It is my contention that this can NOT become a case of Identity Theft. They should have no need to send those letters at all... Assuming the encryption is not trivial, it does not contain Personal Identifiable Information, it contains GIBBERISH!
http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20080729060158920
Stolen laptop had Busch employees' personal info
Tuesday, July 29 2008 @ 06:01 AM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews
It's a story that we've read countless times: a laptop containing personal information of current and former employees was stolen from a company's offices. This time the company was Anheuser-Busch. The computer contained Social Security numbers, home addresses and marital status, and information on employees' use of the company's employee assistance program, which offers counseling and referrals for work-related health issues, such as emotional distress or substance abuse.
But unlike stories we've read countless times, this time the data on the laptop were password-protected and encrypted, according to a statement from the company.
Source - Daily Press
The event was a long time (Memorial Day – years in Internet time) ago, yet it keeps making headlines.
http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20080729063907273
Exponent employees affected by Colt Express Outsourcing Services, Inc. burglary
Tuesday, July 29 2008 @ 06:39 AM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews
For those keeping track, add Exponent to the list of former Colt Express Outsourcing clients who learned that their data were on the computers stolen over Memorial Day weekend.
In a letter signed by Gregory P. Klein, Vice President Human Resources, the company has notified those affected that:
"Between October 1996 and December 2005, Colt provided certain benefits administration services to Exponent including health plan enrollment and administration services. Colt informed us that the computer equipment that was stolen likely contained your name, address, Social Security number, and birth date and those of the dependents you enrolled in our health plans during the period mentioned above."
The company has arranged free credit monitoring services and restoration services for two years for those affected Thanks to reader "Larry" on The Breach Blog for bringing this to our attention. I f others have received notification letters from other firms not yet reported on this site as having been affected, please email this site with a copy of the notification letter or a link to a press release. For reports on firms known to have been affected, click here..
Before you can secure sensitive data you have to know where it is hiding. Here are a few FREE tools for searching for SSN or Credit Card numbers, etc. Now you have no excuse!
http://filebox.vt.edu/users/rtilley/public/find_ssns/
Find_SSNs
Search files for U.S. Social Security Numbers and Credit Card Numbers
https://source.its.utexas.edu/groups/its-iso/projects/senf/
Senf: The Sensitive Number Finder ¶
http://www.cit.cornell.edu/security/tools/
Open-source Forensics Tools for Network and System Administrators
Does he mean “We should regulate neutrality” or “Eliminate my job?” (Pretty poor editorial, but likely to be quoted.)
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/29/006231&from=rss
FCC Commissioner Urges, Don't Regulate the Internet
Posted by kdawson on Monday July 28, @08:12PM from the horse-halfway-out-of-the-barn dept. The Internet Government
Brett Glass writes
"In an op-ed in today's Washington Post, FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell makes a case against government regulation of the Internet, opining that 'engineers, not politicians or bureaucrats, should solve engineering problems.' With state governments pressuring ISPs to pull the plug on Usenet, and a proposal now in play for a censored public Internet, McDowell may have a very good point."
McDowell is one of the two FCC commissioners who did not vote with the majority to punish Comcast for their BitTorrent throttling.
Related?
Jul 28 2008 9:34AM EDT
Timeline of the F.C.C. Investigation Into Comcast
Ain't technology wonnerful? It's only wrong 67% of the time! (What success percentage must it reach before we turn over control of weapons, a la Skynet or Colossus?)
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/29/0314208&from=rss
Video Surveillance Tech Detects Abnormal Activity
Posted by kdawson on Tuesday July 29, @02:50AM from the unblinking-eye dept.
Repton writes with news of a company, Behavioral Recognition Systems, that has received 16 patents on a new video surveillance application that can convert video images into machine-readable language, and then analyze them for anomalies that suggest suspicious behavior in the camera's field of view. The software can 'recognize' up to 300 objects and establish a baseline of activity. It should go on sale in September.
"...the BRS Labs technology will likely create a fair number of false positives, [the CEO] concedes. 'We think a three-to-one ratio of alerts to actual events is what the market will accept,' he says. 'We could be wrong.'"
Related?
http://www.killerstartups.com/Web-App-Tools/vocaroo-com-simple-online-voice-recorder
Vocaroo.com - Simple Online Voice Recorder
Vocaroo is a work of utter simplicity. It’s a voice recorder, nothing more nothing less. [but first it requests access to your camera and microphone. Do you suppose it will give them back? Bob]
It is amazing the ideas you can come up with over a few (too many) beers!
Flint, Mich., wants sponsors for police cameras
FLINT, Mich. - You've heard of adopt-a-highway programs — but how about adopting a police camera?
That's how the city of Flint, Mich., wants to cover the $420,000 cost of adding 14 surveillance cameras. It currently has just one of the cameras.
The city and a private security firm, Asset Protection Specialist, are looking for businesses and individuals willing to pay $30,000 to have their names or corporate logos placed on one of the pole-mounted boxes, which also feature a police shield and a flashing blue light.
So far — no takers.
Is Privacy a selling point?
http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20080728085351866
New Cuil search engine appears more privacy-friendly than Google
Monday, July 28 2008 @ 08:53 AM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews
Readers of PogoWasRight.org will see many headlines elsewhere today about how the person responsible for Google's search engine has set out to beat Google with a new search engine, Cuil.
Of particular note, check out Cuil's privacy policy , which is clearly linked from their home page:
Privacy is a hot topic these days, and we want you to feel totally comfortable using our service, so our privacy policy is very simple: when you search with Cuil, we do not collect any personally identifiable information, period. We have no idea who sends queries: not by name, not by IP address, and not by cookies (more on this later). Your search history is your business, not ours.
More precisely:
Logs
We do not keep logs of our users’ search activity.
Cookies
Cookies are small files on your computer that websites create to store user preferences, such as language settings. Each time you visit a Cuil page, your computer’s cookies automatically provide Cuil with your preferences. You can change or delete your cookies anytime via your Web browser options.
We do not record the information in your cookies on our servers; your browser sends your preferences to us with each search request. This way, we do not store any personal information about you on our servers.
[...]
Geek stuff, Good news and bad. from the comments.
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/28/1742222&from=rss
VMware ESXi Available For Free Starting Today
Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday July 28, @02:52PM from the free-always-sounds-better dept. Operating Systems IT
Mierdaan writes
"VMware's bare-metal hypervisor is available for free starting today. ESXi, which can either be installed or run from an embedded device available in certain servers, has a 32MB footprint and gives small businesses an easy way to get into the virtualization world, with easy upgrade paths to enterprise-level features such as (H)igh (A)vailability and (D)istributed (R)esource (S)cheduler. ESXi runs on most any hardware with a server-class disk controller, and previously retailed for $495. VMware is obviously shooting to prevent Microsoft's Hyper-V technology from gaining a foothold in the marketplace."
[From the comments:
This zdnet blogger [zdnet.com] already gave it a spin on some commodity-like hardware (which it seems to me there might be a few here who will be so inclined) and has a nice write-up of the results as well as some good tips on how to avoid some trouble spots for those not fortunate enough to be putting this on enterprise level hardware.
[From the EULA:
"3.9 Audit Rights. You will maintain accurate records as to your use of the Software as authorized by this Agreement, for at least two (2) years from the last day on which support and subscription services ("Services") expired for the applicable Software. VMware, or persons designated by VMware, will, at any time during the period when you are obliged to maintain such records, be entitled to inspect such records and your computing devices, in order to verify that the Software is used by you in accordance with the terms of this Agreement..."
I haven't been following this area of the music business. However, if my prediction that we won't need to store content (because it will all be available cheaper online) comes true, I think the prices quoted here are way too high.
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/7/avril-lavigne-s-2-million-youtube-payday-not-coming-soon
Avril Lavigne's $2 Million YouTube Payday: Not Coming Soon
Peter Kafka | July 27, 2008 9:15 AM
Conventional wisdom on YouTube: Eyeballs go in, but no money comes out. Google can't figure out how to sell ads against the videos it shows, so the people who make YouTube's videos aren't getting any money out of it.
Not true, says Terry McBride, who runs both a music label and management business under the umbrella of Nettwerk Music Group: There's plenty of cash. For instance, he told a London music conference this month, pop star Avril Lavigne, who Terry manages, is going to make a mint: ”There’s about a $2 million cheque waiting for her for all her YouTube plays.”
[From the second article:
McBride also said labels should be retailing digital tracks at a sweet spot of just $0.25, albums for $2: “You’d see a huge shift; we haven’t even given kids the choice to show us this tipping point yet ... the profit margin in the digital space is about 300 percent that inside the physical space.”
Takes guts...
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/07/new-riaa-lawsui.html
New RIAA Lawsuit Defense Tactic: Admit Liability, Challenge the Law
By David Kravets EmailJuly 28, 2008 | 6:53:00 PMCategories: RIAA Litigation
Here's a unique defense to a Recording Industry Association of America file sharing lawsuit: Admit liability and challenge the law under which you're being sued.
Toy or tool?
http://digg.com/software/Read_Faster_Way_Faster_No_really_I_mean_WAY_faster
Read Faster. Way Faster. No, really, I mean WAY faster.
spreeder.com — Extremely useful online speed reading java applet. Any text you copy and paste into it is "flashed" one word at time as fast as you'd like. (I use it offline too by saving it in IE7 as a "Web Archive .mht file" to my local hard drive so it works when I'm disconnected from the internet.) With this and Project Gutenberg you'll be in reading heaven.
For my website students
http://www.killerstartups.com/Web-App-Tools/textanim-com-create-your-own-animated-text
Textanim.com - Create Your Own Animated Text
Textanim is a tool that allows users to create their own animated text. Once the image is created, users can download it right to their own computer.
Ditto
http://www.killerstartups.com/Web20/goanimate-com-diy-cartoons
GoAnimate.com - DIY Cartoons
Think you can create the next Mickey Mouse? Have a creative itch and a talent for cartoons, animation, or drawing? Try GoAnimate. It's a new site that might help you get your creative juices flowing by letting you make your own animations. Sure, there are plenty of sites for making cartoons, but those generally fall short when it comes to options and features. With GoAnimate, instead of making a simple cartoon strip, you can actually choose from a variety of options. There are plenty of templates or you can create your very own. Characters are plentiful and completely customizable. You can even add your face or photo to a cartoon. [Our your favorite professor... Bob] Cartoons are shareable across a number of sites including Facebook. And the site is completely free.
Ditto Think there's no difference?
Test your web design in different browsers
They've got to get their officers out of those uniforms!
German police officers are mistaken for strippers
BERLIN - No one had ordered strippers for the 30th birthday party — but the two policemen who arrived after midnight to quiet the raucous celebration found themselves greeted by a round of applause.
Female partygoers in western Germany mistook the real-life officers for fake ones who entertain parties by peeling off enticing man-in-uniform outfits.
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