Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Doomed to fail? If an FDA approval won't shield you, how could a PCI certification?

http://www.atthebreach.com/blog/how-strong-is-the-pci-shield/

How strong is the PCI shield?

March 09, 2009

Heartland CEO Bob Carr announced that they will fight any lawsuit because they were PCI certified at the time of the breach. Others including Hannaford plan to use the PCI shield as a way to protect their pocketbooks from lawsuits.


Related? Will China teach us anything? (The unwritten exception: Whatever the State wants...)

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20090309125303402

Recent Data Privacy Developments in China

Monday, March 09 2009 @ 12:53 PM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews

Article by Gordon Milner, Paul McKenzie, Fang Jingxiao, and Dylan Budd in Privacy Law Watch, 41 PRA-BUL, 3/5/2009:

China lacks a national data privacy law, but in recent months legislative interest in the topic has surfaced at the national and local levels, along with litigation suggesting a willingness to protect private information. The authors note that an amendment to the national Criminal Law criminalizes the sale or other unlawful disclosure of personal data by government officials and employees in key industries. They say that companies operating in China in the financial, telecommunications, transportation, education or medical sectors would be well advised to review their internal systems for preventing unauthorized disclosure of customer data, and that all companies looking to acquire customer databases in China should take care to conduct thorough due diligence about the sources of such information.

Via Morrison & Foerster (pdf)



If you worry about your mental health, you're not crazy! Fire your shrink and take up blogging...

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-10192188-71.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5

A Facebook dilemma: When your shrink tries to friend you

by Chris Matyszczyk March 9, 2009 5:51 PM PDT

My friend Harriet called me in a bit of a state today. No, of course Harriet isn't her real name. No one is really called Harriet.

Anyway, Harriet had just experienced a shock. Her shrink had tried to friend her on Facebook. Perhaps those of you who go to see a mental health professional to gain a little work/life balance, or merely to tell the shrink all those hateful and embarrassing things you just can't tell anyone else, will appreciate the dilemma.

It's one thing if some business associate (your money launderer, your dealer, your mother) tries to friend you.

It's surely quite another when the person who knows about the dream featuring the rabbi, the whip and the wardrobe tries to enter the inner circle of your closest 5,000.


Related (Warning: The first two paragraphs are sarcastic – this is the city that used to throw snowballs at Santa Claus during halftime at the Army-Navy game.)

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-10192227-71.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5

Facebook post gets NFL Eagles' worker fired

by Chris Matyszczyk March 9, 2009 8:15 PM PDT

You don't normally associate negative emotions with Philadelphia sports.

In the City of Brotherly Love, they believe in affection, even when the circumstances don't warrant it. Criticism knows no place in Philadelphian hearts and bars.

So perhaps it was odd to the management of the NFL's Philadelphia Eagles that one of their stadium operations workers, Dan Leone, seemed a little upset when the Eagles allowed defensive back Brian Dawkins to sign for the depressingly hapless Denver Broncos.

According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Mr. Leone posted this on his Facebook page: "Dan is ******* devastated about Dawkins signing with Denver...Dam Eagles are Retarded."

He received a response by telephone from the Eagles: "We've decided to let Dan go to Denver, too. Or to Miami, or Pittsburgh."

Yes, I paraphrase. And yes, Leone was fired. There was no agent to soften the blow or get him a deal to man the west gate with another team.

… Oh, why is it so hard to forgive humanity's foibles when they become featured on Facebook?



Statistics (and lots of nifty pie charts)

http://www.atthebreach.com/news/size-does-not-matter-size-of-company-data-breaches/

Size Does Not Matter. Size of Company & Data Breaches.

According to the 2008 Data Breach Investigation Report conducted by the Verizon Business Risk Team it doesn’t appear to matter what size of company you are to experience a data breach.



I doubt there will be any great precedent, but it is still amusing.

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20090309140231133

ACLU suit against Weld County DA goes to trial

Monday, March 09 2009 @ 02:02 PM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews

Opening arguments got under way this afternoon in a lawsuit against Weld County authorities over tax records seized in an identity theft investigation.

The American Civil Liberties Union sued District Attorney Ken Buck and the Weld County Sheriff's Department over their investigation targeting more than 1,300 illegal immigrants.

Source - KRDO.com



Some hacking “don'ts”

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20090309140445624

Charges beefed up against alleged Sarah Palin e-mail hacker

Monday, March 09 2009 @ 02:04 PM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews

The University of Tennessee college student accused of illegally accessing Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's Yahoo e-mail account was formally charged today on new fraud and obstruction-of-justice charges.

Source - Computerworld

[From the article:

During last year's presidential race, Kernell used publicly available information to reset the password for Palin's gov.palin@yahoo.com account and then posted information from that account to an online bulletin board at 4chan.org, prosecutors said in court filings. Kernell also posted the reset passwords to Palin's account, which were used by at least one other person to access the account.

… Within days, Kernell was linked to the incident by bloggers who concluded that he was the anonymous hacker named Rubico who had first posted the Palin data.

… Worried that the FBI was on his trail, Kernell deleted records on his laptop computer in hopes of hiding his tracks, prosecutors said.



Related This may be a duplicate, but I'm gathering reading material for my Computer Security classes.

http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/020790.html

March 09, 2009

2009 Identity Theft Resource Center Breach Report

Identity Theft Resource Center, 2009 Breach List, 3/3/2009 - Breaches: 89 Exposed: 1,140,146.



Perhaps I could join them, after years of watching lawyers, I feel I have a virtual law degree... virtually have a degree?

http://www.abajournal.com/news/at_virtual_law_firm_ex-dla_partner_expects_to_work_less_earn_more/

At Virtual Law Firm, Ex-DLA Partner Expects to Work Less, Earn More

Posted Mar 9, 2009, 05:10 am CDT By Debra Cassens Weiss

While many of the nation’s traditional large law firms are shedding lawyers, one startup is adding three partners a month.

The Virtual Law Firm had only eight partners when it was formed last year, but it now has 33, the Washington Post reports. Lawyers at the law firm work at home, meeting with clients with the help of the Internet and video conferencing. Lawyers keep 85 percent of their billings.



Winning customers for the other guys?

http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/03/09/2328213&from=rss

Microsoft Shoots Own Foot In Iceland

Posted by kdawson on Monday March 09, @10:36PM from the blood-from-a-stone-middleman dept. Microsoft The Almighty Buck

David Gerard writes

"The Microsoft Certified Partner model is: an MCP buys contracts from Microsoft and sells them to businesses as a three-year timed contract, payable in annual installments. Iceland's economy has collapsed, so 1500 businesses have gone bankrupt and aren't paying the fees any more. But Microsoft has told the MCPs: 'Our deal was with you, not them. Pay up.' The MCPs that don't go bankrupt in turn are moving headlong to Free Software, taking most of the country with them. (Warning: link contains strong language and vivid imagery.)"



Steal from the best! (But there aren't thousands there yet, they are just getting started.)

http://www.killerstartups.com/Video-Music-Photo/academicearth-org-video-lectures-from-top-scholars

AcademicEarth.org - Video Lectures From Top Scholars

http://www.academicearth.org/

“Thousands of video lectures from the world’s top scholars” is the way that this online resource advertises itself, and that is a fine description. Basically, this beta website has the noble objective of letting any person have access to a better, world class education no matter where they are located.

The main page lists the featured universities and lecturers, and the same goes for the most renowned instructors. Users can also create playlists (a la YouTube), and these can be shared and accessed through the main page. By way of example, some of the featured subjects include “Computer Science”, “Law”, “History” and “Political Science”. There is also an “Entrepreneurship” category and an “Economics” subsection for those who look for a niche in the industry.



Here's one I'll use a lot! (I will try the others too...)

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10191920-2.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5

Readability: Web reading that's easier for you, less profitable for publishers

by Josh Lowensohn March 9, 2009 1:11 PM PDT

If you often use the print story button just to get a Web article on one page, and without the hijinks that get you to mistakenly click on advertisements, Readability may be just what you're looking for. This small bookmarklet, which you simply drag up to your bookmarks toolbar to add to your browser, will re-format the page you're on to make it easier to read. It gets rid of layout, advertising, and any of the site's original navigation. In return, the story retains its links, photos, and any embedded content, letting you read freely and without distraction.

… This tool reminds me quite a bit of PrintWhatYouLike, the service that lets you customize what page elements you want to print, even if the source site does not have its own print story function. It is, however noticeably faster about cutting out the page elements--it's almost instantaneous.

Update: If you liked Readability, you'll definitely enjoy TidyRead. It does the same exact things as Readability but lets you swap things like the font size, width, and style on the fly. It works in other languages, which as of now Readability manages to flub. It also lets you send simplified article pages to friends via a special re-direct page, just like this one.

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