourselves people. We would NEVER try going through your security (trivial though it may be) we would simply pull the drive and use easily available forensic tools.

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20070816055249907

Computer containing personal data on over 50,000 people stolen from hospital

Thursday, August 16 2007 @ 05:52 AM CDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Breaches

A laptop computer containing personal information and medical records of 51,156 people was stolen from Toshiba General Hospital, hospital officials announced Thursday. Officials said the computer contained the names, dates of birth and test data of 51,156 people. They said that since a password was required to log on to the computer, it would be difficult for anyone else to view the personal information.

Source - Mainichi Daily News



Simple IT error (probably by an entry level employee). Makes you wonder who took over their business?

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20070815192755969

Medical IT Contractor Folds After Breaches

Wednesday, August 15 2007 @ 07:27 PM CDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Breaches

Blamed for privacy breaches at five different hospitals, Verus Inc. silently closes its doors

Source - Dark Reading

Related - Verus Inc. and patient privacy breaches (Chronicles of Dissent, June 10, 2007)



Follow-up. HP problems not done yet!

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20070815171406821

CNET reporters sue HP for invasion of privacy

Wednesday, August 15 2007 @ 05:14 PM CDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Businesses & Privacy

The fallout from Hewlett-Packard's boardroom leak scandal continued Wednesday as three CNET News.com reporters sued the computer maker, alleging that its investigation tactics amounted to an invasion of privacy and a violation of state rules on business practices.

Complaints were filed on behalf of reporters Dawn Kawamoto, Stephen Shankland and Tom Krazit in California Superior Court for the County of San Francisco. Kawamoto's husband, plus Shankland's wife and parents, also filed their own suits Wednesday, according to court documents. All seek unspecified damages.

Source - C|net



Follow-up. You don't need hackers, just IT systems with no means of identifying (and correcting) simple problems.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-me-lax15aug15,1,6802259.story?ctrack=2&cset=true

LAX outage is blamed on a single computer

City officials demand a full report on the U.S. Customs system failure and contingency plans.

By Tami Abdollah, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer August 15, 2007

U.S. Customs officials said Tuesday that they had traced the source of last weekend's system outage that left 17,000 international passengers stranded in airplanes to a malfunctioning network interface card on a single desktop computer in the Tom Bradley International Terminal at LAX.

The card, which allows computers to connect to a local area network, experienced a partial failure that started about 12:50 p.m. Saturday, slowing down the system, said Jennifer Connors, a chief in the office of field operations for the Customs and Border Protection agency.

As data overloaded the system, a domino effect occurred with other computer network cards, eventually causing a total system failure a little after 2 p.m., Connors said.

... The system was restored about nine hours later, only to give out again late Sunday for about 80 minutes, until about 1:15 a.m. Monday. The second outage was caused by a power supply failure, Connors said. But customs officials are investigating whether the Saturday incident may have played a role in Sunday's outage.



Attention conspiracy theorists!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/13/AR2007081300991.html

Source Disclosure Ordered in Anthrax Suit

By Carol D. Leonnig Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, August 14, 2007; A02

Five reporters must reveal their government sources for stories they wrote about Steven J. Hatfill and investigators' suspicions that the former Army scientist was behind the deadly anthrax attacks of 2001, a federal judge ruled yesterday.

The decision from U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton is yet another blow to the news industry [That remains to be seen. If they were dupes, then I agree. Bob] as it seeks to shield anonymous sources who provide critical information -- especially on the secret inner workings of government.

"The names of the sources are central to Dr. Hatfill's case," Walton wrote in a 31-page opinion.

... The judge turned down a companion bid by Hatfill to subpoena testimony from corporate representatives and records from ABC, The Washington Post, Newsweek, CBS, the Associated Press, the Baltimore Sun and the New York Times. He said he would reconsider the ruling on the media companies if the reporters continue to refuse to reveal their sources.



It does no good to spend money on technology you don't know how to use... (If the cameras were any good, they would have been stolen by now!)

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/08/14/MNIPRHRPE.DTL

S.F. public housing cameras no help in homicide arrests

Heather Knight, Chronicle Staff Writer Tuesday, August 14, 2007

The 178 video cameras that keep watch on San Francisco public housing developments have never helped police officers arrest a homicide suspect even though about a quarter of the city's homicides occur on or near public housing property, city officials say.

Nobody monitors the cameras, and the videos are seen only if police specifically request it from San Francisco Housing Authority officials. The cameras have occasionally managed to miss crimes happening in front of them because they were trained in another direction, and footage is particularly grainy at night when most crime occurs, according to police and city officials.

... The city has its own security camera program with 70 cameras in 25 high-crime locations. None of them is on federal housing authority property, but many of them are positioned at street corners right outside them. The city cameras operate in much the same way; they are not routinely monitored in part due to privacy concerns, but footage is available to police upon request.

... He added that he thinks the cameras may have "a scarecrow effect" in that they give residents the feeling they are safer when they actually have little impact on crime.



Just another illustration of how to exploit existing technology...

http://www.technewsworld.com/rsstory/58812.html

To Catch an iPod Thief

By Eddie Kovsky The Idaho Business Review 08/16/07 4:00 AM PT

It took them about a month to put together, but once Blackfin Technology proved it could track down a stolen iPod, NBC went to work getting the iPods stolen for a hidden-camera segment on "Dateline NBC." The iPods were packaged new in the box and left in bags in public places, where Dateline's hidden cameras recorded their disappearance.

... According to a statement from NBC, the iPod's iconic status has also made it an easy target for thieves. "Dateline" wanted to confront the people who steal the portable music player and find out if Apple can track the stolen devices on its own. [You could ask... Bob]

In order for NBC to pull off the story, it needed to be able to track the iPod after it got stolen.

Four programmers and a project manager at Blackfin Technology were able to do it.

... "We had to be careful we didn't violate license agreements, didn't impersonate Apple or violate trademarks," Jewell said.

Blackfin was also constrained by what NBC would allow. Jewell said the company had to run all its ideas by a privacy officer at General Electric (NBC's corporate parent).

... The Blackfin team had to assume that anyone who picked up the iPod would be an unwilling participant, but Blackfin still had to get them to intentionally share their data.

"We locked the device unless the user took steps to help us," Jewell said.

... "We made users think it was okay," Jewell said.

The new user had to consent to what Blackfin was doing.

"The license agreement on the iPod said clearly we are gathering information on who you are, where you live, and it could be made public as a result," Jewell said.

Jewell said it was amazing how much information he and his team were able to gather -- they had much more data than they needed to find out who each person was and where they lived.



Another tool for hackers

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

New Online Tool Unmasks Wikipedia Edits

By BRIAN BERGSTEIN AP Technology Writer Aug 15, 3:54 PM EDT

What edits on Wikipedia have been made by people in congressional offices, the CIA and the Church of Scientology? A new online tool called WikiScanner reveals answers to such questions.

http://www.killerstartups.com/Web-App-Tools/wikiscanner--Find-Out-Whos-Behind-the-Edits/

WikiScanner.virgil.gr - Find Out Who's Behind the Edits

posted 4 Hours 23 Minutes ago by Siri | Visit http://wikiscanner.virgil.gr



,,,and yet another.

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/16/0412208&from=rss

New URI Browser Flaws Worse Than First Thought

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday August 16, @05:00AM from the bad-to-worse dept. Security The Internet

narramissic writes "URI (Uniform Resource Identifier) bugs have become a hot topic over the past month, since researcher Thor Larholm showed how a browser could be tricked into sending malformed data to Firefox. Now, security researchers Billy Rios and Nathan McFeters say they've discovered a number of ways attackers could misuse the URI protocol handler technology to steal data from a victim's computer. 'It is possible through the URI to actually steal content form the user's machine and upload that content to a remote server of the attacker's choice,' said McFetters, a senior security advisor for Ernst & Young Global Ltd. ' This is all through functionality that the application provides.'"



It's interesting that RIAA's lawyers can't even out-think non-lawyers in these cases.

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/15/2228201&from=rss

Boston Judge Denies RIAA Motion for Judgment

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday August 15, @11:45PM from the make-it-slow-and-painful dept.

The Courts

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In a Boston case, Capitol v. Alaujan, the defendant is representing herself, without a lawyer. Nevertheless, the Judge denied the RIAA's motion for summary judgment, which the RIAA had based upon the defendant's alleged failure to respond to the RIAA's Request for Admissions. The Court's decision (pdf) held that the RIAA had served its requests for admission prematurely, prior to the conduct of any discovery conference. The Court also noted that the RIAA had upped the ante quite a bit, trying to get a judgment based on 41 song files, even though it had originally been asking for judgment based on 9 song files. This would have increased the size of the judgment from about $7,000 to about $31,000. The Judge scheduled a discovery conference for October 23rd, at 2:30 P.M. and ordered everybody to attend. Such conferences are open to the public."



If demand hasn't changed, the “problems” traditional news sources face must be on the supply side...

http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/015735.html

August 15, 2007

Analysis - Two Decades of American News Preferences

Two Decades of American News Preferences, Analysis by Michael J. Robinson - Released: August 15, 2007 (36 pages, PDF): "Although the size and scope of the American news media have changed dramatically since the 1980s, audience news interests and preferences have remained surprisingly static. Of the two major indices of interest that are the focus of this report -- overall level of interest in news and preferences for various types of news -- neither has changed very much. This has been especially true for news preferences; Americans continue to follow -- or to ignore -- the same types of stories now as they did two decades ago. News "tastes," measured among 19 separate categories of news, have barely shifted at all: Disaster News and Money News continue to be of greatest interest to the U.S. public; Tabloid News and Foreign News remain the least interesting."



Yet another reason to beat your children. Force them to read this and get started supporting in the style you deserve!

http://news.com.com/The+secrets+of+a+teens+Internet+success/2008-1038_3-6202845.html?part=rss&tag=2547-1_3-0-5&subj=news

The secrets of a teen's Internet success

By Stefanie Olsen Story last modified Thu Aug 16 06:05:38 PDT 2007

Internet start-ups have a legacy of twenty-something founders. Just look at Microsoft, Yahoo and Google.

But that esteemed age limit is lowering.

Catherine Cook, the 17-year-old co-founder of MyYearbook.com, hatched the idea for her now-thriving online yearbook site when she was a sophomore in high school. Now, in little less than two years, the site is making millions in annual revenue from advertising, Cook said, and attracts more than 3 million monthly visitors, according to research firm ComScore. (In 2006, it raised $4.1 million in venture funding from U.S. Venture Partners and First Round Capital.)



Hey! I had the same idea years ago – only different.

http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/15/1736222&from=rss

3D Animations In Mid-Air Using Plasma Balls

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday August 15, @02:36PM from the what's-that-crackling-sound dept.

An anonymous reader clues us to research at Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology that has produced the ability to make animations by creating small plasma balls in mid-air. The technology doesn't use vapor or strange gases, just lasers to heat up oxygen and nitrogen molecules above the device: up to 1,000 brilliant dots per second, which makes smooth motion possible. When the tech improves it could be used for street signs or advertising.



Hide this story from your children! (It's the Hershey lobby in action!)

http://digg.com/health/Chocolate_Toothpaste_is_Better_than_Fluoride_Researchers_Say

Chocolate Toothpaste is Better than Fluoride, Researchers Say

For a healthy smile brush between meals, floss regularly and eat plenty of chocolate? According to Tulane University doctoral candidate Arman Sadeghpour an extract of cocoa powder that occurs naturally in chocolates, teas, and other products might be an effective natural alternative to fluoride in toothpaste.

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