At last (and for the fifth or sixth time) this end the TJX incident. Right?

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20080229100350221

(follow-up) Court to Notify Those Who Made a Purchase or a Return at a TJX Store about a Class Action Settlement

Friday, February 29 2008 @ 10:03 AM EST Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Breaches

A notification program began today in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico, as ordered by the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, to alert people who made a purchase or return to a TJX store about a proposed settlement reached with The TJX Companies, Inc. and Fifth Third Bancorp ("Defendants") in a class action lawsuit against them about the computer system intrusions into personal and financial information at TJX retail stores. The settlement provides benefits to those shoppers who may have been damaged in some way.

... Notices informing members of a portion of the settlement Class about their legal rights will be mailed, and otherwise are scheduled to appear in newspapers and/or magazines all over the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico leading up to a hearing on July 15, 2008, when the Court will consider whether to approve the settlement.

Source - The Earth Times Press Release

This wouldn't be a problem if you used a unique logon id and password for each account... You do, don't you?

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20080229094727326

Computer Sweden: Swedish Officials’ Passwords Revealed by Hacker

Friday, February 29 2008 @ 09:47 AM EST Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Breaches

Passwords used by many of Sweden’s cyber elite are now available on the Internet following a hack against the Swedish Computer Society, an organization of IT professionals. Among the victims are a former security officer at Microsoft, a Symantec security expert and the director of Sweden’s largest Internet bank.

The list of logins for more than 24,000 mail accounts was published Thursday afternoon on an anonymous server. Several of Sweden’s major Internet forums soon linked to the list. The list contains user names, encrypted passwords and e-mail addresses.

The CEO of the Swedish Computer Society, Annica Bergman, confirmed the theft Thursday night after an emergency meeting with the board.

Source - CSO Perspectives

Elsewhere - Computerworld: Finjan uncovers database storing more than 8,700 stolen FTP credentials

[From the article:

It is not known how long the hackers have had access to the servers and the logins.

So, is this good news or bad?

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20080229204340333

Bush Nominates Three to Empty Privacy Board

Friday, February 29 2008 @ 08:43 PM EST Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Fed. Govt.

A newly independent Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board may soon actually have members again, after sitting empty for nearly a full month.

On Thursday, President Bush took the first step to fill vacancies on the Board as he nominated 3 people, including a chairman, to fill some of the five seats.

... Bush nominated Daniel Sutherland, the current civil liberties officer at the Department of Homeland Security, to head the commission for the next six years. Ronald Rotunda, a George Mason University law professor known for his bow ties and for work on the Senate Watergate Commission, was nominated to join the board for an initial four-year term, while Francis X. Taylor, who previously served on the board, was re-nominated for a two-year term.

Source - Threat Level blog

This is another example of an “un-managed” disaster... You can't even ask “What were they thinking?” because plainly they weren't thinking.

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20080229143714791

OR: Whistleblower claims Salem Clinic mishandled patient info

Friday, February 29 2008 @ 02:37 PM EST Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Breaches

Most people don't expect their personal information will end up in someone's living room after they visit their doctor's office.

But that may have happened to dozens of patients of a facility called the Salem Clinic, which is located in Salem. The records of some patients were apparently included in an employee handbook, according to an ex-employee.

A former worker who wishes to remain anonymous told KATU News that everything from actual Social Security numbers to records revealing patient's ailments were part of the clinic's training binder.

Source - KATU.com

Fun statistics to quote at your next cocktail party...

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20080229145833696

2007 Electronic Monitoring & Surveillance Survey

Friday, February 29 2008 @ 02:58 PM EST Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Workplace Privacy

From e-mail monitoring and Website blocking to phone tapping and GPS tracking, employers increasingly combine technology with policy to manage productivity and minimize litigation, security, and other risks. To motivate compliance with rules and policies, more than one fourth of employers have fired workers for misusing e-mail and nearly one third have fired employees for misusing the Internet, according to the 2007 Electronic Monitoring & Surveillance Survey from American Management Association (AMA) and The ePolicy Institute.

Source - Earth Times Press Release

Perspective?

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20080229114503421

special report: privacy matters

Friday, February 29 2008 @ 11:45 AM EST Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Other Privacy News

A multi-part series published this week by Telephony Online:

Part 1: The Triple- and Quad-Play View
Part 2: Privacy and the holy grail of mobility
Part 3: Consumers beware
Part 4: Web of identity

A simple summary of the Streisand Effect...

http://techdirt.com/articles/20080229/143915387.shtml

All Streisand Effects Considered

from the drive-time-radio dept

The Streisand Effect is getting a bit more coverage these days. After the Associated Press mentioned it the other day, I got to sit down and talk with Robert Siegel for today's "All Things Considered" where we discussed The Streisand Effect starting with the Wikileaks case and moving on to some other cases where the Effect clearly made an appearance. If this keeps up, maybe we can look forward to a day when lawyers think twice about trying to force perfectly legitimate content offline. [Nah.... Bob]

Includes recordings of a couple of the phone calls, including the 911 call.

http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2008/02/blind_hacker

Teenage Hacker Is Blind, Brash and in the Crosshairs of the FBI

By Kevin Poulsen Email 02.29.08 | 12:00 AM

At 4 in the morning of May 1, 2005, deputies from the El Paso County Sheriff's Office converged on the suburban Colorado Springs home of Richard Gasper, a TSA screener at the local Colorado Springs Municipal Airport. They were expecting to find a desperate, suicidal gunman holding Gasper and his daughter hostage.

"I will shoot," the gravely voice had warned, in a phone call to police minutes earlier. "I'm not afraid. I will shoot, and then I will kill myself, because I don't care."