http://www.databreaches.net/?p=8117
Archives officials grilled on the Hill over missing data drives
November 6, 2009 by admin Filed under Commentaries and Analyses, Government Sector
Max Cacas reports:
So, why can’t the National Archives hang on to its computer hard drives?
That’s the question that the House Information Policy, Census and National Archives wants answered.
Rep. William Lacy Clay (D-Missouri), is chairman of the panel, a part of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
The theft or loss of the Clinton hard drive was very disturbing, and we look forward to hearing a status report on the agency’s efforts to notify and identify individuals whose personal information may have been compromised.
It is more troubling, however, to hear of new instances of data breaches or losses.
The circumstances, and the agency’s handling of them cast doubt on the National Archives ability to understand existing and emerging risk in order to properly safeguard the nation’s electronic record.
Previous coverage here and here.
Read more on Federal News Radio.
More government breaches?
http://www.databreaches.net/?p=8123
Government accused of ‘cover up’ over lost farmer tapes
November 6, 2009 by admin Filed under Government Sector, Lost or Missing, Non-U.S., Of Note, Subcontractor
The Department of Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has been accused of a “cover up” after two back-up tapes went missing containing the banking details of around 100,000 farmers.
The tapes are said to have gone missing this spring, with Defra officials having been informed in July. The tapes were lost by contractor IBM, after sending them from a site in Reading to Newcastle. The information on the missing tapes related to cash top-up payments to farmers through the Rural Payments Agency (RPA), a Defra body.
The RPA itself was only informed about the loss in September. It is reported a meeting between Defra officials in early October concluded there was “little risk” to farmers as a result of the tapes going missing. It was therefore decided not to report the matter publicly.
Read more on Document Management News.
I thought this was sure to stimulate discussion, and here it is.
http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=5108
Podcast: The Fourth Amendment and Email
November 6, 2009 by Dissent Filed under Court, Featured Headlines, Internet, Other
From LegalTalkNetwork:
The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution gives us protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. But what about a search of your email – is it afforded the same protection? Co-hosts and attorneys J. Craig Williams and Bob Ambrogi welcome Orin S. Kerr , Professor of Law at the George Washington University Law School and Jason Paroff Esq. , Director of Computer Forensics Operations with the ESI Consulting practice at Kroll Ontrack to look at the recent opinion handed down by U.S. District Judge Mosman with respect to the Fourth Amendment and email along with our experts’ look at what can be retrieved and used in court when it comes to email.
You can listen to the 34-minute podcast on their site or download it for later listening.
An interesting vision of the future? This suggests much larger networks of health records than I recall being discussed at the Privacy Foundation's recent seminar.
CDC Adopts Near Real-Time Flu Tracking System
Posted by kdawson on Friday November 06, @09:03AM from the you've-got-the-flu-swine dept.
CWmike writes
"The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention launched an effort this week to better and more easily track for H1N1 and other seasonal influenza activity throughout the US. The CDC said it is now tracking data on 14 million patients from physician practices and hospitals stored on a database hosted by GE Healthcare. The data is submitted daily from physician's offices and hospitals that use GE's electronic medical record system. The data is then uploaded to GE Healthcare's Medical Quality Improvement Consortium , a database repository designed with HIPAA-compliance parameters of patient anonymity and best practices, where it can be the subject of medical data queries. The CDC can perform queries to look for flu-like symptoms being reported by physicians, and then disseminate the data for health care providers and local government officials throughout the country, who can alert businesses and others about flu outbreak hot spots. The CDC also hopes its analysis of the data helps it better understand the characteristics of H1N1 outbreaks and to determine who is most at risk for developing complications from the virus. Prior to implementing the new system, the CDC relied heavily on tracking insurance claims data, which could take days or weeks to make its way to the agency's medical staff for analysis. The medical data is normalized so that fir example reports of hypertension, HTN, and high blood pressure all mean the same thing when a researcher enters a query against the data."
Possibly useful summary.
http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=5103
Microsoft Expresses Cloud Privacy Commitment, Concerns
November 6, 2009 by Dissent Filed under Internet
Thomas Claburn reports:
Cloud computing continues evoke privacy concerns, so Microsoft has published a position paper that attempts to address the questions it’s been hearing.
The paper’s publication coincides with the 31st International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners, which is taking place this week in Madrid, Spain.
“We know that cloud computing is getting a lot of attention these days and we’ve heard from customers and external stakeholders that they’d like to hear what we’re thinking about it,” said Brendon Lynch, senior director of privacy strategy for Microsoft’s trustworthy computing group. “Privacy and security are the number one concern of organizations that are thinking about going into the cloud space.”
Read more on InformationWeek.
[Direct link to the paper: Privacy in the Cloud Computing Era: A Microsoft Perspective.
You don't need hackers when you can shoot yourself in the foot. NOTE: A 1970s era computer would not be a microcomputer. It probably cost more to maintain it each year than replacing it with several (redundant backup) PCs would have cost.
Computer Failure Causes Gridlock In MD County
Posted by Soulskill on Thursday November 05, @12:49PM from the single-point-of-roadrage dept.
Uncle Rummy writes
"A central traffic control computer in Montgomery County, Maryland failed early Wednesday morning, leading to widespread gridlock across the entire county. The computer, which dates to the 1970s, is the single point of unified control for all traffic signals in the county, which comprises a number of major Washington DC-area suburban communities. When the system failed, it caused all signals to default to stand-alone operation, rather than the highly-tuned synchronization that usually serves to facilitate traffic flow during rush hours. The resulting chaos is a yet another stark reminder of how much modern civilization relies on behind-the-scenes automation to deliver and control basic services and infrastructure. The system remains down Thursday, with no ETA in sight."
(Related) Some more details..
http://www.wtopnews.com/?nid=598&sid=1803146
Near-normal commute expected in Montgomery Co.
November 6, 2009 - 5:25am
… In a statement released Thursday evening, Leggett said engineers re-established a connection between the county's 800 traffic lights and the computer that controls them, so lights are now responding to commands from the computer.
… "This is a rather old computer. It's probably 25 to 30 years old," says Emil Wolanin, chief traffic engineer for Montgomery County. "It's a 1980s-vintage Data General main frame computer. Parts are not really available."
(Related) At what point does a software vendor become liable for damages? We better figure this out, since the alternative is, “everyone gets a free shot at hacking your computer.” The scale makes me think Al Gore could “Invent” yet another global crisis. (There's a Nobel for that!)
Shockwave Vulnerabilities Affect More Than 450 Million Systems
Posted by timothy on Thursday November 05, @02:14PM from the drug-resistant-infections dept.
Trinity writes
"Researchers from VUPEN have discovered critical vulnerabilities in Adobe Shockwave, a technology installed on over 450 million Internet-enabled desktops. The vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution by tricking a user into visiting a web page [Human error? Let's eliminate the humans! HAL (I mean, Bob)] using Internet Explorer or even Mozilla Firefox. Version 11.5.1.601 as well as earlier ones are affected. The vendor recommends upgrading to version 11.5.1.602."
Especially sobering when you consider Adobe's current push to be essentially required as an intermediary player for anyone who wants to see certain government data.
I can't help laughing at his one. But I like the concept of using lawyers as facilitators. Q: “How do I get past this silly law?” A: “Create a new work.”
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13526_3-10391592-27.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
Beatles copyright case down a legal rabbit hole
by Matt Rosoff November 5, 2009 2:07 PM PST
Last week, a music site called BlueBeat made headlines by offering Beatles songs as free streams and 25 cent downloads. The Beatles are known for not making their songs legally available on iTunes or any other online forum, so observers rightly asked "how are they doing this legally?"
… According to the report, MRT claims that it didn't post the exact Beatles recordings. Instead, it posted "psychoacoustic simulations," then added simple video content to them. This constitutes a new audiovisual work, and isn't covered by the existing copyrights, MRT argues. In fact, MRT even went so far as to apply for copyrights on the "new" works!
Perhaps this is all some kind of metacommentary on the frustrating inconsistency of U.S. copyright law, but I predict that MRT is going to be laughed out of court. In the meantime, if you want your Beatles music online, it's still available on BlueBeat as of the time I posted this. I didn't want to give the company a credit card to test the whether the downloads work, but the streams sound pretty close to perfect...especially considering that they're only psychoacoustic simulations.
Should we be defending Intel?
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-10391464-64.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
One charge hard to level at Intel: Raising prices
by Brooke Crothers November 6, 2009 4:00 AM PST
Experts say Intel has been instrumental in driving down PC prices, one of the key indicators of competition and one charge New York's Attorney General cannot easily level against Intel in its antitrust lawsuit.
… "Once you strip away the charged but meaningless phrases like 'bullying,' it boils down to accusing Intel of offering steep price rebates in order to retain business--i.e., the essence of competition," according to a note released Thursday by Richard Brosnick, who practices in the area of antitrust at the law firm Butzel Long.
"One of the purposes of antitrust is to get companies to compete on price. To tell a company like Intel that you can't drop price in response to competition is taking antitrust laws to a place they're not intended to be," he said in an interview.
(Related) If not anti-trust, what legal tool addresses the industry's collaboration to restrict how music is sold? (Can “failure to adapt” be “restraint of trade?”)
Record labels keep blaming P2P, but it's a hard sell
The IFPI is blasting a recent study showing that P2P users buy more music, but an EU Commissioner and a UK Parliamentary body both blame music labels for "much of the problem" with current P2P usage levels. The major labels couldn't disagree more.
By Nate Anderson Last updated November 4, 2009 7:15 PM CT
In response to a new survey suggesting that P2P file-swapping might not be harming music sales, music's international trade group IFPI today put out a statement. "The net effect of illegal file-sharing in the UK and elsewhere has been to reduce legitimate sales," IFPI asserts. "This is why spending on recorded music has fallen every year since illegal file-sharing began to become widespread."
In other words, P2P file-sharing is the main cause of the revenue decline and the (very real) job losses in the recorded music business. It's a strong assertion, but it's not necessarily accepted outside the music industry. And we're not talking about the usual copyrighters, or groups like EFF, or Pirate Party backers; complaints about P2P have failed to convince even people like the European Commissioner for Information Society and Media, Viviane Reding.
Back in June 2009, Reding made a speech in which she put equal blame for the problem on Big Content, so terrified of piracy and lack of control that many companies refuse to give customers what they want.
Interesting. I toss this in because the comments turned into a (long) list of reasons why landlines (and the phone companies) are outdated. Reads like a business opportunity to me.
http://ask.slashdot.org/story/09/11/05/2021254/Home-Phone-System-That-Syncs-To-Computer?from=rss
Home Phone System That Syncs To Computer?
Posted by timothy on Thursday November 05, @03:40PM from the not-where-the-action-is dept.
An anonymous reader writes
'In comparison to the advanced technology in today's smart phones, the standard home phone is painfully backwards. My current setup is a Panasonic system that has 4 cordless phones over one base station. Setting the time on one phone changes the time on all the phones; however, this is not the case for the phone book. Each entry must be manually copied (pushed) to each handset. Is this as far as home phone technology has come? What I would like is a phone system that I could sync to my computer so I could update the phone book over all the units (if not sync with Address Book or Outlook), keep a log of caller IDs, or even forward me new voicemail notifications. Does anyone know if such a system exists?'
[From the comments:
For my website students
Google Releases Open Source JavaScript Tools
Posted by timothy on Thursday November 05, @06:24PM from the see-not-evil dept.
Dan Jones writes
"Google has open sourced several of its key JavaScript application development tools, hoping that they will prove useful for external programmers to build faster Web applications. According to Google, by enabling and allowing developers to use the same tools that Google uses, they can not only build rich applications but also make the Web really fast. The Closure JavaScript compiler and library are used as the standard Javascript library for pretty much any large, public Web application that Google is serving today, including some of its most popular Web applications, including Gmail, Google Docs and Google Maps. Google has also released Closure Templates which are designed to automate the dynamic creation of HTML. The announcement comes a few months after Google released and open sourced the NX server."
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