Gosh, a laptop theft. Who could have imagined such a thing?

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20071101080501880

CUNY THEFT THREATENS STUDENT IDS

Thursday, November 01 2007 @ 08:05 AM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Breaches

As many as 20,000 current and former CUNY students are at risk of identity theft after a laptop with their names and Social Security numbers was stolen from a financial-aid office in Midtown, The Post has learned.

The potential breach angered students, who were sent letters Oct. 19 urging them to contact their credit-card companies and take other steps to protect themselves.

Source - New York Post

“We hadn't given this any thought before, but we're going to fix some of the really obvious problems sometime soon... Aren't we great managers?”

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20071101140120959

Ferris State makes changes after data is stolen

Thursday, November 01 2007 @ 02:01 PM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Breaches

Ferris State University is overhauling its computer safety rules after a laptop holding the personal information of 18,000 applicants was stolen from an admission officer's car.

Leaders promised to review all procedures for gathering and storing student data, and they immediately ended the practice of allowing campus recruiters to carry students' personal information in laptops.

Source - mLive

Related. You don't have to research problems – but if you do you probably shouldn't ignore the results.

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20071101181730930

UK: Lords fume as government rejects e-crime threat

Thursday, November 01 2007 @ 06:17 PM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Non-U.S. News

Ministers are “putting their heads in the sand” over online crime and personal data security, peers from the House of Lords science and technology committee have warned.

The warning comes after the government rejected a series of recommendations made by the committee following its inquiry into personal internet security.

Source - CIO

[From the article:

The committee had tried to look ahead 10 years to take account of emerging risks, he said. “Unfortunately, the Government dismissed every recommendation out of hand, and their approach seems to solely consist of putting their head in the sand.”

Guidelines: Grasping the obvious?

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20071101195240680

Identity Theft Red Flag Guidelines Issued

Thursday, November 01 2007 @ 07:52 PM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Businesses & Privacy

The 2003 FACTA Act directed federal regulators to issue identity theft guidelines on "red flags" and address discrepancies (identity thieves often use an address other than the consumer's because having credit cards, for example, sent to the consumer-victim will usually do the thief little good). The guidelines have finally been issued.

Source - Consumer Law & Policy Blog

Related - OCC Guidelines

[The guidelines can be found here.

OCC rules are hrer: http://www.occ.gov/ftp/release/2007-122a.pdf all all 256 pages of them. Bob]

Privacy for the masses?

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2007/11/01/aol-spreads-its-privacy-education-program

AOL Spreads Its Privacy Education Program

Submitted by David A. Utter on Thu, 11/01/2007 - 06:10.

AOL announced a program that will help Internet users understand behaviorally targeted advertising, along with providing mechanisms for opting out of such targeting.

The company estimated it can reach 91 percent of the US Internet audience [What's wrong with the other 9%? Bob] with its privacy education campaign. AOL expects to display millions of public service banner ads both on its properties and on the third party sites where its advertising appears.

... AOL said Tacoda uses a Web cache technique to preserve someone's opt-out choice even if they delete their browser cookies, [So even if they don't know who you are, they know who you are? Bob] something other opt-out systems cannot currently do. They may offer licenses of the technology on a royalty-free basis for use exclusively in consumer privacy protection programs.

... This position should have interesting implications for AOL's billion-dollar relationship with Google, which provides search and advertising for AOL. Google could be hard-pressed to explain opposition to using such an opt-out mechanism, unless they have something similar planned for their DoubleClick purchase.

Is this better than a Class Action suit?

http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9809263-7.html

FCC urged to stop Comcast Internet blocking

Posted by Marguerite Reardon November 1, 2007 11:41 AM PDT

Members of the SavetheInternet.com Coalition and Internet scholars from Harvard, Yale and Stanford law schools filed a petition and complaint with the Federal Communications Commission Thursday in response to claims that Comcast is blocking some kinds of peer-to-peer traffic.

The complaint comes after the Associated Press discovered, based on its own testing, that content was blocked on several Comcast broadband connections using the peer-to-peer filing sharing network BitTorrent. Other Comcast users have also complained that their BitTorrent content has been blocked.

In their petition, the groups claim that Comcast is violating the FCC's Internet Policy Statement, which essentially states that consumers are entitled to access all applications, services and content of their choice. A footnote to the policy acknowledges that Internet service providers are able to engage in "reasonable network management."

Concast certainly takes it seriously (and vindictively)

http://consumerist.com/consumer/leaks/comcast-hunts-bittorrent-memo-leaker-317667.php

Comcast Hunts BitTorrent Memo Leaker

According to an inside source, Comcast is trying to hunt down who leaked the internal BitTorrent memo to us last week. The rumor is that they're interrogating supervisors and then customer service representatives. Memos regarding the dire consequences of providing internal information to the press are being distributed.

Does this have implications in the “unlimited” use of the Internet debate?

http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/01/231250&from=rss

Seagate Offers Refunds on 6.2 Million Hard Drives

Posted by CowboyNeal on Friday November 02, @04:55AM from the making-things-right dept. Data Storage The Almighty Buck Hardware

An anonymous reader writes "Seagate has agreed to settle a lawsuit that alleges that the company mislead customers by selling them hard disk drives with less capacity than the company advertised. The suit states that Seagate's use of the decimal definition of the storage capacity term "gigabyte" was misleading and inaccurate: whereby 1GB = 1 billion bytes. In actuality, 1GB = 1,073,741,824 bytes — a difference of approximately 7% from Seagate's figures. Seagate is saying it will offer a cash refund or free backup and recovery software."

It should be easy to link a bunch of these “guidelines” together with a bit of description and become an instant “expert” in the Identity Theft Remediation field...

http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/016402.html

November 01, 2007

Consumers Union Online Guide to ID Theft Safeguards

Press release: "Starting November 1, consumers in all 50 states will be able to freeze access to their credit files at all three major credit bureaus to prevent identity thieves from opening fraudulent accounts in their names. By that date, all three major credit bureaus will offer “security freeze” protection to all consumers living in the eleven states that have not passed laws requiring it and the five states that currently limit this protection to identity theft victims. To help consumers learn how to take advantage of this powerful identity theft safeguard, Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports, is making available online an updated Guide to Security Freeze Protection."

It is hard to protect yourself from religious fanatics. (No chance they'll ever collect this award)

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20071101075733970

Federal jury orders military funeral protesters to pay $11M to father of Marine

Thursday, November 01 2007 @ 07:57 AM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: In the Courts

A federal jury awarded the father of a fallen Marine almost $11 million in damages Wednesday for harm caused by a Kansas Christian fundamentalist church's protests at his son's funeral. ... The jury ordered the defendants to pay $2.9 million in compensatory damages for violations of Snyder's privacy, $2 million for intentional infliction of emotional distress, and an additional $6 million in punitive damages.

Source - JURIST

Tracking down outlandish statements by the bureaucrats – is nothing sacred any more?

http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/016412.html

November 01, 2007

ALM Corporate Fraud Data Base

Corporate Fraud Data Base: "Last spring, as the five-year anniversary of the Corporate Fraud Task Force approached, The American Lawyer set out to review its record of fraud prosecution. This turned out to be a difficult undertaking. The U.S. Department of Justice, after repeated inquiries, finally explained that it collects its statistics from individual U.S. attorney’s offices and does not maintain a centralized record of the corporate fraud cases that produced the 1,236 convictions cited by then–attorney general Alberto Gonzales at the task force’s anniversary celebration last July. So we developed our own database of significant corporate fraud prosecutions. In this we were guided by the Corporate Fraud Task Force Web site, which identified about 80 investigations deemed important by the Justice Department. We added criminal cases cited in reports published by the task force, as well as more recent prosecutions mentioned by Justice Department officials in speeches or testimony. In all, we analyzed 124 corporate fraud investigations, which resulted in 440 indicted defendants. Our sources were publicly available case records, as well as interviews with hundreds of prosecutors and defense lawyers. This database contains information about when and where these 440 cases were brought, the lawyers on both sides, and how the cases turned out. In all, we believe the database provides a historic portrait of corporate fraud prosecution in the post-Enron age."

• What's Behind the Drop in Corporate Fraud Indictments? Is there no more corporate crime -- or has Justice simply stopped looking for it? Daphne Eviatar, The American Lawyer, November 1, 2007

Seems worse than the casual downloading of “free” music. Another indication that management is not in control of their business?

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/01/2046251&from=rss

EMI Caught Offering Illegal Downloads

Posted by Zonk on Thursday November 01, @09:52PM from the dirty-dealings dept. Music Businesses The Internet

Hypocricy, LLC writes "While the RIAA is swift to punish any person caught offering illegal downloads, they're not very swift with outrage when a member company like EMI offers illegal downloads. Not only did the band King Crimson's contract never allow digital distribution to begin with, but band member Robert Fripp claims that EMI offered their music for sale even after their contract ended entirely."

Vindication!

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/31/1624239&from=rss

Blogger Wins 1.5 Year Legal Battle

Posted by Zonk on Wednesday October 31, @04:44PM from the fighting-the-good-fight dept. Censorship The Internet The Media

FixYourThinking writes "After nearly one and a half years of harassment from a relentless attorney, it seems that quietly a blogger in South Carolina has won a monumental ruling in favor of bloggers. In a summary judgement requested by the Defendant, Philip Smith was able to obtain a special sanction after the Plaintiff attorney put a 'notice of lien' (called lis pendens) on Smith's residence. The judge also reprimanded the Plaintiff attorney for abusive deposition and court procedure. The case set forth the following; 'It's not the format; it's the content and intention that make text journalism / reporting.'"

I just love the headline...

http://www.technewsworld.com/rsstory/60101.html

Sign of the Apocalypse? Wal-Mart Sells Linux PCs

By Peter Svensson AP 11/01/07 4:00 AM PT

Wal-Mart Stores sold Linux computers online -- but not in stores -- starting in 2002 at prices as low as $199. Computers from several manufacturers were available for several years but they didn't find much of a market, and they're gone now. The variant of Linux on the gPC is called "gOS" and is derived from the popular Ubuntu variant. It's heavily oriented toward Google's Web sites and online applications.

For an English teacher I know... Writing with consequence.

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/01/2245248&from=rss

Students Assigned to Write Wikipedia Articles

Posted by CowboyNeal on Friday November 02, @01:53AM from the term-papers-that-live-on dept. Education The Internet

openfrog writes "An inspired professor at University of Washington-Bothell, Martha Groom, made an interesting pedagogical experiment. Instead of vilifying Wikipedia as some academics are prone to do, she assigned the students enrolled in her environmental history course to contribute articles. The result has proven "transformative" to her students. They were no longer spending their time writing for one reader, says Groom, but were doing work of consequence in a "peer reviewed" environment, which enhanced the quality of their output."