See the next article, too
http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=2208562130
An Open Letter from Mark Zuckerberg:
by Mark Zuckerberg 2:48am Today
We really messed this one up. When we launched News Feed and Mini-Feed we were trying to provide you with a stream of information about your social world. Instead, we did a bad job of explaining what the new features were and an even worse job of giving you control of them. I'd like to try to correct those errors now.
... This is the same reason we have built extensive privacy settings — to give you even more control over who you share your information with.
Somehow we missed this point with Feed and we didn’t build in the proper privacy controls right away. This was a big mistake on our part, and I’m sorry for it. But apologizing isn’t enough. I wanted to make sure we did something about it, and quickly. So we have been coding nonstop for two days to get you better privacy controls. This new privacy page will allow you to choose which types of stories go into your Mini-Feed and your friends’ News Feeds, and it also lists the type of actions Facebook will never let any other person know about. If you have more comments, please send them over.
The risk is real, but not huge in a multi-billion dollar market.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14718350/
FTC fines Xanga for violating kids' privacy
$1 million penalty against social networking site is largest under 1998 law
By Bob Sullivan Technology correspondent MSNBC Updated: 3:15 p.m. MT Sept 7, 2006
Social networking Web site Xanga.com will pay $1 million — the largest penalty ever issued for violations of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act — for repeatedly allowing children under 13 to sign up for the service without getting their parent's consent, the Federal Trade Commission announced Thursday.
In its complaint, the FTC alleged that Xanga, a rival to the popular MySpace.com, allegedly permitted creation of 1.7 million accounts by users who submitted birthdays indicating they were under 13. Collecting personal information from anyone under 13 without parental consent is a violation of the children's protection act, or COPPA, which was passed by Congress in 1998.
Looks like this will grow into a real cancer...
Reporters' phone records accessed in HP probe
HP admits 'pretexting' was used to obtain journalists' phone records during an internal investigation into board leaks
By Steven Schwankert, IDG News Service September 08, 2006
Hewlett-Packard obtained the telephone records of nine reporters as part of its internal probe of information leaks, the company confirmed Thursday.
The company sent the list of the nine reporters to the Office of the Attorney General of the State of California, in response to the Attorney General's inquiries.
"HP is dismayed that the phone records of journalists were accessed without their knowledge, [but by their agent, right? Bob] and we are fully cooperating with the attorney general's investigation," said company spokesman Ryan Donovan.
In an Aug. 31 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), HP admitted that an outside investigator had used "pretexting," a technique in which an investigator may obtain information by disguising their identity. HP's internal investigation was sparked by what the company said were "multiple leaks of confidential HP information," including discussions by the board of directors, HP said in the SEC filing.
At a May 18 board meeting, HP board members asked fellow director George A. Keyworth II to resign, as a source of those leaks. He declined, but Thomas J. Perkins did resign over a dispute with HP's Nonexecutive Chairman Patricia Dunn over the investigation's handling, the company said.
The California Attorney General has asked HP for information about techniques used in the leak investigation, while the SEC is making inquiries into a filing HP made when Perkins resigned.
HP's Donovan confirmed reports that among the journalists whose phone records were accessed were a reporter from The Wall Street Journal and a reporter from CNet Networks. He declined to name the other reporters. The Wall Street Journal and CNet published reports including leaked information from board meetings. The leaks to the Wall Street Journal included information about discussions leading up to the firing of Chief Executive Officer Carly Fiorina last year.
The Attorney General's office declined to name the reporters on the list handed over by HP.
Would this apply to Sony as well?
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/012382.html
September 07, 2006
FTC Settles Against Alleged Spyware Operation
FTC press release: "An operation that placed spyware on consumers’ computers in violation of federal laws will give up more than $2 million to settle Federal Trade Commission charges. Under a stipulated final judgment and order, the defendants are permanently prohibited from interfering with a consumer’s computer use, including but not limited to distributing software code that tracks consumers’ Internet activity or collects other personal information, changes their preferred homepage or other browser settings, inserts new advertising toolbars or other frames onto their browsers, installs dialer programs, inserts advertising hyperlinks into third-party Web pages, or installs other advertising software code, file, or content on consumers' computers."
...or is this closer to the mark?
http://techdirt.com/articles/20060907/151259.shtml
Zango Wins Lawsuit, Dismisses Users Who Can't Uninstall Its App As 'Background Noise'
from the such-concern-for-their-users dept
Adware firm Zango, which recently changed its name from 180solutions is doing a bit of gloating today after a court dismissed the class action lawsuit that was filed against the company a year ago. Note that this comes just days after security firm Sunbelt Software declared Zango's search assistant one of the most insidious spyware apps around for the month of August. Not to mention, of course, the recent revelations of how Zango was caught trying to trick people into putting videos on their MySpace pages that installed Zango. After denying that they did so, others revealed emails from the company telling others how to target MySpace users. Meanwhile, the sheer number of folks who constantly complain that their machines are infested with Zango software that they never agreed to install, combined with story after story that shows that the company has not stopped rogue distributors, would suggest that Zango may be a bit premature in brushing aside critics.
It's not clear from Zango's announcement (yes, they announced it) why this case was thrown out -- but it's pretty clear that there's something in their software that pisses off an awful lot of people who have it and have no idea how they got it. It's hard to see how that's something to cheer about. In the press release, the CEO of the company calls such complaints "occasional distractions" and "background noise of a small group of fixated critics" while another company exec claims that this dismissal confirms "that our innovative business model is entirely legitimate." Both claims seem to be stretching the truth. The dismissal of a single lawsuit (and the details are missing as to why it was dismissed) doesn't necessarily justify the business model -- and the fact that the company views some pretty serious, and very detailed, complaints from an awful lot of people as "background noise" should hopefully alert advertisers that this is not a company to work with.
Obvious?
http://blog.wired.com/27BStroke6/index.blog?entry_id=1551869
Encryption Not Equal to More Rights
27B Stroke 6 by Ryan Singel and Kevin Poulsen Tuesday, 5 September 2006
Encrypting your communications -- even using the strongest algorithm possible -- gives you no extra legal privacy rights, according to the good professor Orin Kerr.
Kerr recently blogged his 2001 law review article, which argues persuasively, yet counter-intuitively, that wrapping your communication in code isn't new (the Founders did it too!). He also argues that the expectation that it would be hard for an outsider to decipher a communication or figure something out, doesn't give you legal cover to prevent the government from cracking your code or flying over your house in a plane to see that you are growing marijuana.
... Find the whole paper here (I had no luck downloading in FireFox and then trying to open it with Adobe, but was able to open it in Adobe by clicking on the link with IE).
There's also, as usual, a fine discussion of the piece over at the Volokh Conspiracy, where Professor Kerr first blogged the article.
A little more on this case.
http://blog.wired.com/27BStroke6/index.blog?entry_id=1551352
27B Stroke 6
by Ryan Singel and Kevin Poulsen Tuesday, 5 September 2006
A federal magistrate today dismissed with prejudice a disgraceful DMCA prosecution against three young Texas men who bought a lot of cell phones while looking Arab.
Adham Othman, 21, his brother Louai Othman, 23, and their cousin Maruan Muhareb, 18, were cleared of money laundering and conspiracy charges after a day-long preliminary hearing.
The three were rousted by local law enforcement in Michigan last month after they were spotted driving from Wal-Mart to Wal-Mart buying as many low-cost pre-paid cell phones as they could get their hands on.
Tuscola County authorities arrested them as suspected terrorists and made a lot of noise. Then when the case didn't pan out the feds stepped in with charges that the men conspired to violate the DMCA.
After hearing the evidence today, Michigan U.S. District Court Magistrate Charles Binder threw out the case.
"I think (law enforcement) dug themselves a hole and they tried to dig themselves out," defense attorney Nabih Ayad told me. "The government had no evidence whatsoever that the phones and been modified or tampered with … And they didn't show that there was a third party they were conspiring with."
According to the FBI, the men admitted to buying hundreds of phones with the intention of digitally unlocking them so they could be used with other carriers, then reselling them at a small markup. In the complaint (.pdf), the FBI called this a "fraud scheme" in violation of the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions, and said it injured consumers, TracFone, and the brand equity of Nokia, "the eighth most valuable brand in the world!" (exclamation mark added).
It's hard to imagine anything creepier than the FBI merging homeland security hysteria with corporate IP extremism.
The case was apparently dismissed for lack of evidence, which ducks the more interesting question of how unlocking a cell phone constitutes circumvention of a copy protection scheme. Similar arguments have been floated in civil court over garage door openers and printer cartridges, and failed miserably.
That's why the feds normally wait for legal uncertainties like this to be decided civilly before taking sides with a criminal prosecution. In this case, their eagerness to fabricate a face-saving prosecution overcame their good sense, and today they got the black eye they deserve.
(BTW, props to Carlo at Techdirt who called foul on this case when it was filed.)
Is paper still relevant? Will this just complicate discovery? (All target documents now contain correspondence with attorneys?
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/07/2243222&from=rss
Xerox Reveals Transient Documents
Posted by CowboyNeal on Thursday September 07, @07:21PM from the bum-papers dept. Printers Hardware
Heartless Gamer writes "Xerox has lifted the veil from some of its research and development work in the field of printing. They demoed the very intriguing 'transient documents.' These offer the prospect of reusable paper in the sense that the content is automatically erased after a period of time, ready for fresh printing. Inspired by the fact that many print outs have a life-span of a few hours (think of the emails you may print out just to read, or the content you proof read on the train journey back home), the specially prepared paper will preserve its content for up to 16 hours."
e-fencing? Converting your data into cash.
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/08/0049259&from=rss
Selling Other People's Identities
Posted by CowboyNeal on Friday September 08, @01:16AM from the information-trade dept. The Internet Security Privacy
joeflies writes "The San Francisco Chronicle has an extensive article on the controversial site Jigsaw, which makes it easy to sell other people's identity information. Jigsaw encourages people to collect business cards and email signature blocks, which is compiled together into a searchable database. Participants earn points towards their own searches or earn money. Is this exactly what Scott McNealy meant when he said electronic privacy is dead?"
First precedent?
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/tech/news/4171144.html
Target can be sued if Web site inaccessible to blind, judge says
Associated Press Sept. 7, 2006, 6:15PM
NEW YORK — A federal judge ruled Wednesday that Target Corp. may be sued if its Web site is inaccessible to the blind, allowing a disabilities class action suit against the retailer to go forward.
The Minneapolis-based company unsuccessfully sought a dismissal of the action in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, arguing that that only its stores are covered by disabilities laws.
The court ruled instead that all services provided by Target, including its Web site, must be accessible to the disabled.
The suit brought by the National Federation of the Blind charges that Target's Web site is inaccessible to the blind, and therefore violates the Americans with Disabilities Act as well as California state laws.
A Target representative wasn't immediately available for comment.
For those of us collecting security policies and standards...
http://news.com.com/2100-1029_3-6113512.html?part=rss&tag=6113512&subj=news
Credit card companies form security council
By Erica Ogg Story last modified Fri Sep 08 06:22:48 PDT 2006
Five major credit card companies have teamed up in the interest of creating better security.
American Express, Discover Financial Services, JCB, MasterCard Worldwide and Visa International announced Thursday the creation of an organization to develop and maintain security standards for credit and debit card payments. It's the first time the five brands have agreed on a single, common framework.
The newly formed Payment Card International (PCI) Security Standards Council will manage the PCI Data Security Standard, first established in January 2005 with the intention of making its implementation more efficient for all parties involved in a payment card transaction. That includes merchants, payment processors, point-of-sale vendors, financial institutions and more than a billion card holders worldwide.
The companies have come together despite being in competition with each other because they say ensuring better security will benefit everyone.
"First of all, it's to protect the information of our mutual customers and to make the process of data security compliance easier," said Rob Tourt, vice president of network services for Discover.
Having a single data-security standard is a critical issue for the entire industry and will simplify the process, said Brian Buckley, Visa's senior vice president of international risk management.
"Our view is that this is first and foremost an important initiative to get data security in place for payment cards," he said.
Having the common accepted set of rules should foster broader compliance, said Bruce Rutherford, MasterCard's vice president of payments. Those rules include instructions on proper data encryption, common technical standards and security audit procedures.
The first action of the new council was to update the PCI security standard, which was promised in May. The revision gives instructions for how to implement the new standards and clarifies language that was previously considered vague. For example, terms such as "periodically" and "regularly" were swapped for definite deadlines like "annually" or "quarterly" where appropriate. A statement released by the newly formed council said the revisions were the result of feedback from vendors, merchants and payment processors.
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/012384.html
September 07, 2006
DHS OIG Survey of DHS Data Mining Activities
Survey of DHS Data Mining Activities, OIG-06-56 (PDF, 22 pages), September 6, 2006.
The good news is that most government projects are handled equally well, the bad news is that most government projects are handled equally well...
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/012385.html
September 07, 2006
GAO Report Highlights Need for Better IT Management and Spending
Information Technology: Improvements Needed to More Accurately Identify and Better Oversee Risky Projects Totaling Billions of Dollars, Full-text GAO-06-1099T, and Highlights, September 7, 2006.
"As a result of the Management Watch List and high risk projects processes, about 300 projects totaling about $12 billion in estimated IT expenditures for fiscal year 2007 have been identified as being either poorly planned or poorly performing. Specifically, of the 857 major IT projects in the President's budget for fiscal year 2007, OMB placed 263 projects, representing about $10 billion on its Management Watch List."
Related: "The Clinger-Cohen Act (CCA) of 1996 provides that the government information technology shop be operated exactly as an efficient and profitable business would be operated." [So can the stakeholders sue? Bob]
Interesting business model – allow those addicted to both toys to interconnect them...
http://www.epicempire.com/software/youtube-to-ipod.html
| YouTube to iPod |
| Wednesday, 06 September 2006 |
| Free and Easy There have been several programs promise to grab Youtube videos,convert and import them into iTunes but then pull a fast one and ask you to pay for a license. iTube and PodTube do all the work for free. iTube, a program by Benjamin Strahs, requires .Net framework and works exclusively on Windows. You simply paste the YouTube videos URL into the application and it does the rest. PodTube, a Mac OS X program, downloads, encodes, and adds YouTube videos to your iTunes library but requires Safari to fetch the videos. These programs are free and do not contain spyware or adware. |
Can't help myself, I love this kind of article...
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2006860,00.asp
PC Magazine's Top 99 Undiscovered Web Sites
08.22.06
Think of us as the friends who are always forwarding you links to cool sites you'd never find on your own. That's who we aim to be with this list of 99 Undiscovered Web Sites, and that's who you'll be after reading it.
The following list is made up of sites that are still flying under the radar, but are useful, funny, or interesting enough to merit entrée into the Web's public consciousness.
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