The duck will go crazy!

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=2007072606195682

JP: Computer stolen with personal info on 152,000 Aflac customers

Thursday, July 26 2007 @ 06:38 AM CDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Breaches

Aflac Japan said on Thursday that an employee of an agent had a computer stolen containing information on more than 152,000 customers. The stolen computer contains insurance contracts on 152,758 customers, their addresses, names and birthdates. Aflac Japan officials said that the information was coded [Let's hope they mean encrypted... Bob] and that outsiders would not be able to decode the data.

Source - Mainichi Daily News

Sounds like someone actually looked at the activity logs!

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20070726113525922

Security breach hits thousands

Thursday, July 26 2007 @ 12:32 PM CDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Breaches

A COUNCIL computer blunder has led to a serious breach of security for credit and debit card holders on Tyneside.

Police and security experts have been called in after details of thousands of people’s cards were downloaded to an address which has been traced to the Middle East.

As a result of the mistake, millions of financial records held by Newcastle City Council have been accessed and up to 54,000 individual card holders are affected.

Information was placed in error on an open server site which could be accessed by outsiders instead of a secure network. The site was shut down as soon as the problem was discovered.

Source - icNewcastle.co.uk

Related - ComputerworldUK: Insecure server sees Newcastle council suffer massive data breach

Still a lot of people who never got the memo?

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20070726162740993

Concern about USB sticks used for handovers

Thursday, July 26 2007 @ 04:27 PM CDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Medical Privacy

The security of data stored on USB sticks has been called into question following the theft of a stick containing unprotected confidential patient details at the Nottingham University Hospitals Trust.

Around a third of junior doctors currently use universal serial bus (USB) sticks as a means of saving and storing patient data, to pass on to other members of the clinical team at the end of a shift.

These should be stored on secure sticks which use at least 129-bit encryption protection, to be used solely on the trust’s computers but E-Health Insider has been told that this is far from the case.

Source - e-Health Insider

So many its hard to keep score...

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20070727052202151

5,000 student loan customers' info on stolen laptop

Friday, July 27 2007 @ 05:22 AM CDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Breaches

The theft of one laptop computer has resulted in compromising the personal information of more than 5,000 student loan customers.

American Education Services -- the revenue-generating arm of the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency -- has sent letters to 5,184 student loan customers telling them that their personal information was on a laptop stolen in a burglary at a subcontractor's headquarters in Livermore, Calif.

The subcontractor is Vista Financial Inc., a subsidiary of Performant Financial Corp.

The information, which was not encrypted, included name, address, phone number, e-mail address and Social Security number.

Source - Post-Gazette

No mandatory maximum? Google might want to move its servers...

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20070727042913108

Data retention law passed in UK

Friday, July 27 2007 @ 04:38 AM CDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Non-U.S. News

UK telecoms companies will have to keep phone call logs for a year under a new law to come into force in October. The law does not apply to records of internet activity, such as web surfing, email and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone calls.

The Data Retention (EC) Regulations were approved by the House of Lords on Tuesday and signed into law by Home Secretary Jacqui Smith on Wednesday. The Regulations transpose into UK law most of the European Union's Data Retention Directive.

The new law is intended to ensure that security services have a reliable log of mobile and fixed-line phone calls to be used in investigations, and relates not to the content of calls but only to records of their occurrence.

Source - Out-Law.com

This won't stand. “Your honor, we've arrested the man we think stole that nuclear weapon. We'd like a subpoena to search his vehicle since he keeps saying “Soon, American dogs!” To speed things up, we've towed the vehicle over to your house so we can start looking as soon as you sign the....” (BOOM!)

http://www.abc15.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=fff9d4ae-aaa4-4e68-a692-ed54bc3f0360

Jul 26, 2007 5:07 PM

AZ Supreme Court rules against post-arrest car search

A sharply divided Arizona Supreme Court has ruled that it violates Fourth Amendment rights for police to search an arrested person's vehicle without a warrant when the scene is secure and the arrestee is handcuffed, seated in a patrol car and under supervision of an officer.

... Thomas J. Jacobs, a Tucson attorney for the defendant in the case, agreed and said the ruling could affect hundreds or even thousands of Arizona cases either awaiting trial or pending appeal by requiring that authorities prove there was actual and justifiable circumstances allowing warrantless searches.

"In this technological age, when warrants can be obtained within minutes, it is not unreasonable to require that police officers obtain search warrants when they have probable cause to do so to protect a citizen's right to be free from unreasonable governmental searches," Vice Chief Justice Rebecca White Berch wrote for the majority.

... In the case that produced the ruling, police on Aug. 25, 1999, seized cocaine and drug paraphernalia after Rodney Gant got out of his parked car and was arrested about 10 feet away by officers who had earlier learned that Gant was named on an arrest warrant for driving with a suspended license.

Gant had been handcuffed and placed in a locked patrol car under police supervision by the time police searched his car.

Maybe...

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20070726162312415

CDT Analysis: Constitutional Protection for Email

Thursday, July 26 2007 @ 04:23 PM CDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: In the Courts

From CDT.org:

A recent federal court decision affirming that e-mail exchanges are protected under the Fourth Amendment brings welcome certainty to an undeveloped area of the law, CDT concludes in an analysis issued today. The Sixth Circuit court of appeals held in Warshak v. US that Internet users have a reasonable expectation of privacy in e-mail stored with service providers, requiring the government to either get a warrant or provide users notice when the government seeks their e-mail.

Warshak Analysis [PDF], July 26, 2007: http://www.cdt.org/security/20070726warshak-analysis.pdf [PDF]

Worth a look

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/07/computer-science-resources-for.html

Computer science resources for academics

7/26/2007 04:36:00 PM Posted by Dan Peterson, Product Manager

Google has a long history of involvement with universities, and we're excited to share some recent news on that front with you. At the main Google campus this week we're hosting the Google Faculty Summit, which involves universities all over participating in discussions about what we're up to in research-land as well as computer science education - something very near and dear to us.

Meanwhile, because we know that between teaching, doing research and advising students, computer science educators are quite strapped for time, we've recently launched a site called Google Code for Educators. While you may have previously heard about our offerings for K-12 teachers, this new program is focused on CS topics at the university level, and lets us share the knowledge we've built up around things like distributed systems and AJAX programming. It's designed for university faculty to learn about new computer science topics and include them in their courses, as well as to help curious students learn on their own.

Right now, Google Code for Educators offers materials for AJAX web programming, distributed systems and parallel programming, and web security. The site includes slides, programming labs, problem sets, background tutorials and videos. We're eager to provide more content areas and also more iterations for existing topic areas. To allow for liberal reuse and remixing, most sample course content on Code EDU is available under a Creative Commons license. Please let us know your thoughts on this new site.

Beyond CS education, another important faculty topic is research. Google Research offers resources to CS researchers,including papers authored by Googlers and a wide variety of our tech talks. You might be interested in learning more about MapReduce and Google File System, two pieces of Google-grown technology that have allowed us to operate at enormous scale. We also recently put together a few university research programs and we're eager to see what academics come up with.

Ever want to pilot the Exxon Valdez through the narrows?

http://www.techzonez.com/comments.php?shownews=21764

Ship Simulator 2008 Demo

Posted by Reverend on 26 Jul 2007 - 18:33 GMT | 0 comments Previous Post | Games | Next Post

Lighthouse Interactive has released a playable demo of Ship Simulator 2008, giving you the chance to try out the latest installement in the ship sim series, now available in many stores in the UK and Scandinavia as well as online.

Ship Simulator 2008 includes three new sailing areas like San Francisco, Southampton/Solent area incl. Cowes, and Marseille, nine brand new vessels, from pilot boat to supertanker, including even a massive offshore oil rig, user-controlled harbour container cranes, ocean waves with realistic ship motions, open sea missions and more.

Download: Ship Simulator 2008 Demo