Close to home...
http://www.ncua.gov/news/press_releases/2007/MR07-0411.htm
New Horizons Community CU Takes Action
After Potential Data Breach; Members Informed of Protections
April 11, 2007, Alexandria VA—New Horizons Community Credit Union (NHCCU), a state chartered federally insured credit union located in Denver, Colo., and operating under conservatorship of the National Credit Union Administration, is notifying members of a potential breach of confidential member loan information. The potential breach results from the theft of a laptop computer from Protiviti, a consultant employed by Bellco Credit Union conducting due diligence to prepare a possible acquisition bid.
... On April 3, the NCUA Region V Office and the Colorado Division of Financial Services were alerted of a potential data security breach involving the loan account information of approximately 9,000 of NHCCU’s 19,500 members. The stolen computer contains information pertaining only to members who had loans with the credit union.
Employee monitoring?
http://www.alamogordonews.com/news/ci_5682295
DA investigates possible data security breach
Alamogordo Daily News Daily News Report Article Launched: 04/17/2007 12:00:00 AM MDT
District Attorney Scot Key says his office is undertaking a "complex" ongoing investigation into data found on an employee's laptop at Gerald Champion Regional Medical Center, saying that criminal charges are not being filed at this time.
He declined to comment on the scope of the investigation or any potential targets.
"We are not anticipating any criminal charges at this time," he said.
According to a press release issued by the hospital, the laptop contained "confidential employee information, including Social Security numbers and bank account numbers."
The employee was not authorized to have possession of such information and has been suspended from work.
The data was found during a routine virus scan of computers at the hospital, [Sounds like more than a “virus scan” Bob] according to the news release. The scan picked up an anomaly, and the hospital called in technical support to investigate further.
Sue Johnson-Phillipe, chief executive officer at GCRMC, said "a good portion" of the employees on the list, which dates to 2001, no longer work at the hospital. She said all affected individuals have been notified.
As laptop thefts become more common, the news items get smaller...
Stolen laptop contained Social Security numbers
From Times Staff Reports April 17, 2007
A county laptop computer that contained individuals' Social Security numbers was stolen last month, according to a county report.
The password-protected computer assigned to a county auditor-controller employee held the names and Social Security numbers of 28 people enrolled in the Department of Social Services' Refugee Employment Program.
The auditor-controller's office is sending letters to the affected individuals advising them to protect themselves against identity theft.
The department is also obtaining encryption software and warning employees not to store sensitive data on laptops.
Shouldn't OSU have learned from OU?
http://www.cantonrep.com/index.php?ID=348872&Category=13&subCategoryID=
Personal information stolen from Ohio State University computer
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Someone hacked into an Ohio State University computer and stole the personal information of more than 14,000 current and former faculty and staff members, the school said.
The hacker breached a computer firewall the weekend of March 31 and accessed records from an Office of Research database, university spokesman Jim Lynch said Monday.
The records of 7,160 former and 6,934 current faculty and staff members contained names, Social Security numbers, employee ID numbers and birth dates, the university said.
The breach was discovered by the Office of Research on April 2 during a routine review of daily activity logs, and steps were taken to block access to the data, the university said.
“This was a malicious attack,” Lynch said.
Ohio State also reported Monday that two laptops stolen from the home of a professor in February contained the Social Security numbers and grades of about 3,500 chemistry students over the past decade.
... Allan Silverman, chairman of the Faculty Council that represents Ohio State faculty members, said he would ask the university why the Office of Research, which works to obtain research grants, possessed the database of about 190,000 current and former university employees.
Look at the evidence, then THINK!
http://techdirt.com/articles/20070416/103859.shtml
Early Time Change Costs Kid 12 Days In Jail
from the daylight-stupid-time dept
The early start on daylight savings time passed last month with little impact, both in terms of the predicted aclockalypse as well as the energy savings it was supposed to generate. However, the shift did have some severe consequences for one Pennsylvania 15-year-old: 12 days in the slammer. The kid made a call in to his school's recorded information line in the early hours of March 11, just a few minutes before the hot line supposedly received a bomb threat. School officials, in their haste to find the caller, matched his cell phone number to a list of callers to the hotline that morning, and immediately pointed the finger at him. His phone correctly recorded the call time as 3:12 am, which was apparently close enough for them to the 3:17 am entry in the system's call logs for the bomb threat. However, the officials hadn't set the clock in their call system properly, meaning the bomb threat came in more than an hour after the kid's innocent call, and it took nearly two weeks of the kid sitting in juvenile detention for somebody to figure it out. The real culprit here is somebody's stupidity -- because even if the time change hadn't occurred, the call times still didn't match up by five minutes.
Free is good!
Giving Away Information, but Increasing Revenue
By BOB TEDESCHI April 16, 2007 E-Commerce Report
THOSE who don’t have $6,000 or enough prominent connections to get into a TED conference can take heart. The price of admission just went to zero, provided you can settle for a more remote experience.
The TED organization (TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design) runs an invitation-only conference in Monterey, Calif., every year for movers and shakers in business and nonprofit circles.
Yesterday, TED introduced a Web site that offers about 100 of its TED Talks, the polished 20-minute presentations for which the conference is renowned.
The new site will generate more advertising revenue for TED, but more important, conference leaders said, it will expose TED’s content to millions of people who would otherwise never attend the event.
In so doing, TED is at the vanguard of a trend in the conference industry, where organizers have begun to exploit assets that in years past evaporated as soon as speakers left the stage.
... Ms. Cohen said TED’s organizers began posting last June a handful of free videos from past conferences on TED.com, with “fairly aggressive goals for how I thought they’d do. But we blew past those pretty quickly.” By January, the number of TED Talks on the site had grown to 44, and they had been viewed more than three million times.
... From a business standpoint, Ms. Cohen said that giving away the conference’s content in such a highly polished manner has “completely transformed” the organization.
“Conventional business logic would tell you that in a community like TED you have to keep your commodity scarce and expensive to retain brand value,” she said. “But the same year we started releasing most of our content for free we raised our conference price by nearly 50 percent and still sold out in 12 days.”
Would Dilbert get it wrong?
http://techdirt.com/articles/20070412/183135.shtml
Scott Adams' Pointy Haired Views On Copyright
from the whose-cognitive-dissonance-was-that? dept
I've been quite busy lately and haven't had a chance to get much work done on the latest post about economics in the absence of scarcity, but it seems like Dilbert creator Scott Adams has picked up on a piece of the topic. dcm writes in to let us know: "Sounds like Adams has been reading your blog. He mentions a few reoccurring themes from your many entries, but comes to the opposite conclusions. Being a copyright owner, he sees it from a different perspective. I don't think I suffer from cognitive dissonance as he says, but that maybe that is the cognitive dissonance speaking. What do you think?"
It's an interesting read, and his description of the position statement of those who don't believe copyright infringement is the equivalent of stealing is almost word for word along the lines of what we generally say. However, where Adams gets confused is when he gets down into analogy land. He uses an argument about borrowing someone's underwear, cleaning it and putting it back -- but that's a bad example and not at all analogous. Also, the use of underwear and the idea of wearing someone else's is designed to make people react emotionally, not logically. The problem is that the analogy isn't at all valid, since the underwear is a scarce good -- and even if someone else takes it and cleans it, wearing it has a real "cost" to the original owner. The underwear is worn down slightly, the owner cannot wear it at the same time if he wanted to and there is, of course, that emotional cost of knowing someone else is wearing your underwear. However, a much more analogous situation is that someone learns that you wear one kind of underwear and makes a similar pair for themselves. In fact, to make it even more analogous, say that someone has created a special replicating machine that allows you to replicate the style of anyone's underwear that you like. That's what's happening. Suddenly, it doesn't seem nearly as bad.
The bigger problem with Adams' essay, however, is that he seems confused about how markets work. He complains that the "loss" created by infringement is the creator's right to control how a work is marketed. Unfortunately, there is no such right. If I build a chair and someone buys it, then they can then market it however they want. The creator doesn't retain control. Or, if you want to get even more specific, if I build a chair and someone else likes it and builds their own similar chair, again they can market it however they want. In fact, as we were just discussing, this is pretty much how the fashion industry works -- and it's working out quite well there, creating all sorts of incentives for continual growth, creativity and innovation. Once a product is out in the market, the original creator no longer gets to keep control over it.
Finally, it's quite weak of Adams to then pick some very poorly thought out defenses of copyright infringement and use that as evidence that everyone who disagrees with copyright policy has cognitive dissonance on the issue. It's a blanket way of brushing off all criticism without addressing the actual points. All in all, Scott Adams is an intelligent and thoughtful guy -- so it's too bad that his argument on this particular topic wasn't more compelling.
Logic? We don't need no stinking logic!
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/014568.html
April 16, 2007
Fact Sheet: Proposed FISA Modernization Legislation
Office of the Director of National Intelligence, April 13, 2007, Fact Sheet: Proposed FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act)Modernization Legislation
"Key Provisions of this Bill Are:
Updating the definition of electronic surveillance to account for the sweeping changes in telecommunications technology that have taken place. The proposed legislation is technology neutral. In contrast to the 1978 statute, which contains central provisions that are tied to specific communications technologies, this proposal is not tied to specific technology we have today. That way, as telecommunications technology develops over time - - which it surely will do - - FISA will not run the risk of becoming out of date.
Protecting civil liberties and privacy interests and improving our intelligence capabilities by focusing FISA on people located in the United States. [Huh? Bob]
Improving the way the United States does business with communications providers. The country’s communications providers are important partners in the ability of the United States Government to protect our national security. The proposed legislation includes needed authority both to protect those carriers when they do comply with lawful requests under FISA, and to enable providers to cooperate with authorized intelligence activities.
Streamlining the FISA process. Numerous Congressional and Executive Branch reviews of the FISA process have recommended that the FISA process be made more efficient, and the Department of Justice has made major strides in recent years in improving its practices and procedures. The proposal would make several changes to improve further the efficiency of the FISA process, including extending the period of authorization for non-United States persons, which will allow the Department and the FISA Court to concentrate more scarce resources to the cases that concern United States persons.
Reflecting today’s national security threats. The Bill seeks to update FISA to reflect today’s national security threats. One of those threats is the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. This legislation will allow the Intelligence Community to obtain FISA authority to better protect the nation against proliferators.
Adding an additional definition of an agent of a foreign power for non-U.S. persons whom the Government believes possess significant intelligence information, but whose relationship to a foreign power is unclear." [So the new definition would be “undefined?” Bob]
Via FAS, the text of the proposed legislative changes to FISA, including a section by section analysis (66 pages, PDF).
April 16, 2007 press release: "Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Arlen Specter (R-PA) today re-introduced legislation reaffirming that the federal government must follow the requirements of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) when conducting electronic surveillance of American citizens in the United States for foreign intelligence purposes. The Feinstein-Specter bill also would prevent delays in intelligence agency anti-terrorist surveillance, while ensuring that these activities do not violate the civil liberties guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and federal law."
Congress has been in the dark before...
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/005205.php
Sen. Specter: Telcos' Role in NSA Spying Program Must Be Exposed
April 16, 2007
Tomorrow, the Bush Administration will go before the Senate Intelligence Committee to push a dangerous new spying bill [PDF]. Among other things, the bill could threaten cases like EFF's against AT&T by giving blanket immunity to companies for illegally assisting the NSA spying program.
We're glad to hear that Senators are already pushing back against this proposal. As the NY Times reports:
"[Senator Arlen] Specter said he opposed the proposed immunity for telecommunications companies because the White House had never provided Congress with enough information about the role of the companies in the program.
"'That provision is a pig in the poke,' Mr. Specter said. 'There has never been a statement from the administration as to what these companies have done. That's been an intolerable situation.'"
The rest of Congress should heed those words. It would be highly irresponsible of Congress to legislate in the dark, before the past and present abuse of surveillance powers has been thoroughly investigated.
Perhaps the RIAA would like to explain why?
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/16/2239256&from=rss
Return of the Vinyl Album
Posted by kdawson on Monday April 16, @08:34PM from the vinylly dept. Music Data Storage Hardware
bulled writes "NPR ran a story this morning about the comeback of vinyl. It seems that sales of new vinyl records are up about 10%; sales will approach a million this year (as against half a billion for CDs). NPR mentioned the popularity of a turntable with a USB interface — they didn't specify the brand; could be this one, or this — and speculated on other possible reasons for the resurgence. They mentioned sound quality and lack of DRM as possible causes. Sound quality can and will be debated, but DRM rates a resounding 'Duh.'"
Perhaps the RIAA should sue for unfair competition?
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/014566.html
April 15, 2007
BBC Plans to Offer Entire Broadcasting Archive Free
Guardian Unlimited reports: "The BBC wants to put nearly one million hours of material on the internet for viewers to watch, listen to and download and has already begun the long process of retrieving and transferring programmes. A trial involving 20,000 users will begin next month, and the service could be available nationally in a year's time."
Perhaps this story will get more interesting? It sure isn't dying! Would this have been appropriate “employee monitoring?”
Ex-principal in sex tape apologizes, but says privacy invaded
Tuesday, April 17, 2007 12:28 AM CDT BY JOAN CARREON Times Correspondent
As students and staff returned to Sandridge Elementary School from spring break Monday, the school's former principal publicly apologized to his wife of 30 years and said the "persons who invaded my privacy need to be held accountable."
The words were Leroy Coleman's first about the explicit DVD that began to circulate last week and showed the former Sandridge Elementary District 172 administrator and a former science teacher having sex in a school office.
The recording showed Coleman, a 56-year-old Flossmoor resident, and science teacher Janet Lofton, a 41-year-old resident of Lynwood, engaged in sexual activity at various times and dates in what appeared to be December and January.
Another woman, identified as teacher's aide and substitute teacher Anjayla Reed, also appears in the recording on a separate occasion being hugged and touched by Coleman.
All three educators resigned their positions last week.
With Cook County Sheriff's Department police on hand, students arrived at Sandridge Elementary School as about 25 disgruntled parents staged a demonstration directly across the street and shouted sentiments such as "Fire Leroy Coleman!" at cars and trucks passing by.
Authorities kept parents and the media from school grounds, and some parents kept their children home from school.
One parent, Bonita Stack, said half of the children at Sandridge don't understand what has happened and now are wondering why their principal is not at school.
Sue Dykstra, whose first- and third-graders are in public school for the first time at Sandridge, said she thinks Coleman, Lofton and Reed should have been fired and not been allowed to resign.
"What if one of the kids would have walked in on them (at school)?" she asked.
Later that afternoon, Coleman read from a prepared statement in front of media at his home, and later in the office of his Matteson attorney, Raymond G. Wigell. In the statement, Coleman accepted full responsibility for "my inappropriate acts with a consenting adult."
"Without denigrating my wrongdoing and my acceptance of responsibility, the persons who invaded my privacy need to be held accountable," Coleman said. "It is not for me to comment on the motivation of the persons who knew or should have known of the placement of the video camera on District 172 property. While my actions have hurt my wife, their actions have hurt my family, friends and a lifetime of educating children."
Coleman said he will continue to cooperate with the Sheriff's Department's investigation.
“I know nothing!” Sgt. Schultz
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/014576.html
April 16, 2007
Pew Research Survey - What Americans Know: 1989-2007
Public Knowledge of Current Affairs Little Changed by News and Information Revolutions - What Americans Know: 1989-2007. Released April 15, 2007.
"Since the late 1980s, the emergence of 24-hour cable news as a dominant news source and the explosive growth of the internet have led to major changes in the American public's news habits. But a new nationwide survey finds that the coaxial and digital revolutions and attendant changes in news audience behaviors have had little impact on how much Americans know about national and international affairs.
On average, today's citizens are about as able to name their leaders, and are about as aware of major news events, as was the public nearly 20 years ago."
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