http://www.phiprivacy.net/?p=2159
Major deficiencies in VCHA’s Primary Access Regional Information System – report
By Dissent, March 5, 2010 10:00 pm
The Office of the Information & Privacy Commissioner of British Columbia has released its review of the electronic health information system set up by the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority known as the Primary Access Regional Information System (PARIS).
From the Executive Summary:
Major deficiencies in implementation of the PARIS software from a privacy perspective are the following:
an access model that is team-based rather than role-based resulting in too many users having access to too much personal information,
several data flows of personal information outside of the health authority that are not authorized under FIPPA,
the security protection for the system when we investigated it was not reasonable given the sensitivity of the personal information and did not meet the FIPPA standard1, and
records are stored indefinitely – neither archived nor destroyed when they are no longer needed to provide care.
Read the full report here.
Interesting question
http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/03/05/cyberattack.prosecute/index.html?hpt=Sbin
Is chasing cybercrooks worth it?
By John D. Sutter, CNN March 5, 2010 8:49 a.m. EST
… It would be smarter, Karygiannis said, to develop new anti-virus technologies and to teach people how to protect themselves from Internet crime.
… A number of cybersecurity experts, however, characterized the recent arrests as relative anomalies. They criticized efforts to prosecute cybercriminals as a waste of time and said the people who are arrested are rarely the right people: They're often the middlemen instead of the kingpins, experts said.
Starting a botnet like Mariposa "takes no more skill than it takes to run Microsoft Office," said Vincent Weafer, vice president for security response at Symantec, a company that makes anti-virus software.
All a person has to do is download the program from the Internet. Such programs are still available for easy purchase, he said.
The people who actually write these programs -- the keys to cybercrime -- are almost impossible to catch and prosecute, said Marty Lindner, principal engineer with Carnegie Mellon University's Computer Emergency Response Team.
The reason it's difficult to find these masterminds has to do both with technology and the law.
Lindner said it's unclear if the authors of malicious code are doing anything illegal.
Does this suggest that Reverse Engineering is futile? What went wrong? Is “major redesign” defined here?
TiVo Time Warp Judgment Affirmed
Posted by timothy on Saturday March 06, @07:07AM
zapakh writes
"A federal appeals court this week upheld a lower court decision that accused DISH Network and EchoStar of continuing to infringe on TiVo patents.' This is a follow-on to a Slashdot story from October. Despite a 'Herculean effort' by EchoStar in redesigning its DVR software, the ruling agrees with the district court that that was not a major redesign of the software. The patent in question is titled 'Multimedia time warping system.' TiVo is pleased with the ruling."
Oh, so that's what a legal can of worms looks like. I'm amazed anyone bothers. (I suspect this would be an interesting exercise for students in a litigation class.)
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/023674.html
March 05, 2010
Jonathan Band's Chart of Possible Google Book Search Settlement Results
Follow up to previous postings on Google Book Search: "Now that the fairness hearing on the Google Books Settlement has occurred, it is up to Judge Chin to decide whether the proposed settlement is "fair, reasonable, and adequate." The attached chart attempts to diagram some of the possible paths forward. Notwithstanding the complexity of the chart, it does not reflect all the possible permutations. For example, it does not mention stays pending appeals nor whether litigation would proceed as a class action. Moreover, the chart does not address the substantive reasons why a certain outcome may occur, e.g., the basis for Judge Chin accepting or rejecting the settlement. And it doesn't begin to address the issue of Congressional intervention through legislation. In short, the precise way forward is more difficult to predict than the NCAA tournament. And although the next step in the GBS saga may occur this March, many more NCAA tournaments will come and go before the buzzer sounds on this dispute."
(Related) I'm sure all drunk, junket-taking, bribe accepting, cheating-on-the-wife politicians hope this is true, but I have no doubt that someone will archive this data.
Law Prevents British Websites From Being Archived
Posted by timothy on Friday March 05, @07:03PM
Lanxon writes
"The law that allows the US Internet Archive to collect and preserve websites does not apply to British archivists. In fact, experts from the Archive and many other archivist institutions argue that the only way the millions of Britain's websites could be legally archived is if British law itself was amended, reports Wired in an investigation published today. Currently, archivists have to seek permission from webmasters of every single site before they are able to take snapshots and retain data."
Microsoft enters the e-Reader market? Or perhaps this is a larger version of the iPhone? Or just a dual screen computer?
Microsoft "Courier" Pictures
Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday March 05, @05:31PM
tekgoblin writes to let us know that Gizmodo has some early shots of the new prototype "Courier" booklet (foldable tablet) on the way from Microsoft.
"Courier is a real device, and we've heard that it's in the 'late prototype' stage of development. It's not a tablet, it's a booklet. The dual 7-inch (or so) screens are multitouch, and designed for writing, flicking and drawing with a stylus, in addition to fingers. They're connected by a hinge that holds a single iPhone-esque home button. Statuses, like wireless signal and battery life, are displayed along the rim of one of the screens. On the back cover is a camera, and it might charge through an inductive pad, like the Palm Touchstone charging dock for Pre."
Attention Apple geeks!
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-19512_7-10464432-233.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
Apple drops price of Mac Developer Program to $99
For my website class.
http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/csscoloreditor-change-css-color
CSSColorEditor: Easily Change CSS Colors Online
Re-designing a website can be a hassle if you have a large and messy CSS file. CSSColorEditor makes it easy for you by allowing you to change CSS colors without writing any lines of code. Simply upload a CSS file from your computer and load it into the tool.
The editor will than list all the colors present in your file and let you replace them easily by either choosing a new color from the color wizard or by entering the hex code for the new color. If you don’t want to replace any of the colors, just leave it blank.
Once you have finalized your colors, click on generate new CSS to produce a revised CSS file with new colors. Upload it to your website and you are all set.
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