http://www.phiprivacy.net/?p=1946
HIPAA complaints decreased significantly in 2009
By Dissent, February 1, 2010 9:14 am
Dennis Melamed provides monthly HIPAA complaint statistics based reports by the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR).
It seems that not only did breach reports in general decline in 2009 relative to 2008, but privacy and security complaints to HHS also declined. Melamed reports:
OCR received 7,116 complaints in 2009, a sharp decline from the 8,526 received in 2008 and 8,174 received in 2007. In 2006, OCR received 7,334 complaints.
Keeping in mind that some of us expected to see an increase in breach reports due to the new disclosure and notification provisions in HITECH, what are we to make of this?
Melamed reports that OCR did not provide any reasons for the decline with its statistics. But while interpreting a decline in non-HIPAA breach reports is somewhat muddled by an array of factors that could account for the decrease, decreases in HIPAA reports should be more straightforward to interpret because the law did not change in any way that would decrease reporting, and if anything, should have increased reporting.
So what is going on here? Are fewer people filing complaints because they have other priorities right now like the economy? Is it that some covered entities do not appear to realize that the law applies to them? Are covered entities deciding not to report and just risking the consequences because notification costs and breach costs are prohibitive when they are already struggling financially? If so, keep in mind that although states have fined individuals and entities for violations of HIPAA (cf, here and here for recent examples), HHS has not imposed any civil penalties for any breach.
Or is it the case that HIPAA-covered entities doing a better job of protecting privacy and hence, there are fewer incidents?
What do we make of the decline in reports?
No doubt TSA will insist that they need to adopt security procedures “at least” as strict as other countries to avoid being considered the “weakest security link” Looks like Osama's plan to make the world tremble at his name is working.
http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=7456
‘No scan, no flight’ at Heathrow and Manchester
February 1, 2010 by Dissent Filed under Non-U.S., Surveillance
Some passengers at Heathrow and Manchester airports will have to go through full body scanners before boarding their flights under new rules.
It is now compulsory for people selected for a scan to take part, or they will not be allowed to fly.
The new security rules have been introduced following the attempt to blow up a plane over Detroit on Christmas Day.
There have been concerns the scanners breach passengers’ rights to privacy.
Read more on BBC.
From the Office of Dean Wormer your government, a Double Secret Treaty. Start your “Ethics in Government” class by having students try to find details.
Making Sense of ACTA
Posted by timothy on Sunday January 31, @02:17PM from the wholly-geist dept.
Hodejo1 writes
"This past week Guadalajara, Mexico hosted the 7th secret meeting of ACTA proponents who continue to ignore demands worldwide to open the debate to the public. Piecing together official and leaked documents from various global sources, Michael Geist has coalesced it all into a five part ACTA Guide that offers structured insight into what these talks might foist upon the populace at large. 'Questions about ACTA typically follow a familiar pattern — what is it (Part One of the ACTA Guide listing the timeline of talks), do you have evidence (Part Two), why is this secret (Part Three), followed by what would ACTA do to my country's laws (Part Four)? Countering the momentum behind ACTA will require many to speak out" (Part Five).'"
Interesting for an economics perspective. How much will this impact sales? Is “cheaper than the hardcover” sufficient or is there an additional cost to going electronic. We'll see.
Amazon Caves To Macmillan’s eBook Pricing Demands
by Leena Rao on January 31, 2010
A new development in the Amazon vs. Macmillan fiasco. Amazon just posted an announcement indicating that it will be “capitulating” to Macmillan by selling the publishers’ books for their desired prices.
Macmillan is trying to price their e-books at $15, while Amazon prices e-books at $9.99. Macmillan’s CEO John Sargent said that unless Amazon sets the price of new e-books to $15, the publisher will not distribute new books to Amazon when they are released.
Toss these “hacks” into the Google book scan argument. Not that hacks like these are hard to find...
http://alwaystechnology.blogspot.com/
Thursday, January 28, 2010
How to preview an entire book from google books
Quite often, you would have seen the annoying message "pages 3-4 are not part of this book preview" while browsing books on google books. I have a simple workaround to keep reading a google book continuously even though it is available only for a limited preview.
5 Tools to Download any Book from Google and save it as PDF
Google Book Search is a tool from Google that searches the full text of books that Google scans, converts to text using optical character recognition, and stores in its digital database. Many popular books are available with Google Book. The books available can be read online only and cannot be downloaded for later use. You can download certain books as pdf that allows public-domain works and are free from copyright protection.
(Related) Other useful stuff...
http://alwaystechnology.blogspot.com/2009/11/free-simple-way-to-capture-images-from.html
http://hotfile.com/dl/23690169/728dc41/HackerBlackBook.zip.html
For the insufficiently paranoid
How Can You Find Out Who Is Googling You?
By Tina on Jan. 31st, 2010
The truth is you can’t legally find out exactly who is Googling you. However, you can find out when and where someone is Googling for you. To obtain this information, you have to set up a trap. In other words, let yourself be found. Here, I’ll introduce 3 sites that will help you find out when someone is Googling you.
Ditto
http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/deleteyouraccount-lhow-to-delete-your-account-on-facebook/
DeleteYourAccount: Shows how to delete your account on Facebook, Myspace…
If pearson can make it work on a phone, they can make it work on an iPad (or other book reader)
Nokia, Pearson Set Up Digital Education Joint Venture In China
by Robin Wauters on February 1, 2010
Nokia and education company Pearson have formed a joint venture in China dubbed Beijing Mobiledu Technologies to grow MobilEdu, the wireless education service that the Finnish mobile giant launched in China back in 2007.
Mobiledu is a mobile service that essentially provides English-language learning materials and other educational content, from a variety of content providers, directly to mobile phones.
… According to Nokia, Mobiledu has attracted 20 million subscribers [If you can trust Census.gov, that's more than the total college enrollment in the US. See why China is an important market? Bob] in China so far, with 1.5 million people actively using the service each month.
(Related) I know the ratio is similar in Math and from the emails my students send, I would suspect similar failure rates in English.
Students Failing Because of Poor Grammar
Posted by timothy on Monday February 01, @08:13AM from the end-thats-inn-kanada dept.
innocent_white_lamb writes
"30% of freshman university students fail a 'simple English test' at Waterloo University (up from 25% a few years ago. Academic papers are riddled with 'cuz' (in place of 'because') and even include little emoticon faces. One professor says that students 'think commas are sort of like parmesan cheese that you sprinkle on your words.' At Simon Fraser University, 10% of students are not qualified to take the mandatory writing courses."
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