Apparently, filling out a form is too complicated for T Rowe Price, so they hired an outside firm to do it? Have they no computer geeks on staff?

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20080128093147302

T. Rowe Price warns of computer thefts

Monday, January 28 2008 @ 09:31 AM EST Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Breaches

T. Rowe Price Retirement Plan Services alerted 35,000 current and former participants in “several hundred” plans that their names and Social Security numbers were contained in files on computers that were stolen, said Brian Lewbart, spokesman.

The machines were taken from the office of CBIZ Benefits and Insurance Services Inc., which prepares the 5500s for T. Rowe Price, he said.

Source - InvestmentNews.com

[From the article:

Other personal information, such as addresses, and birth dates, was not on the computers. [No problem, look at 123People.com below... Bob]

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20080129055704326

D.C.: 38,000 Social Security Numbers Potentially Exposed After Theft

Tuesday, January 29 2008 @ 05:57 AM EST Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Breaches

A hard drive containing the Social Security numbers of nearly 40,000 Georgetown students, alumni, faculty and staff was reported stolen from the office of Student Affairs on Jan. 3, potentially exposing thousands of students to identity theft.

The external hard drive, located on the fifth floor of the Leavey Center, was used to back up a computer that contained billing information for various student services, including activities fees and student health insurance, according to David Lambert, vice president and chief information officer for University Information Services..... The hard drive was not encrypted

Source - TheHoya.com

[From the article:

According to the MPD report, the hard drive was valued at $100. [See why many police departments don't get too excited about lost hardware? Bob]

...so why should we limit wiretapping to the NSA?

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=2008012906153934

UK: Phones tapped at the rate of 1,000 a day

Tuesday, January 29 2008 @ 06:15 AM EST Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Non-U.S. News

Britain is in danger of becoming a "surveillance state" as authorities including councils launch bugging operations against 1,000 people a day.

Councils, police and intelligence services are tapping and intercepting the phone calls, emails and letters of hundreds of thousands of people every year, an official report said.

Source - Telegraph.co.uk

[From the article:

Councils are among more than 600 public bodies with the power to monitor people's private communications.

I learn something new every day...

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20080129060409873

Is It Constitutional for the Senate to Retroactively Immunize From Civil Liability the Telecoms?

Tuesday, January 29 2008 @ 06:04 AM EST Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Fed. Govt.

FindLaw columnist and Cardozo law professor Anthony Sebok discusses a possible Takings Clause problem that will arise if the Senate goes through with its plan to provide immunity to telecommunications companies that illegally provided information about customers' communications to the government. Sebok notes that in other contexts, such as that of the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund, the government would never consider taking away rights to sue without affording compensation, in part because there would be a Takings Clause barrier to doing so. Is this case different? Sebok considers precedent as to whether the customer privacy rights that were allegedly compromised by the telephone companies count as property rights that have properly vested and accrued.

Source - FindLaw's Writ

How long before they raise taxes to pay for all this...

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=2008012820161533

UK: Costs set to rule out register of fingerprints

Monday, January 28 2008 @ 08:16 PM EST Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Non-U.S. News

The future of the UK's identity card scheme was thrown into further confusion last night after it emerged that the Home Office is looking to scrap one of its key components - a national register of fingerprints.

Source - Guardian

[From the article:

The use of iris scans has already been quietly dropped.

Erased is not always erased and deleted is not always deleted. Any questions?

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20080128083446105

The Art of Redacting Privileged Data

Monday, January 28 2008 @ 08:34 AM EST Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Other Privacy News

In the old days, redacting privileged data from a document was simple. I would pull out my black Sharpie, cross out privileged words, and record the redaction on a privilege log. Attorneys produced redacted documents with full confidence that their client's privileged information would remain concealed. In today's age of electronic data discovery, attorneys can no longer retain the same confidence.

Source - Law.com

This should be fun...

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20080128171417941

Lawsuit Challenges Government's Withholding of Documents Concerning Pre-Dawn Immigration Home Raids in New Jersey

Monday, January 28 2008 @ 05:14 PM EST Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: In the Courts

Seton Hall Law School’s Center for Social Justice (CSJ) and the Brazilian Voice filed suit today in federal court under the Freedom of Information Act (the FOIA) to compel the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to release documents regarding its practice of executing pre-dawn, warrantless raids of immigrants’ homes throughout the state of New Jersey.

Source - Seton Hall Law

Is this idea as stupid as I think it is? “We don't know how to make money, so give us some of yours...”

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/28/2043259&from=rss

Canadian Songwriters Propose Collective Licensing

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday January 28, @05:29PM from the all-about-just-gettin-paid dept. Music The Internet

aboivin writes "The Songwriters association of Canada has put forward a proposition for collective licensing of music for personal use. The Right to Equitable Remuneration for Music File Sharing would legalize sharing of a copy of a copyrighted musical work without motive of financial gain, for a monthly fee of $5.00 applied to all Canadian internet connections, which would be distributed to creators and rights holders. From the proposal: 'File sharing is both a revolution in music distribution and a very positive phenomenon. The volunteer efforts of millions of music fans creates a much greater choice of repertoire for consumers while allowing songs — both new and old, well known and obscure — to be heard. All that's needed to fulfill this revolution in distribution is a way for Creators and rights holders to be paid.'"

Ditto? (This is long and rambling, so I cut it short...)

http://techdirt.com/articles/20080129/014416102.shtml

U2 Manager Says Google And Its Hippie Friends Should Pay The Recording Industry

from the still-haven't-found-what-i'm-looking-for... dept

While the IFPI and the RIAA have been actively pushing for ISP liability for file sharing, it appears some in the industry are taking it even further. U2's manager for 30-years, Paul McGuinness, gave a talk at the Midem conference where he blamed Silicon Valley's "hippie values" for creating the problem, and demanding that tech companies of all stripes start paying the recording industry. He's talking not only about ISPs, but also Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and basically every other successful tech company. There are so many problems with this, it's difficult to know where to begin, but let's tackle a few of the quotes:

First he blames these companies who have "built multibillion dollar industries on the back of our content without paying for it."

Tools & Techniques: For the stalker in you?

http://www.killerstartups.com/Search/123Peoplecom---Find-All-About-that-Special-Someone/

123People.com - Find All About that Special Someone

123 People is a people search engine which takes on stalkerish proportions. Type in any name and 123 will pull up contact information—phone numbers, email addresses, images, and any media available, i.e. videos, profiles, tags, and weblinks. If you’ve got videos on Youtube, a LinkedIn profile, a Wiki article, even a Facebook or Google account, 123 People will find it. It’s quite useful actually for detecting a person’s web presence. If you’re a registered user, you can interact more with the site. You may add tags, ratings and comments to existing profiles; you can also build your own profile and put limits as to how much people can actually add to your profile. Searches can be focused on tags or people in Switzerland, the US, the UK, Germany and Austria more specifically, or the world in general. Registration is free.

http://www.123people.com/en/signup/private

For my web site class...

http://www.killerstartups.com/Web-App-Tools/Reshadecom---Easy-Image-Resizing/

Reshade.com - Easy Image Resizing

Finding a decent image editor that doesn’t compromise image quality and doesn’t cost an arm and a leg is not easy. Reshade is a new image resizing tool that manages to produce excellent image results. There’s a web-based version which is absolutely free as well as a client app that costs $149. Both have an excellent easy-to-use and intuitive user interface that’s not too facile for the pro and perfect for amateurs. With the web-based freeware, however, you’ll have to sacrifice some of the input processing power but it supports both computer-stored images and URLs. You can resize with a simple click and drag or manually enter it in. Features such as edge control, smooth defects, accuracy, etc make for the perfect picture. There’s also a free trial version of the client app.

http://reshade.com/

So my web site class can make even cooler sites...

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/28/206251&from=rss

Stanford's New Website Converts Your Photos to 3D

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday January 28, @04:46PM from the please-be-kind-to-their-servers dept.

An anonymous reader writes to tell us that Stanford has a new website that not only shows you how cool their new 3-d modeling system is, but actually allows you to give it a try with your own photos. The system can take a 2-d still image and estimate a detailed 3-d structure which you can navigate.

"For each small homogeneous patch in the image, we use a Markov Random Field (MRF) to infer a set of "plane parameters" that capture both the 3-d location and 3-d orientation of the patch. The MRF, trained via supervised learning, models both image depth cues as well as the relationships between different parts of the image. Other than assuming that the environment is made up of a number of small planes, our model makes no explicit assumptions about the structure of the scene; this enables the algorithm to capture much more detailed 3-d structure than does prior art (such as Saxena et al., 2005, Delage et al., 2005, and Hoiem et el., 2005), and also give a much richer experience in the 3-d flythroughs created using image-based rendering, even for scenes with significant non-vertical structure."