Of all countries, one would assume that the UK knew how to be Big Brother. If you have 'false positives' are there a similar number of 'false negatives?'

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20081113152431434

UK: CRB database wrongly labels thousands as criminals

Thursday, November 13 2008 @ 03:24 PM EST Contributed by: PrivacyNews

More than 12,000 people have been wrongly branded criminals due to mistakes on their criminal records, the government has revealed.

A Parliamentary answer reveals that 12,225 people have disputed the results of a criminal record check and had their complaint upheld in the last five years. The number of complaints upheld has risen slightly - from 2,265 in 2004-2005 to 2,785 in 2007-2008 - but over the same time the number of records disclosed has risen from 2.4 million to 3.3 million.

Source - The Register Thanks to Brian Honan for the link.

Related Too difficult to determine who has a 'need to know?' Let everyone access the data.

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20081113181350553

UK: 'Deeply disturbing' privacy fears as 1m state staff could view child database

Thursday, November 13 2008 @ 06:13 PM EST Contributed by: PrivacyNews

Up to a million public sector workers could be allowed to access a Government database containing sensitive information on every child in England and Wales, it has emerged.

Critics say the figure is three times higher than ministers told Parliament, and raises further privacy concerns about the controversial ContactPoint system.

The database will contain the name, home address and school of all 11million children. It will also include information about their legal guardians.

Source - MailOnline

Not Big Brother, but certainly 'dumb spokesperson.'

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=2008111404511371

UK: Identity theft fears over stolen UPS laptop

Friday, November 14 2008 @ 04:51 AM EST Contributed by: PrivacyNews

A laptop containing the bank details and personal information of 8,500 Brits has been stolen in Italy.

The details - which include salaries, national insurance numbers and addresses - belonged to staff at courier firm UPS.

The laptop, which was stolen four weeks ago, was password protected.

Source - mirror.co.uk

[From the article:

Ups insisted there was no risk of fraud, but one employee said: "No one can know what repercussions this could have." [Statements like this do not inspire trust. Bob]

I would imagine Court Reporter laptops are stolen as frequently as those of any other profession.

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20081114044833151

OK: Tulsa Court Reporter's Computer Stolen

Friday, November 14 2008 @ 04:48 AM EST Contributed by: PrivacyNews

A single laptop computer now missing has Tulsa Police hunting for the thieves.

That computer belonged to a court reporter who had sensitive information on the laptop including social security numbers and medical records.

Source - FOX23.com

Let's hope this is bad reporting. What payroll clerk needs access to “secret databases?”

http://breachblog.com/2008/11/13/jrb.aspx?ref=rss

Identity theft ring hits 8,000 U.S. sailors and reservists

Date Reported: 11/06/08

Breach Description:

"Leak at Fort Worth base compromises identities of 8,000 military members." "A former U.S. Navy petty officer at Fort Worth's Joint Reserve Base accessed secret military databases and compromised the identities of 8,000 sailors and reservists, police said."

... "She worked in intelligence," [elsewhere in the story she is identified as a payroll clerk Bob] said Euless police Lt. John Williams. "She had access to all the bank information."

... Euless detectives investigated the ring for nearly two years, [Were they that good? Bob] along with the U.S. Secret Service and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.

Perhaps we need to replace this non-profit with another?

http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/13/1929213&from=rss

Non-Profit Org Claims Rights In Library Catalog Data

Posted by timothy on Thursday November 13, @02:48PM from the paging-dr-gracenote dept. Books The Almighty Buck

lamona writes

"The main source of the bibliographic records that are carried in library databases is a non-profit organization called OCLC. Over the weekend OCLC 'leaked' its new policy that claims contractual rights in the subsequent uses of the data, uses such as downloading book information into Zotero or other bibliographic software. The policy explicitly forbids any use that would compete with OCLC. This would essentially rule out the creation of free and open databases of library content, such as the Open Library and LibraryThing. The library blogosphere is up in arms . But can our right to say: "Twain, Mark. The adventures of Tom Sawyer" be saved?"