Low quantity, high quality (i.e. It isn't just us second class citizens this time.)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23943781/

Privacy advocate's health data is stolen

Lawmaker's medical records nabbed along with government laptop

updated 4:12 p.m. MT, Thurs., April. 3, 2008

WASHINGTON - If there's one person whose medical records you wouldn't want to lose track of, it's the co-chairman of the congressional caucus that focuses on protecting consumers' privacy.

For my hacking students. Consider this a warning – no matter how bad the security was (is?) at OU, you still can't do things like this...

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20080403093814895

Student charged with hacking into OU accounts

Thursday, April 03 2008 @ 09:38 AM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Breaches

A University of Oklahoma student has been charged with violation of the Oklahoma Computer Crimes Act for allegedly hacking into and causing havoc with other students’ computer accounts.

Jose Antonio Roman, 19, was charged Tuesday in Cleveland County District Court.

Roman is accused of using his laptop computer to scan the local OU subnet at Walker Tower from his dorm room. Roman allegedly used data acquired to obtain user names and passwords to other students’ OU e-mail and Facebook accounts. Investigators said he changed other students’ passwords, locking them out of their accounts. In one case, Roman allegedly replaced a woman’s photo with a graphic described as “the laughing man.”

Source - Norman Transcript

Interesting. May reflect reality, but not the ethical perspective I think must apply.

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=2008040317184527

Nissenbaum: “Privacy in Context”

Thursday, April 03 2008 @ 05:18 PM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Other Privacy News

NYU’s Helen Nissenbaum gave a lecture entitled, “Privacy in Context” at the School of Information yesterday as the last Distinguished Lecture of the semester. You can find audio of her talk here and photos here.

Abstract: Contemporary practices of gathering, analyzing, and disseminating personal information have placed impossible demands on the concept of privacy. The weight of these demands, in turn, is reflected in norms, laws, policies, and technical requirements that frequently seem to miss the mark, failing to negotiate a reasonable course between unbridled opportunism, on the one hand, and suspicious intransigence, on the other. This talk will present key elements in the theory of contextual integrity, which builds upon structural aspects of social life to enrich our understanding of privacy and its importance as a moral and political value. Allowing context-relative social norms and context-based social values into the scope of analysis enables nuance and subtle discrimination, often missing in other dominant approaches, in modeling and theorizing privacy as well as adjudicating and justifying particular privacy claims.

Source - UC Berkeley School of Information

Statistics

http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/018015.html

April 03, 2008

FBI: Reported Dollar Loss from Internet Crime Reaches All-Time High

News release: "According to the 2007 Internet Crime Report, the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) received 206,884 complaints of crimes perpetrated over the Internet during 2007. Of the complaints received, more than 90,000 were referred to law enforcement around the nation, amounting to nearly $240 million in reported losses. This represents a $40 million increase in reported losses from complaints referred to law enforcement in 2006. All complaints received by IC3 are accessible to federal, state, and local law enforcement to support active investigations, trend analysis, and public outreach and awareness efforts."

Perhaps you don't need sophisticated technical analysis to find crooks?

http://techdirt.com/articles/20080402/184456730.shtml

State Sues Unclaimed Money Site After Finding It Told Wile E. Coyote He Had Unclaimed Money

from the batman-too dept

Pennsylvania is suing a website that promised to help people get access to unclaimed money they were owed after investigators determined that the site was convincing people to pay $24.95 for a membership by telling them they had unclaimed money, no matter who they were. Investigators used the scientific method of testing whether Spiderman, Batman and Wile E. Coyote had unclaimed money. After discovering that all three were told they did (on a free search, details only available if you paid), they decided that the site was perhaps being less than honest with users.

Interesting problems with hints at some technical solutions

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20080404063722800

Q&A: Chris Kelly, chief privacy officer of Facebook

Friday, April 04 2008 @ 06:37 AM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Internet & Computers

Facebook's man in charge of privacy talks about the challenges of China, identity theft and child protection

Source - Times Online hat-tip, FIRST.org

Interesting legal summary in the article...

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20080404063127993

Ie: Filter or Else! Music Industry Sues Irish ISP (editorial)

Friday, April 04 2008 @ 06:31 AM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Internet & Computers

EMI, Sony, Warner and Universal have brought an action in the High Court (Record Number 2008 1601P) seeking an injunction which would require Eircom to put in place a filtering system to block illegal peer-to-peer downloads. While there have previously been cases aimed at individuals who are uploading music, this is the first Irish action to target an ISP. This note briefly considers the background to, and possible implications of, this case.

Source - Society for Computers and Law

Interesting 'take' on censorship.

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/28/2117256&from=rss

EU Views Net Censorship As a "Trade Barrier"

Posted by kdawson on Thu Feb 28, 2008 06:25 PM from the do-as-i-say dept. Censorship

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes

"The European Parliament just passed a proposal to treat internet censorship as a trade barrier, in particular the 'Great Firewall of China.' If passed by the European Council, the issue would be raised in trade negotiations and could lead to economic sanctions and trade restrictions for those countries unwilling to remove oppressive Net censorship."

We have discussed some of the ways in which the EU, and its member countries, engage in their own brand of censorship.

Gee willikers, a government computer system project that failed. How unusual.

http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/03/1612249&from=rss

Census Bureau To Scrap Handhelds — Cost $3 Billion

Posted by kdawson on Thursday April 03, @12:49PM from the one-two-three-many dept. Portables Government United States

GovTechGuy writes

"The Census Bureau will tell a House panel today that it will drop plans to use handheld computers to help count Americans for the 2010 census, increasing the cost for the decennial census by as much as $3 billion, according to testimony the Commerce Department secretary plans to give this afternoon."

Tools & Techniques Not “Can't,” rather “don't bother to...”

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20080403094054463

Survey reveals inability to track and trace data access among UK retailers

Thursday, April 03 2008 @ 09:40 AM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Breaches

Figures out today indicate that almost half (45 per cent) of medium to large retailers in the UK who handle credit card transactions are unable to track and trace who has been accessing data within the company network according to a survey carried out by research experts Vanson Bourne on behalf of LogLogic, the leader in log management integration.

Source - Press Release

[From the article:

Restrictions on budget (24 per cent), time (14 per cent) and other priorities (41 per cent) were cited as the reasons why concerned IT directors didn’t have systems in place to track and trace data access.

Tools & Techniques

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20080403170151834

NFC Phones: Next Hacker Target

Thursday, April 03 2008 @ 05:01 PM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Other Privacy News

Small computerized devices that communicate wirelessly promise to make everyday life more comfortable and less technically challenging, but the technology might achieve just the opposite. Near field communication (NFC) in phones automatically exchange data with other phones and objects in their vicinity. These phones are the latest example of a new technology developed with a strong focus on potential applications, but without sufficient thought to security and privacy concerns.

Source - EETimes

[From the article:

NFC merges mobile phones with radio frequency identification (RFID) tags and promises easy access to information. The technology enables phones to communicate with RFID labels attached to objects, as well as with other NFC phones over short ranges, centimeters. [A simple hack should convert these into the “Ronco Price-o-matic” (seen on Saturday Night Live) allowing you to set whatever price you think is fair... Bob]

For my hacking students (Someone needs to educate users)

http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/018012.html

April 03, 2008

New FTC Videos Help Consumers Spot Phishing Scams

News release: "The Federal Trade Commission has released three 60-second videos to help alert consumers to phishing scams. Phishing uses deceptive spam to trick consumers into divulging sensitive or personal information, including credit card numbers and other financial data, through an email or a link to a “copycat” site. The goal of the videos is to offer practical, useful, and memorable messages. The videos are the newest tool on OnGuardOnline.gov, the agency’s multimedia initiative to help consumers be on guard against Internet fraud, secure their computers, and protect their personal information. The award-winning site features tips, articles, how-to videos, interactive quizzes, and tutorials in English and Spanish. The new videos also will be featured on YouTube and on the FTC Web site here."