Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Is there a “Vampire Hacker?”

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20080219144606863

Lawsuit targets Lifeblood

Tuesday, February 19 2008 @ 02:46 PM EST Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Breaches

A lawsuit has been filed against Lifeblood, Mid-South Regional Blood Center, after laptop computers with personal information of roughly 321,000 blood donors came up missing and are presumed stolen.

The suit, filed Monday in Shelby County Circuit Court by Collierville resident and blood donor Robert M. Saino, asks a judge to certify it for class action status. It seeks money damages that would amount to multimillions if awarded.

Source - Commercial Appeal


Imported (for the gourmet vampire?)

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20080219160108476

Irish blood donor records stolen in New York

Tuesday, February 19 2008 @ 04:01 PM EST Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Breaches

A computer containing over 171,000 confidential blood donor records and other files from the Irish Blood Transfusion Service has been stolen.

The data, which the Blood Service says was securly encryped, was given to the New York Blood centre in December on a computer disk.

Source - RTÉ.ie



Counter-surveillance? Anti-stalker tool?

http://www.news4jax.com/technology/15341939/detail.html

Who Is Googling You?

Sites Let Consumers Find Out Who Searches For Them

UPDATED: 11:41 am EST February 19, 2008

BOSTON -- Fifty million times a day, someone Googles someone else's name, Boston television station WCVB reported. A new technology can help people figure out who is searching for them.

Video: Who's Googling You?

The station said the technology raises privacy concerns for people who think those searches should be anonymous.

One user, Elizabeth Yekhtikian, said she gets an e-mail from Ziggs.com at least once a day alerting her that she's been Googled.

... "I can check on the site and it shows me with little maps where the searches are coming from, and from exactly which town, within which state or part of the country or the world," said Yekhtikian.



The Nigerian money scam morphs into a new form (again)

http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00001382.html

Paid for Receiving Bank Transfers

Posted by Sean @ 17:22 GMT

Here's a screenshot of a site that we discovered back in December, BGI-Funds:



When you aren't free to choose, you have consented?

http://blogs.enotes.com/decision-blog/2008-02/interesting-wiretap-decision-from-the-tenth/

Interesting Wiretap Decision from the Tenth

Tuesday, February 19th by Robert Loblaw

U.S. v. Verdin-Garcia, 06-3354 (10th Cir., Feb. 19, 2008)

Fans of the HBO series The Wire will appreciate this Tenth Circuit criminal appeal, which involves a massive drug conspiracy that the government pieced together using 3000 wiretapped calls over a three-month period. But after meticulously putting together its case against drug kingpin Fidencio Verdin-Garcia and one of his top henchman, the government faced one last challenge at trial. How were prosecutors going to prove that the voices on the incriminating calls belonged to the defendants?

The two defendants refused to comply with a court order to turn over a voice sample, so instead the government used recordings of their prison phone calls. The defendants moved to suppress this and other evidence, with Verdin-Garcia arguing that the prison recordings violated Title III of the Wiretap Act because the government did not have his prior consent. But the Tenth rejects this argument, explaining that prisoners are advised that their calls may be monitored or recorded. Because Verdin-Garcia used the prison telephone despite these warnings, his consent to be recorded is implied. [Obviously, he should have used another phone... Bob]



Someone needs to come up with an Open Source citation scheme...

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/19/1556212&from=rss

1.8 Million US Court Rulings Now Online

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday February 19, @01:18PM from the star-wars-kid-v.-lol-cats dept. The Courts

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes

"For a long time now, lawyers and any serious law students have been bound to paid services like LexusNexis for access to case law, but that is slowly changing. Carl Malamud has posted free electronic copies of every U.S. Supreme Court decision and Court of Appeals ruling since 1950, 1.8 million rulings in all, online for free. While the rulings themselves have long been government works not subject to copyright, courts still charge several cents per page for copies and they're inconvenient to access, so lawyers usually turn to legal publishers which are more expensive but more convenient, providing helpful things like notes about related cases, summaries of the holdings, and information about if and when the case was overturned. This free database is not Carl's first, either. He convinced the SEC to provide EDGAR, and helped get both the Smithsonian and Congressional hearings online."



I think there's a big market for these guides – if they are written from there “Here's How...” rather than the “You Can't...” perspective... (Lawyers as enablers – what a concept!)

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/20/0154210&from=rss

SFLC's Legal Guide On Free Software

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday February 19, @09:13PM from the law-for-the-rest-of-us dept. Programming

An anonymous reader writes

"Last week the Software Freedom Law Center published A Legal Issues Primer for Open Source and Free Software Projects. The primer, written for developers, has sections on copyrights, trademarks, patents, and organizational structure. Linux-Watch has reviewed the guide, saying 'I think any open-source developer or open-source group administrator must read this paper.'"



What happens when our favorite teen hacker grows up and needs a job? (Think he'll get sued much?)

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080219-doubletwist-makes-drm-stripping-sharing-easy-as-pie.html

doubleTwist makes DRM-stripping, sharing easy as pie

By Jacqui Cheng | Published: February 19, 2008 - 01:15PM CT

DVD Jon is growing up. He's no longer helping geeks free their media from DRM—he wants to make it easy enough for our parents to use, too. Through a new venture called doubleTwist, DVD Jon (Jon Lech Johansen) and partner Monique Farantzos have already released a desktop and web application that makes stripping DRM from some of the world's most popular formats—including Windows Media DRM and iTunes' FairPlay—as easy as drag-and-drop.

"When you receive an e-mail, you can read it on your Blackberry, web mail, or Outlook. E-mail just works," said Farantzos in a statement. "With digital media such as video from a friend’s cell phone or your own iTunes playlists, it’s a jungle out there. It can be an hour-long exercise in futility to convert files to the correct format and transfer them to your Sony PSP or your phone. [...] Our goal is to provide a simple and well integrated solution that the average consumer can use to eliminate the headaches associated with their expanding digital universe."



Looking ahead. (Not sure I like “Reality Mining” so much)

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/20/0216243&from=rss

TR Picks 10 Emerging Technologies of 08

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday February 19, @10:50PM from the what-will-be dept. Science Technology

arktemplar suggests Technology Review for their annual list of 10 emerging technologies that the editors believe will be particularly important over the next few years. Quoting:

"This is work ready to emerge from the lab, in a broad range of areas: energy, computer hardware and software, biological imaging, social interactions. Two of the technologies — cellulolytic enzymes and atomic magnetometers — are efforts by leading scientists to solve critical problems, while five — surprise modeling, connectomics, probabilistic CMOS, reality mining, and offline Web applications — represent whole new ways of looking at problems. And three — graphene transistors, nanoradio, and wireless power — are amazing feats of engineering that have created something entirely new."



Some ideas for the e-discovery team

http://ralphlosey.wordpress.com/2008/02/17/e-discovery-teams-self-organization-and-development-of-evidence-preservation-protocols/

e-Discovery Teams: Self-Organization and Development of Evidence Preservation Protocols



Not extensive, but has potential...

http://www.killerstartups.com/Web20/OsGuidenet---A-Directory-of-Open-Source-Software/

OsGuide.net - A Directory of Open Source Software

Open Source Guide or osGuide, is a directory of open source software on the net. The site works via user submissions—if you’ve got any open source apps or tools you’d like to see represented, it takes only a couple of seconds to submit. Simply fill out the appropriate form indicating the name, version and license type along with a description and image link. All entries are categorized by type, e.g. audio, database and games. Additionally, you can further filter results using the tabs labeled Windows, Linux, and Mac Downloads. Clicking on any item takes you to the source site. OsGuide also features a discussion forum.

http://www.osguide.net/



Yesterday I missed that High School students were included in this...

http://www.technewsworld.com/rsstory/61733.html

MS Ropes In Developing Developers With Free SDK Giveaway

By Walaika Haskins TechNewsWorld 02/19/08 1:26 PM PT

Microsoft on Monday announced a new student program Monday dubbed "DreamSpark." The new program will give college and high school students around the world access to the software giant's development applications at no charge.

No comments: