No, no, NO! You have to go after the lawMAKERS...

http://www.khou.com/news/local/crime/stories/khou070518_tj_copcomputer.81e7d778.html

Thousands of police at risk

12:48 AM CDT on Saturday, May 19, 2007 By Jeremy Desel / 11 News

The state agency that licenses cops had a computer stolen that contains personal information of every licensed peace officer in the state of Texas.

Police tell us to guard our personal information closely. But it is the police who are now at risk.

... That is what police departments were notified by TCLEOSE- the agency that licenses peace officers in Texas.

... Anyone who has a TCLEOSE certification- nearly 230,000 men and women.

... But so far officers here at HPD have not been notified officially about the thefts. When 11 News asked him specifically about the progress of the investigation, Chief Hurtt said he did not want to comment further because he "doesn't want to spook them." [Isn't that cop-speak for “we haven't got a clue?” Bob]

The flip side of a “surveillance state”

http://www.publictechnology.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=9304

Stolen: Sensitive personal data on 30,000 disabled benefits claimants

This was published: 2007-05-18 08:10:00

30,000 disabled people had sensitive personal information including bank account details stolen last September, Liberal Democrat research has revealed.

Recipients of Independent Living Funds and civil servants working on the scheme had personal information including their names, addresses, National Insurance numbers and bank account details stolen when a van was broken into last year.

... “This Government has an obsession with gathering ever more information on its citizens despite its abysmal track record of ensuring that the details it holds are kept secure.

Weekly Recap

http://www.pogowasright.org/blogs/dissent/?p=376

Data “Dysprotection” Weekend Roundup for Week Ending May 20th (update 1)

Friday May 18th 2007, 2:55 pm

E-Discovery – sort of... We're not done with you yet. OR We may have “possible cause.”

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/fn/4817012.html

Pa. Prosecutor Asks MySpace to Keep Data

May 18, 2007, 3:38PM

HARRISBURG, Pa. — Pennsylvania's attorney general on Friday asked the social networking Web site MySpace.com to preserve any user profiles posted by the state's registered sex offenders.

Attorney General Tom Corbett said he was responding to published statements by MySpace officials that they had identified, removed and blocked thousands of user profiles of convicted sex offenders.

On Monday, Corbett and seven other state attorneys general asked the company to provide information about registered sex offenders who use MySpace. The company said federal privacy laws bar it from doing that in the absence of specific legal procedures.

Prosecutors want to make sure that MySpace, which is owned by News Corp., will be able to produce the information if it is needed to prosecute Pennsylvania offenders "who might be violating their terms of release, or may be engaged in criminal activity," a Corbett spokesman, Nils Frederiksen, said Friday.

The formal "preservation letter" was sent to MySpace's custodian of records in Santa Monica, Calif., Frederiksen said. Messages left Friday for MySpace officials were not immediately returned.

Isn't it logical that holding data is neutral while using it for negative purposes is the true evil?

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5685.html

An Empirical Approach to Understanding Privacy Valuation

Published: May 18, 2007 Paper Release Date: April 2007 Authors: Luc Wathieu and Allan Friedman

Executive Summary:

What do consumers value and why? Researchers on privacy remain stumped by a "privacy paradox." Consumers declare that they value privacy highly, yet do not take steps to guard it during transactions. At the same time, consumers feel unable to enact their preferences on privacy. Clearly, scholars need a more nuanced understanding of how consumers treat information privacy in complex situations. To test the hypothesis that there is a homo economicus behind privacy concerns, not just primal fear, Wathieu and Friedman conducted an experiment based on a real-world situation about the transmission of personal information in the context of car insurance. Their experiment was based on a previous case study about marketing processes that use membership databases of trusted associations (such as alumni associations) to channel targeted deals to members through a blend of direct mail and telemarketing. Key concepts include:

* Contrary to some research, the chief privacy concern appears based on data use, not data itself.

* There is consumer demand for social control that focuses on data use.

* Sophisticated consumers care about economic context and indirect economic effects.

Read this in the context of the attacks on Estonian computers or the statement by the military that they are concerned about bandwidth used by soldiers accessing MySpace! (see below)

http://www.securityfocus.com/news/11465?ref=rss

"Data storm" blamed for nuclear-plant shutdown

Robert Lemos, SecurityFocus 2007-05-18

The U.S. House of Representative's Committee on Homeland Security called this week for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to further investigate the cause of excessive network traffic that caused an Alabama nuclear plant to shut down last year.

... An investigation into the failure found that the controllers for the pumps locked up following a spike in data traffic...

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003713602_estonia19.html

Estonian government, business Web sites under attack

By Peter Finn The Washington Post Saturday, May 19, 2007 - Page updated at 02:02 AM

TALLINN, Estonia — Estonia, one of the most wired societies in Europe, has been subjected in recent weeks to massive and coordinated cyber attacks on Web sites of the government, banks, telecommunications companies, Internet service providers (ISPs) and news organizations, according to Estonian and foreign officials here.

Computer security specialists here call it an unprecedented assault on the public and private electronic infrastructure of a state. They say it is originating in Russia, which is angry over Estonia's recent relocation of a Soviet war memorial. Russian officials deny any government involvement.

The NATO alliance and the European Union have rushed information technology specialists to Estonia to observe and assist during the attacks, which have disrupted government e-mail and led financial institutions to shut down online banking.

... Estonian officials said they traced some attackers to Internet protocol (IP) addresses that belong to the Russian presidential administration and other state agencies in Russia.

... Roughly 1 million unwitting computers worldwide were employed, said Jaak Aaviksoo, Estonia's minister of defense.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/17/AR2007051702177.html

Military Says Bandwidth Alone Forced Web-Site Blocking

By Sam Diaz Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, May 18, 2007; Page D01

... The Defense Department, which announced Monday that it was blocking access on its networks to such popular Web sites as MySpace and YouTube, put a technology official under the spotlight to explain why bandwidth -- the available space on a computer network for transferring data -- is something that the military cannot afford to compromise.

Rear Adm. Elizabeth A. Hight, vice director of the Defense Information Systems Agency, repeated the Defense Department's position that 13 specific Web sites were singled out because of the heavy traffic to them from military computers.

Reporters questioned Hight about whether bandwidth usage had ever reached a point where military operations would be compromised. She said it had not, and characterized the department's decision as "proactive."

They asked her how much bandwidth was available on the military's computer networks, a question she did not answer directly, instead turning to focus on the demands created by the sites. "We cannot accommodate the growth in bandwidth demands from these newer technologies," she said.

Research away! (Shouldn't the Democrats get equal time?)

http://www.gothamist.com/2007/05/17/nypd_releases_a.php

May 17, 2007

NYPD Releases All 2004 RNC-Related Documents

The NYPD decided not to appeal a judge's decision that the NYPD should declassify its surveillance documents from the 2004 RNC, so it has set up a special NYPD RNC Documents website with the documents. Of course, you have to scroll down to the very bottom for a zip file of the 600 pages of documents. And what's above the documents is the NYPD's rather thorough explanation/ defense justifying why it did such extensive surveillance of disparate groups and people, listing various terror incidents between 2001 and the convention as well as other incidents of protest.

More potential summer reading...

http://techdirt.com/articles/20070516/195222.shtml

A Reading List For The Economics Of Ideas

from the a-bibliography dept

While the core of my series of posts on economics of ideas and content may now be done, there are some follow-ups and other discussions I hope to add as we go forward. However, to kick off that next section, I'm going to do an "easy" post and highlight some of what I've been reading to help inform these posts.

As typically happens, my Presentation (PowerPoint) class is over, so NOW I find a presentation I really like and it contains some useful ideas – suppose there is a connection?

http://www.identity20.com/media/OSCON2005/

OSCON 2005 Keynote - Identity 2.0

Dick Hardt | Founder & CEO, Sxip Identity

Watch Dick deliver a compelling and dynamic introduction on Identity 2.0 and how the concept of digital identity is evolving.