New TJX? (Would they blame MasterCard if it was TJX?) Few details, but it does not sound good.
http://www.theindychannel.com/news/13363509/detail.html
Debit Card Breach Affects Some In Central Indiana
Man Discovers Bank Account Is Drained
POSTED: 6:36 am EDT May 22, 2007 UPDATED: 7:24 am EDT May 22, 2007
INDIANAPOLIS -- A security breach has left some customers vulnerable to hackers as Sky Bank officials on Monday confirmed a problem with some debit cards.
Customer Dennis Martin told 6News he went to an ATM machine and discovered that he didn't have a dime left in his checking account, 6News' Cheryl Jackson reported.
Martin said $1,200 was drained from his account and expressed disappointment that he was not notified about the situation beforehand.
"We decided to do a balance inquiry and found out we were about $300 to the negative, which floored us," Martin said. "My God, something's happened."
Martin said he was surprised when the bank branch manager told him that they already knew that some customer account information was in the hands of hackers.
"She says, 'It's happened to a few people. I don't know how many.' They all knew all about it," Martin said.
Sky Bank officials confirmed Monday that they knew about the breach last week. In a statement, bank officials blamed the problem on the debit card's issuer, Master Card, and said it is not specific to their bank. [So, this could be huge! Bob]
"The issue that Mr. Martin lists below relates to a card number compromise at an unidentified merchant, which means other bank's cardholders might be impacted as well," the statement said. "It is important to note that this was not a compromise to Sky Bank's debit card program or its security."
Martin said the bank branch manager told him that there was vulnerability in the system when Union Federal Bank became Sky Bank. [We knew, but did nothing? Bob]
"What she said is, 'It went into a kind of limbo with the old Union Federal number and it went to an unsecured part of their system and the hacker was able to retrieve a list,'" Martin said.
Sky Bank officials denied that the events are connected and said that they were working to reissue new cards as soon as they could.
Martin said the bank did not offer to make good on the money drained from his account, but was told that he would hear from the bank by mail within 10 days.
Sky Bank officials said they are working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.
It's the e-Sopranos!
Columbia Bank says online hackers breached security
Monday, May 21, 2007
By RICHARD NEWMAN STAFF WRITER
Columbia Bank, which has the largest share of deposits in Fair Lawn, has notified its online banking customers of a security breach that could make them vulnerable to identity theft.
A hacker or hackers gained access to customers’ names and Social Security numbers. “The intrusion affected all of our customers who have online banking,” Chief Executive Officer Raymond G. Hallock said Monday in a phone conservation.
Account numbers and passwords were not accessed, Hallock said.
He declined to say how many Social Security numbers may have been accessed and offered few other details, citing concerns about compromising investigations underway by the FBI and New Jersey State Police.
Hallock said in a May 18 letter to customers that the bank is offering free credit monitoring for a year. The bank also advised customers to keep a close watch for suspicious activity on credit card bills and bank statements for at least a year.
England becomes more Orwellian...
http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20070521193100371
UK: Secret plans to turn staff into police informers
Monday, May 21 2007 @ 07:31 PM CDT
Council workers, charity staff and doctors will be required to tip off police about anyone whom they believe could commit a violent crime, [I would have to squeal on all politicians – in particular those who voted for this law. Bob] under secret Home Office plans.
Civil liberties campaigners last night said that the proposal raised the prospect of people being placed under surveillance and detained even though they have committed no offence.
And a senior Whitehall official, who leaked the plans to The Times, said that it would entail a mass of personal information, including sensitive medical records, being passed around many different agencies — even if there was no firm evidence of any potential risk from an individual.
Source - Times Online
Update...
http://www.realtime-itcompliance.com/laws_regulations/2007/05/many_new_us_state_and_federal.htm
Many New U.S. State and Federal Privacy Bills Introduced, and Some New State Data Protection Laws Signed
... This past week was a busy one with a flurry of new and updated bills related to protecting privacy introduced, and a few new state laws.
Here's a quick laundry list:
Is this the perfect model?
http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20070521155201878
FOR COMMENT
Monday, May 21 2007 @ 03:52 PM CDT
Social Security Numbers are sensitive data that can be abused by identity thieves to commit fraud. This abuse can cause privacy harm to Penn constituents and can create compliance and reputational risks to Penn itself. Penn has been committed to a multi-year effort to minimize the use of SSN and there are now additional tools that enable faculty and staff to identify where Social Security Numbers reside on their systems and to securely delete, convert, or truncate such information.
This draft policy has been created in recognition of the risks that Social Security Numbers present, as well the opportunities to reduce the availability of such data at Penn. We welcome your comments on this draft policy by June 21. To submit a comment, please e-mail 2007mmdd-ssnpol-comments@isc.upenn.edu.
Source - University of Pennsylvania Almanac
Didn't take long for them to cave in...
http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20070521125656697
MySpace to provide sex offender data to state AGs
Monday, May 21 2007 @ 12:56 PM CDT
MySpace.com has unveiled a plan for cooperating with the state attorneys general who have requested that the social-networking site turn over data pertaining to registered sex offenders.
According to a statement from the company released on Monday, MySpace will provide the Multi-State Attorney General Executive Committee data that it has gathered on registered sex offenders through its partnership with identity verification firm Sentinel Tech Holding.
Source – C|net What's Related http://news.com.com/MyS... More by PrivacyNews More from Internet & Computers
Very clever! So simple, even a lawyer can understand it?
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/21/1226217&from=rss
Disney Video Used to Explain Copyright
Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday May 21, @08:50AM from the insanely-well-done dept.
Recently a pretty amazing video surfaced that used clips from Disney films to explain copyright law. It was created by Eric Faden of Bucknell University and must have taken an insane amount of time to assemble. Now you have to wonder how long before someone gets sued over it. Also here is a corel cache version as well as a link to the original page.
Or, you could use this method...
http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1179479096959
Public Access Group Posts Smithsonian Images Online
Brett Zongker The Associated Press May 21, 2007
Grabbing pictures of iconic Smithsonian Institution artifacts just got a whole lot easier.
Before, if you wanted to get a picture of the Wright Brothers' plane, you could go to the Smithsonian Images Web site and pay for a print or high-resolution image after clicking through several warnings about copyrights and other restrictions -- and only if you were a student, teacher or pledging not to use it to make money.
Now, you can just go to the free photo-sharing Web site flickr.com.
A nonprofit group is challenging the copyrights and restrictions on images being sold by the Smithsonian. But instead of going to court, the group downloaded all 6,288 photos online and posted them Wednesday night on the free Internet site.
"I don't care if they sell the photos, but then once they sell it, they can't say you can't reuse this photo," said Carl Malamud, co-founder of the group Public.Resource.Org, advocates for posting more government information online.
"You're not allowed to chill debate by telling people they can't use something because it's under copyright when that's not true."
... Images made by federal government employees are exempt from copyright law and are considered to be in the public domain, said Robert Brauneis, a George Washington University intellectual property law professor. Most Smithsonian employees are considered federal workers because their salaries come from taxpayer funds.
The language of the restrictions on the Smithsonian Images Web site appears to be using contract law to extend the Smithsonian's rights beyond copyrights, he said. One provision states, "even in the absence of copyright, Smithsonian still reserves all rights to image use."
More on Copyright
http://techdirt.com/articles/20070521/015928.shtml
Arguing For Infinite Copyright... Using Copied Ideas And A Near Total Misunderstanding Of Property
from the copyright-this dept
Well, well, well. I don't think we've ever had a single story submitted to us more often than Mark Helprin's opinion piece in the NY Times over the weekend, trying (and failing) to support the idea that copyright deserves to last forever and be passed on from descendant to descendant. Before getting into the details of why he's wrong (and confused), I should note that it certainly is interesting that just as a new "copyright alliance" has formed to push for stronger copyright laws, we start seeing articles like this one and others pushing the argument for stronger copyright and patent laws to extreme positions. A conspiracy-minded person might suggest that this is no coincidence, and that the best way to get stronger copyright and patent laws passed is to first get people arguing about ridiculously strong laws, and then get them to agree to "lesser" changes that are still much stronger than what we have today.
On to Helprin's confused piece. Helprin makes the same mistake that many make of thinking that just because the linguistic convention is to call such things "intellectual property," it really is the same thing as property. His entire argument is based on this simple point -- and it's why he's wrong. It is amusing to note that some are already pointing out that Helprin's argument is a blatant copy of Mark Twain's -- and yet we doubt he paid the descendants of Mark Twain for it. However, the key to Helprin's problem is his total and complete misunderstanding of the purpose of property as well as the purpose of copyright law.
The purpose of property is to better manage the allocation of scarce resources. Since the resource is limited and not everyone can have it, property rights and property law make complete sense for a civilized society, allowing those with rights to the property to buy, sell and exchange their property. This allows for resources to be efficiently allocated through commerce and the laws of supply and demand. It's a sensible system for the best allocation of scarce resources. However, when it comes to infinite resources, there's simply no need to worry about efficient allocation -- since anyone can have a copy. The purpose of copyright (and of patent law), then, wasn't the same as the purpose of property law. It has nothing to do with more efficient allocation of scarce resources. Instead, it's a government-granted incentive -- a subsidy -- to encourage the creation of new works. In other words, it was a case where the government believed there was a market failure. That is, they believed that without this incentive, certain intellectual works wouldn't be created -- and the tradeoff between locking up that idea and creating more content was one that was worthwhile. However, they always knew that it was a tradeoff -- which is not at all true for real property. And, as an incentive, many would say it's been plenty of incentive for many authors who have written books -- including Helprin. As an author of 11 books, clearly the incentive was enough for him at the time. In effect, by arguing for extended copyright, Helprin is going back and asking the government to change the bargain it gave him and retroactively promise him more. It's as if you could go back to your boss for the work you did in 1975 and say you now want to be paid again for it. Or, more realistically, it's Helprin asking for welfare. He is asking the government to give him a greater subsidy. But, of course, copyright is not a welfare system.
The key point here is that in pretending (or simply ignorantly claiming) that intellectual property is the same as tangible property, Helprin completely misunderstands what rights copyright law gives him. It is not the same right as he has over his own property -- which, after he sells it, he no longer has control over it. Instead of "property rights," copyright gives him a monopoly right (which is what Jefferson preferred to call it) to control how his output is used even after it's sold. That's completely different than a property right -- and, again, the reasoning is simply as an incentive for creation, not to guarantee control. Apparently, Helprin needs quite a history and economics lesson -- but if he had his way, that would be much more difficult since such ideas would be locked up forever.
Could be useful...
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5674.html
Fixing the Marketing-CEO Disconnect
Q&A with: Gail McGovern Published: May 21, 2007 Author: Sean Silverthorne
In most companies, no one knows and understands your customers and their changing needs better than the marketing department. Certainly that knowledge should be routinely presented and understood by the chief executive and board of directors, right?
... Two HBS faculty developed a CD-based program called Measuring Marketing Performance targeted at senior executives—namely CEOs, COOs, and CMOs. The tutorial helps execs understand how the customer base is segmented, how the size and profitability of each segment is changing, and how the company's products and services address the needs of each segment.
... The program has been made available for purchase through Harvard Business School Publishing.
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