http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=abYZEjwImupI&refer=us
GE Laptop With 50,000 Employee Names, Data Stolen From Hotel
By Rachel Layne
Sept. 26 (Bloomberg) -- General Electric Co. said an employee's laptop computer containing the names and Social Security numbers of 50,000 current and former GE workers was stolen from a locked hotel room earlier this month.
“We believe this was a random criminal act,'' GE said in a Sept. 22 [Friday Bob] letter sent to the affected employees that was obtained by Bloomberg News. There's no indication the data on the laptop and its external hard drive were accessed, company spokesman Russell Wilkerson said today.
GE, which is working with law enforcement officials, isn't disclosing the location or day of the theft because the incident is still under investigation, Wilkerson said. General Electric immediately began notifying the employees whose names were on the laptop and offered them one free year of the company's identity- theft and credit-protection monitoring service, Wilkerson said.
General Electric, based in Fairfield, Connecticut, has about 318,000 current employees and at least 440,000 former workers, based on the tally of pension plan participants in its annual report. Its businesses include GE Consumer Finance, the world's largest private label credit card issuer.
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/firstlook/index.html
Winning Legally: Using the Law to Create Value, Marshal Resources, and Manage Risk
Harvard Business School Note 806-138
Describes the four components of legal astuteness: the attitudes, proactive approach, judgment, and knowledge necessary to manage the legal aspects of business effectively. Identifies a number of legal tools legally astute managers can use during different phases of business development to create and capture value and manage risk. This is a rewritten version of an earlier note.
Purchase this note: http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu/b01/en/common/item_detail.jhtml?id=806138
September 26, 2006
Podcasting Software MT-Podcast Offered for Free to Hobbyists
Filed under: Multimedia-Audio
I don’t know too much about this software, but thought it might be interesting to pass along. MagneticTime, at http://www.magnetictime.com , is offering their MT-Podcast product free to hobbyist bloggers. (The name is a little unfortunate; glancing at it you might think the product is just for Movable Type. But actually MT stands for MagneticTime.)
MT-Podcast uses text-to-speech software to create podcasts from text files (or, I suppose, blog entries.) If you’re interested in trying it for your site, e-mail press@magnetictime.com . “Eligible bloggers” (words from the press release) will be sent instructions. If you want more information about MT-Podcast, you can check out an early 2006 press release, but I don’t see a specific page devoted to it on MagneticTime’s Web site. Did I miss it?
Probable cause?
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/27/0118245&from=rss
Untraceable Messaging Service Raises a Few Eyebrows
Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Tuesday September 26, @11:39PM from the taking-the-pry-out-of-privacy dept. Communications Security
netbuzz writes "A messaging service called VaporStream announced today at DEMOfall will allow any two parties to communicate electronically without leaving any record of their interaction on any computer or server. Messages cannot be forwarded, edited, printed or saved. After they're read, they're gone."
Good on ya!
Sep 27, 7:56 AM EDT
MySpace Launches Voter-Registration Plan
By ANICK JESDANUN AP Internet Writer
NEW YORK (AP) -- The youth-heavy online hangout MySpace.com is launching a voter-registration drive to engage its members in civics. In partnership with the nonpartisan group Declare Yourself, MySpace is running ads on its highly trafficked Web site and giving members tools such as a "I Registered To Vote On MySpace" badge to place on their personal profile pages.
September 26, 2006
Defendant in Pellicano Wiretap Case Acquitted
By DAVID M. HALBFINGER and ALLISON HOPE WEINER
LOS ANGELES, Sept. 25 — A former telephone company worker accused of lying to a grand jury investigating the Pellicano wiretapping scandal was acquitted of most of the charges against her on Monday, dealing a sharp setback to federal prosecutors.
The defendant, Joann Wiggan, was suspected of providing information from her job at Pacific Bell (now AT&T) that was used by the private detective Anthony Pellicano to wiretap people, including the actor Sylvester Stallone.
Prosecutors said Ms. Wiggan had funneled the information to Ray Turner, a onetime phone company repairman who stands accused in the larger federal case against Mr. Pellicano of installing his wiretaps. Mr. Turner has pleaded not guilty in that case, which is scheduled for trial in February.
Prosecutors hastened to draw a distinction between the two cases. “The charges against Ms. Wiggan are completely different from those contained in the separate indictment against Anthony Pellicano,” said Daniel A. Saunders, an assistant United States attorney. “Today’s verdict does not impact the prosecution or the ongoing investigation of Mr. Pellicano and his associates.”
Ms. Wiggan was accused of five counts of perjury after she repeatedly denied in October and January that she had ever used her company voice mail, or spoken with Mr. Turner, over several years. Records showed more than 1,000 calls to her voice mail and scores of calls and messages between the two from 1999 until 2002.
After less than two days of deliberation, a jury acquitted Ms. Wiggan of four counts of perjury. A mistrial was declared on a fifth count, and prosecutors said they would consider whether to retry her on it.
We've been saying this for years!
http://www.technewsworld.com/rsstory/53249.html
Survey: Brands Marred by Poor Online Transactions
By John P. Mello Jr. www.EcommerceTimes.com Part of the ECT News Network 09/27/06 4:00 AM PT
Brand image is closely tied with the experience that a consumer has with a business, said Cliff Hopkins, senior director of marketing for PayPal Merchant Services. "Anything that detracts from a customer's shopping experience on a merchant's Web site will detract from that merchant's brand association in the mind of the customer," he added.
Transaction failures at a company's Web site can have a significant negative impact on the business' brand, according to a survey released Monday by TeaLeaf Technology and Harris Interactive
... "An astounding 91 percent of online consumers who experienced any type of problem when conducting an online transaction said they are at least somewhat likely to question the ability of a company to keep their private data secure if they encounter an online issue," it continued.
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/012620.html
September 25, 2006
New on LLRX.com
Identity Theft: A Bibliography of Federal, State, Consumer and News Resources - Revised and Updated, by Sabrina I. Pacifici & Catherine Guthrie
Small Content, Long Tails, and Big Ideas in Law Libraries, by Jason Eisenman
E-Discovery Update - by Fios Inc.: The Myth of Search, by Conrad J. Jacoby
CongressLine, by GalleryWatch.com: Congressional Intent,
by Paul Jenks
Burney's Gadgets for Legal Pros, Reviews: A Paperless ScanJet and A Device to MPEG your Video from any Source,
by Brett Burney
FOIA Facts - The Slow Road: FOIA Litigation, by Scott A. Hodes
Commentary: Previously Unreleased FCC Reports on TV Localism Raise Questions About Media Diversity, by Beth Wellington
A Cup of Creativi-tea: Brainstorming, by Terri Wilson
http://techdirt.com/articles/20060926/080720.shtml
What Does It Say When The World's Largest Patent Holder Sees Problems With The System?
from the seems-telling dept
The world's most prolific patent filer, IBM, is taking steps to address what it sees as significant flaws in the patent system. Under a new policy, the company will be more open about what patents it holds, post filed patents to the web before they're accepted by the patent office, and stand opposed to broad, business-model patents that don't represent any technical innovation. CEO Sam Palmisano nicely lays out the business case for patent reform, "The larger picture here is that intellectual property is the crucial capital in a global knowledge economy. If you need a dozen lawyers involved every time you want to do something, it's going to be a huge barrier. We need to make sure that intellectual property is not used as a barrier to growth in the future." The company acknowledges that by posting its patent applications to the web, years in advance of when the patent is accepted, it's tipping off its competitors as to what technologies the company is working on. But ceding this competitive advantage is a small price to pay, if the overall technology market grows because of it. In fact, having competitors develop competing and complementary technologies to IBM's is critical to developing a thriving ecosystem. In this light, it shouldn't be surprising that a company with a history of innovation, like IBM, lead the way on patent reform. The current system is fraught with risks, including the possibility that less innovative firms will use the patent weapon to extract money from it, rather than actually bringing innovative products to market. Of course, it doesn't seem like IBM will slow down their own patent applications any time soon. There's still a defensive case for filing patents as inoculation against future lawsuits. But it's good to see such an influential company moving in this direction. Hopefully more of its peers will follow suit.
http://techdirt.com/articles/20060926/170329.shtml
What The Future Of Newspapers Has To Do With Microwaved Hamburgers
from the making-the-big-shift dept
For a while now, newspapers have been worrying about how to survive in this age of the internet. All too often, the results are backwards or just too narrowly focused. There's been some buzz around Michael Kinsley's Time opinion piece about whether or not newspapers have a future, where he notes that they obviously do, but it's a future where things need to change. This idea is echoed (and more) by Vin Crosbie, who has a long opinion piece talking about how confused some newspapers are, believing that as long as they throw their content online, they're in the "new media" business. Crosbie points out that doing so is "as much new-media as microwaving hamburgers is new cuisine." So what is the answer? Well, Crosbie believes its in really personalizing content. That is, finally recognizing that not only is the internet different than paper, it lets you do new and useful things that simply couldn't be done on paper. Instead of just copying the offline experience, make it much, much better. He also notes that this means including articles from other sources, rather than being so focused on internally generated content. Of course, we're still seeing newspapers that still won't even link to another source, so it may be a while before they customize their viewing experiences by pointing people elsewhere. However, what's silly is this still assumes that you have a captive audience, when that's no longer the case. People (especially younger users) are used to surfing around, and the key for the newspaper is to learn how to be the hub for all of that -- but to do so, they need to actually add value. It's similar to the story we had earlier today about the differences between NBC and Google. It's not about coming up with a single program for everyone, but figuring out how to come up with the perfect program for any one person specifically.
“Hi! We're Microsoft and you can trust us to secure your computer against any hacker!”
http://news.com.com/2100-1025_3-6119892.html
Microsoft sues over source code theft
By John Borland Story last modified Wed Sep 27 04:48:12 PDT 2006
Microsoft has filed a federal lawsuit against an alleged hacker who broke through its copy protection technology, charging that the mystery developer somehow gained access to its copyrighted source code.
For more than a month, the Redmond, Wash., company has been combating a program released online called FairUse4WM, which successfully stripped anticopying guards from songs downloaded through subscription media services such as Napster or Yahoo Music.
Microsoft has released two successive patches aimed at disabling the tool. The first worked--but the hacker, known only by the pseudonym "Viodentia," quickly found a way around the update, the company alleges. Now the company says this was because the hacker had apparently gained access to copyrighted source code unavailable to previous generations of would-be crackers.
"Our own intellectual property was stolen from us and used to create this tool," said Bonnie MacNaughton, a senior attorney in Microsoft's legal and corporate affairs division. "They obviously had a leg up on any of the other hackers that might be creating circumvention tools from scratch."
In a Web posting early Wednesday morning, Viodentia denied using any copyrighted Microsoft code, and released yet another version of his tool.
"FairUse4WM has been my own creation, and has never involved Microsoft source code," the developer wrote. "I link with Microsoft's static libraries provided with the compiler and various platform SDK (software development kit) files."
This latest round of copy-protection headaches comes at a delicate time for Microsoft. In a few months, the company plans to launch its own digital music subscription service, called "Zune," paired with an iPod device rival of the same name. The package will compete with services from Microsoft's traditional partners, such as Napster and Yahoo.
The Zune service and device will use their own flavor of digital rights management, and this will not be directly compatible with Microsoft's partners' products, despite being based on the same Windows Media technology. The company is taking great pains to assure its partners that their PlaysForSure-branded products are still state of the art.
Two-pronged approach
At the moment, Microsoft is taking a two-pronged technical and legal approach to FairUse4WM that goes beyond the scope of its earlier DRM battles.
On the technical side, it is pursuing much the same strategy as in the past: studying the hacker's tool and trying to update its Windows Media technology to block it.
Indeed, the company's Windows Media copy protection technology was designed from the start to support swift updates that would address inevitable cracks. [Translation: The software isn't foolproof... Bob] That has long been part of the technology's draw for record labels and movie studios, which are fearful that content protection flaws will lead to films and music being swapped freely online.
Microsoft's copy protection has been cracked before and then quickly fixed. Company representatives said that the FairUse4WM tool, despite its developer's success in breaking through the company's first patch, is simply triggering the same kind of security review that has happened in the past.
"This particular circumvention doesn't change that reality at all, or affect the underpinnings of the system," said Marcus Matthias, a senior product manager at Microsoft. "This is not quite as 'cat and mouse' as some people might have you believe."
The crack's unusual longevity has caused ripples of worry inside the digital media community, however. One service provider, the British network BSkyB, even temporarily canceled movie downloads.
Representatives from other services say Microsoft's previous rights-management security updates have been successful and expect this effort ultimately to be no different.
"One of the great features of the Windows Media DRM is its renewability," said Bill Pence, chief technical officer at Napster. "When the DRM system is compromised, we can incorporate updates with minimal impact on users, and we expect to do the same with the current patch."
Using courts to track a cracker
However, the federal "John Doe" lawsuit, along with "dozens" of legal letters sent to Internet sites that are hosting the allegedly copyright-infringing tool, is a decidedly different tack for Microsoft.
The copyright lawsuit was filed in Seattle federal court last Friday, without a name attached. Just as in the recording industry's many lawsuits against accused file swappers, it targets an unknown individual or individuals, whose true identity will be sought in the course of the case.
For now, that means going to the Internet service providers for Web sites where the original FairUse4WM tool was released, in hopes of tracking down an IP address or other digital traces that might lead to the developer, MacNaughton said.
Microsoft is also contacting other Web sites that have posted the FairUse4WM tool, asking them to remove the software, on the grounds that it contains copyrighted company code.
Company representatives declined to speculate on exactly how "Viodentia" gained access to copyrighted source code. The code in question is part of a Windows Media software development kit, but is not easily accessible to anyone with a copy of that toolkit, Microsoft said.
So far, little is known about the developer, who has used the pseudonym "Viodentia" in several online postings at a site called Doom9.org. "Viodentia" could not immediately be reached for comment.
After spending an unaccustomed month of grappling with the problem, Microsoft representatives stopped short of promising their latest Windows Media update will be impregnable--although certainly, the hope is that a third patch won't be needed. Viodentia's newest release, posted online Wednesday, will test the strength of the company's latest approach.
"Any time we put out an update, it is our hope that it will be as efficacious as possible," Matthias said. "It is our hope that the technical mitigations that we've put in place will do something to impede this circumvention."
Analysts say that "Viodentia" hasn't proved that Microsoft's DRM tools are fundamentally flawed, but has shown that the business of keeping it, or any rights management system, secure is increasingly becoming a full-time job.
"Any DRM out there is going to be cracked," GartnerG2 analyst Michael McGuire said. "More important is how the technology service reacts. Someone has to be keeping an eye online all the time now, looking for the next time."
Of course, the Congressman knew nothing about this...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060926/ap_on_el_ho/nh_house_blogger
Top aide to N.H. congressman resigns
By ANNE SAUNDERS, Associated Press Writer Tue Sep 26, 7:18 PM ET
A top aide to U.S. Rep. Charles Bass resigned Tuesday after disclosures that he posed as a supporter of the Republican's opponent in blog messages intended to convince people that the race was not competitive.
Operators of two liberal blogs traced the postings to the House of Representatives' computer server. Bass' office traced the messages to his policy director, Tad Furtado, and issued a statement announcing Furtado's resignation Tuesday.
"Tad Furtado posted to political Web sites from my office without my knowledge or authorization and in violation of my office policy," [Policy: Don't embarrass me! Bob] said Bass, who apologized to the bloggers and said he referred the matter to the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct.
... "You see this all the time on political blogs, some elaborate act where someone says, 'Now, I hate to say something against a Democrat, but,'" Clawson told the Concord Monitor. "So you develop an eye for it. And this poster definitely tripped all the wires."
... House ethics rules state that congressional staff time and equipment may not be used for campaign purposes, and that criminal and financial penalties can be assessed. The rules also say congressmen are responsible for their staff members' actions.
I doubt it, but it sure looks quotable...
http://www.nwfdailynews.com/articleArchive/sep2006/tradebodybanktransactions.php
Trade body: India outsourcing firms could process 30 percent of US bank transactions by 2010
By The Associated Press 2006-09-26
NEW DELHI (AP) - India's outsourcing industry has the potential to process up to 30 percent of banking transactions in the United States by 2010, but tightening data security is key to realizing that aim, a trade body said Tuesday.
Currently, outsourcing centers in India process about 8 percent of U.S. banking transactions, as financial institutions have increasingly shifted back office work and other software-related jobs to India, where wages are low.
I hope this is in time for my database class. It will be fun to have my students tear it apart an rewrite it correctly!
New law to create online budget database
By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer Tue Sep 26, 12:07 PM ET
President Bush said Tuesday that Americans will now be able to "Google their tax dollars," as he signed a law to create an online database for tracking about $1 trillion in government spending on grants and contracts.
The law is aimed preventing wasteful spending by opening the federal budget to greater scrutiny.
... "Information on earmarks will no longer be hidden deep in the pages of a federal budget bill, but just a few clicks away," Bush said in a signing ceremony.
... Senate leaders had tried to pass the bill in early August but Rep. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, and Sen. Robert Byrd (news, bio, voting record), D-W.Va., blocked passage by lodging secret "holds" on the bill. The bloggers tracked down those responsible for the delay and the senators let the bill advance under the pressure.
The law calls for the Web site to go online by Jan. 1, 2008. It will list federal grants and contracts greater than $25,000, except for those classified for national security reasons.
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