You thought it would be bad to have someone run up charges on your credit card. How would you like this on your medical records?

http://www.phiprivacy.net/?p=521

Jul-4-2008

ID fraud reported at hospital

Officials at South Coast Medical Center are still trying to figure out how a woman was admitted under a 72-hour psychiatric hold using another woman’s identity — and insurance card.

[...]

Kofl said it is the first known incident [it's the unknown that worry me... Bob] of insurance identity theft in the Adventist Health chain of 18 hospitals.

Full story - Coastline Pilot

[From the article: Hospital officials were shocked to learn the patient and the woman whose insurance was billed for the $13,000 hospital stay were not the same. [Almost as shocked as realizing they weren't going to be paid. Bob]

... The hospital had no way of knowing the woman was using another person’s insurance card, Kofl said.

“The patient had a valid insurance card [Perhaps “valid looking?” Bob] and the address matched what was in the system,” she said.

What goes around comes around?

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20080704093044920

Daily Mail publisher is red-faced after laptop with personal data is stolen

Friday, July 04 2008 @ 09:30 AM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews

Daily Mail publisher Associated Newspapers has admitted that a laptop containing financial and personal details of thousands of staff, suppliers and contributors has been stolen.

...Even those who no longer work for either Associated Newspapers, which also publishes the Mail on Sunday and the Evening Standard, and regional newspaper publisher Northcliffe Media have been affected and contacted.

... The letters from the Associated Newspapers group finance director, Simon Dyson, and his Northcliffe counterpart, Martyn Hindley, tell recipients that their "name, address, bank account number and bank sort code were the sensitive data lost" when the laptop was stolen last week.

Source - Guardian

So, can I legally install an anti-virus program that blocks, detects and/or removes it?

http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/04/1343214&from=rss

Bavarian Police Can Legally Place Trojans On PCs

Posted by kdawson on Friday July 04, @12:34PM from the trust-us-we-would-never-abuse-this-power dept. Government Privacy Security

An anonymous reader writes

"The Bavarian Parliament passed a law that allows Bavarian police to place 'Remote Forensic Software' (Google translation) on a suspect's computer as well as on the computers of a suspect's contacts. They may break into houses in secret to install the RFS if a remote installation is not possible; and while they are there a (physical) search is permitted too. The RFS may be used to read, delete, and alter data."

The translation says that RFSs may be used in cases of an "urgent threat to the existence or the security of the Federation or a country or physical, life or liberty of a person... Even where there is a reasonable assumptions on concrete preparatory acts for such serious offenses."

Strange that none of the defense lawyers paid as much attention to what was being blogged about this case as the Judge did.

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/04/1851218&from=rss

NC Judge Takes "A Fresh Look" At RIAA Subpoenas

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday July 04, @05:56PM from the doing-their-part dept. The Courts Education

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes

"When some North Carolina State students recently brought to the attention of the Court the apparent illegality of the RIAA's investigations by unlicensed investigators, they also caught the attention of the judges. After reading these new papers, District Judge Louise W. Flanagan, who admits that she's been routinely signing the RIAA's ex parte discovery orders in the past, has indicated that she is now going to take 'a fresh look' at the RIAA's tactics. She issued a stay of the subpoena, ordering NC State not to respond to it, and referred the motions to dismiss the cases to a Magistrate Judge for him to take that 'fresh look' at what has been going on."

Mot that anyone will ever read it...

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/04/google-changes-home-page-adding-link-to-privacy-policy/

Google Changes Home Page, Adding Link to Privacy Policy

By Saul Hansell UPDATED | 7/4, 10:07 AM

The word “privacy” now appears on Google’s home page, with a link to the company’s privacy policy.

With that one word, the Web search giant heads off the growing controversy over whether its previous practice ran afoul of a California law, the California Online Privacy Protection Act of 2003, which requires the operator of a commercial Web site that collects personal information to link to its privacy policy from its home page.

I see this as an interesting question for the White Hat club

http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/04/1247249&from=rss

Best Way To Get Back a Stolen Computer?

Posted by kdawson on Friday July 04, @10:26AM from the aiding-lawn-forcement dept. Social Networks

davidphogan74 writes

"I have some stolen computers checking in with a server we have (software pre-loaded), and I have full access to the systems. What's the best way to deal with this situation? The local police (to the theft) have been contacted several times and seem to be clueless. I personally have no financial interest in these computers, I just don't like atom-thieves. What's the best way to handle knowing the IPs, email addresses, MySpace sites, the Google login, etc. when working with law enforcement? The officer I spoke with (who genuinely seemed to care) didn't know an IP address from a mailing address, so I called others. Nobody cared. Anyone have any ideas?"

e-Discovery Even with the small amount of data listed here, and assuming reasonable compression, 12 terabytes seems small to me.... (Do you suppose they will print the log for them?)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/07/03/ST2008070304015.html

YouTube Ordered To Release User Data

Viacom Had Sought Access to Database In Copyright Battle

By Ellen Nakashima Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, July 4, 2008; Page D01

... On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Louis L. Stanton granted Viacom's request that YouTube release its 12-terabyte "logging" database -- a database that is larger than the Library of Congress's collection of about 10 million books, to Viacom. Every minute, 13 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube servers. The site logs hundreds of millions of views a week.

The database contains the unique login ID of the viewer, the time he began watching, the Internet Protocol, or IP, address of the user's computer and the identification of the video. That database is the only existing record of how often each video has been viewed during various time periods, the opinion said. Its data can recreate the number of views of a video for any particular day.