Friday, December 26, 2008

Merry Christmas, y'all! No indication anything else was taken. Sounds like this information was the target.

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20081225103404979

Identities of 16,000 Pulte Homes customers compromised

Thursday, December 25 2008 @ 10:34 AM EST Contributed by: PrivacyNews

Computer tapes holding private customer information including names, addresses, driver's license numbers and financial account numbers were stolen from a Pulte Homes office in Las Vegas last month, and the developer is cautioning home buyers to take precautions to protect their identity.

In a letter dated Dec. 19, Pulte Homes Las Vegas Division told 16,000 customers of the Nov. 13 theft of a box containing computer backup tapes.

"At this time, it is not known whether the box was stolen with the knowledge of its contents, or the intent, know-how and ability to extract and exploit the information stored in these backup tapes," the letter said.

... Information on both home buyers and employees was on the tapes, she said.

Source - Las Vegas Sun

[From the article:

It took a month for Pulte's information systems team to identify the customers who were potentially affected, she said. [Time to identify victims is inversely proportional to security and control of data. Bob]



An auction could help establish a price...

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20081226061015306

ME: Your records for sale to the highest bidder

Friday, December 26 2008 @ 06:10 AM EST Contributed by: PrivacyNews

Earlier this month, the Mini Self Storage company in Scarborough was prepared to auction off the contents of a unit rented to a mortgage brokerage that hadn't paid its bill: 60 boxes of financial records, including loan applications with personal financial information such as Social Security and bank account numbers.

The situation represents one of at least three recent cases in Maine when self-storage facilities ended up with private financial documents amid property they intended to sell.

... Maine does have a data-breach notification law that requires creditors, banks and others who discover an electronic data incursion to report it to regulators and affected consumers. However, the statute does not apply to storage facility operators.

A records-retention law requires financial documents to be held by the originator for two years after the financial transaction is completed, but it does not address the possibility of those records being sold off by storage facilities to cover unpaid storage bills.

Source - Portland Press Herald

[From the article:

In the Scarborough case, the Maine Bureau of Consumer Credit Protection obtained a court order to confiscate the records of the shuttered mortgage company, which was legally obligated to maintain the documents.

... In two other recent cases, including one in Westbrook, the owners of self-storage facilities asked the state what they should do with such records.

"Current law places no burden whatsoever on the facility operator to inventory what is in the unit, identify records that might be confidential and notify regulators," said Will Lund, superintendent of Maine's Consumer Credit Protection Bureau.



This is the opposite of the decision I reported a few days ago. Sound logic (isn't it?)

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20081226054542938

S.D. Fla.: Search incident of cellphone not justified

Friday, December 26 2008 @ 05:45 AM EST Contributed by: PrivacyNews

A search incident of a cellphone is not justified. United States v. Wall, 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 103058 (S.D. Fla. December 22, 2008)

The Court declines to adopt the reasoning of Finley and extend law to provide an exception to the warrant requirement for searches of cell phones. The search of the cell phone cannot be justified as a search incident to lawful arrest. First, Agent Mitchell accessed the text messages when Wall was being booked at the stationhouse. Thus, it was not contemporaneous with the arrest. Kucynda, 321 F.3d at 1082. Also, the justification for this exception to the warrant requirement is the need for officer safety and to preserve evidence. Agnello v. United States, 269 U.S. 20, 30 (1925) (recognizing the long-held right of law enforcement "to find and seize things connected with the crime ... as well as weapons and other things to effect an escape from custody"). The content of a text message on a cell phone presents no danger of physical harm to the arresting officers or others. Further, searching through information stored on a cell phone is analogous to a search of a sealed letter, which requires a warrant. See United States v. Jacobsen, 466 U.S. 109, 114 (1984).

Source - FourthAmendment.com



No need to make a fuss when there was a clear winner in November, but it will be interesting to count the “at risk”/disputed/over- or under-counted votes claimed in these lawsuits and relate it to populations or the margin of victory.

http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08%2F12%2F25%2F135240&from=rss

Legal Troubles Continue To Mount For Diebold

Posted by Soulskill on Thursday December 25, @09:20AM from the voted-off-the-island-with-no-recount dept. The Courts Politics

dstates writes

"The State of Maryland has filed a $8.5M claim against Premier Election Systems (previously known as Diebold), joining Ohio in seeking damages from the company. The claim alleges that election officials were forced to spend millions of dollars to address multiple security flaws in the machines. Previously, Diebold paid millions to settle a California lawsuit over security issues in their machines. The dispute comes as Maryland and Virginia prepare to scrap the touch screen electronic voting systems they bought after the 2000 presidential election. California, Florida, New Mexico, and Iowa have already switched to optical scanners, and voters in Pennsylvania are suing to prevent the use of paperless electronic voting systems in their state. Meanwhile, Artifex Software is suing Diebold for violations of the GPL covering the Ghostscript software technology used in the proprietary voting machines."



What ever you do, don't anger the Canadians. We'll be moving there to escape Global Warming!

http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08%2F12%2F25%2F1457214&from=rss

DHS To Grab Biometric Data From Green Card Holders

Posted by Soulskill on Thursday December 25, @12:12PM from the imports-with-documentation dept. United States Privacy Politics

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Nextgov:

"The Homeland Security Department has announced plans to expand its biometric data collection program to include foreign permanent residents and refugees. Almost all noncitizens will be required to provide digital fingerprints and a photograph upon entry into the United States as of Jan. 18. A notice (PDF) in Friday's Federal Register said expansion of the US Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology Program (US VISIT) will include 'nearly all aliens,' except Canadian citizens on brief visits. Those categories include permanent residents with green cards, individuals seeking to enter on immigrant visas, and potential refugees. The US VISIT program was developed after the Sept.11, 2001 terrorist attacks to collect fingerprints from foreign visitors and run them against the FBI's terrorist watch list and other criminal databases. Another phase of the project, to develop an exit system to track foreign nationals leaving the country, has run into repeated setbacks." [See, it was designed like a roach motel! Terrorists can check in, but they can't check out. Bob]

Reader MirrororriM points out other DHS news that they're thinking about monitoring blogs for information on terrorists.



The Digital Age – a time when entire industries are born and die within the span of a single human lifetime.

http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08%2F12%2F25%2F1952258&from=rss

Last Major Supplier Calls It Quits For VHS

Posted by timothy on Thursday December 25, @04:40PM from the one-death-after-another dept. Media Data Storage Television IT

thefickler writes

"The last major supplier of VHS videotapes is ditching the format in favor of DVD, effectively killing the format for good. This uncharitable commentator has this to say: 'Will VHS be missed? Not ... with videos being brittle, clunky, and rather user-unfriendly. But they ushered in a new era that was important to get to where we are today. And for that reason, the death of VHS is rather sad. Almost as sad as the people still using it.'"

At least my dad's got the blank-tape market cornered.



Late Christmas gifts: Here's a guaranteed sleep aid!

http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/020161.html

December 25, 2008

Archive Publishes Treasure Trove of Kissinger Telephone Conversations

Comprehensive Collection of Kissinger "Telcons" Provides Inside View of Government Decision-Making; Reveals Candid talks with Presidents, Foreign Leaders, Journalists, and Power-brokers during Nixon-Ford Years, National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 263 - Part 1, Edited by William Burr

  • "...the National Security Archive announces the publication of a comprehensively unique, thoroughly-indexed set of the telephone conversation (telcon) transcripts of Henry A. Kissinger, one of the most famous and controversial U.S. diplomats of the second half of the 20th century. Consisting of 15,502 documents and over 30,000 pages, this on-line collection, published by the Digital National Security Archive (ProQuest), is the result of a protracted effort by the National Security Archive to secure this critically important record of U.S. diplomacy during the administrations of Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford, when Kissinger served as National Security Adviser and Secretary of State. Collectively, the documents include the telcons released at the Nixon Presidential Library as well as those declassified by the State Department as a result of the Archive’s Freedom of Information Act request. The set sheds light on every aspect of Nixon-Ford diplomacy, including U.S.-Soviet détente, the wars in Southeast Asia, the 1971 South Asia crisis, and the October 1973 Middle East War, among many other developments. Kissinger’s many interlocutors include political and policy figures, such as Presidents Nixon and Ford, Secretary of State William Rogers, Governor Nelson Rockefeller, former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, and Soviet Ambassador Anatoli Dobrynin; journalists and publishers, such as Ted Koppel, James Reston, and Katherine Graham; and such show business friends as Frank Sinatra."



It's never too late to make a Nerd's day! (We're so easily amused.)

http://entertainment.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08%2F12%2F26%2F0418209&from=rss

DIY USB Servo-Guided Water Gun

Posted by timothy on Friday December 26, @04:50AM from the seasonally-inappropriate dept. Toys Hardware Hacking

An anonymous reader writes

"What better way is there to learn something than by making your own DIY gadget? Here's a new video showing how to use a common hobby servo, in conjunction with a small water pump, to create a USB controlled water gun! You can use your keyboard to aim and fire at an unsuspecting passerby. Both fun and educational, this project looks like a great DIY weekend project for any IT guy, wanting to make sure people think twice before asking a stupid question!"

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