http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20081217083738489
UK: Burglars take barristers' details
Wednesday, December 17 2008 @ 08:36 AM EST Contributed by: PrivacyNews
The contact details and data records of all practising barristers in England and Wales have been stolen.
The data was taken during a burglary at the central London offices of the Bar Council, which is the professional body for barristers.
Details of direct debits and people who have complained about barristers, including witnesses, were also taken.
Source - BBC
Why I don't believe the press releases.
http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=2008121709444416
Duke employee charged with selling fake IDs
Wednesday, December 17 2008 @ 09:44 AM EST Contributed by: PrivacyNews
A biomedical research technician at Duke University is accused of supplying hundreds of fake IDs to college students with the aid of a computer stolen from the state Division of Motor Vehicles.
Wake ABC law enforcement officers arrested Robert Wayne Bullock, 23, Tuesday at his home in rural Orange County and charged him with selling false IDs. The officers found him in possession of the computer, which had been taken two years ago from the DMV office in Louisburg, said Lew Nuckles, chief of ABC law enforcement in Wake County.
... The IDs were made with the date of birth and holograms found on real driver's licenses issued by the state, he said.
Source - News&Observer
Comment: the original DMV breach was reported here. At the time, the News&Observer reported: "The motorist information is not easily accessible on the computer, and there is no evidence that it has been used, Howell said." Two years later, we find out that the data was certainly accessible to at least one person and that some of the information has, indeed, been used. -- Dissent.
Local, and a good example of bad (communications with) management? How many managers failed to notice extra people on their payroll?
http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20081217201452960
CO: Payroll chief accused of $3M theft from energy firm
Wednesday, December 17 2008 @ 08:14 PM EST Contributed by:PrivacyNews
A 34-year-old former payroll manager for a Denver energy company is facing charges alleging that she stole more than $3 million from the firm by inventing fake employees and having their pay deposited in accounts she controlled.
... According to an arrest warrant affidavit, Bundy was payroll manager for Ensign United States Drilling Inc. The theft took place between 2001 and this year, the affidavit alleges.
Bundy added nonexistent employees to the payroll, and arranged to have their wages direct-deposited to accounts that she set up, the affidavit alleges.
Source - Denver Business Journal
Note: I would have missed this one and written it off as insider theft, but Rob Douglas of InsideIDTheft.info kindly alerted me that a second story on 9News.com reported that she also used the identities of former employees. -- Dissent
[Cute little video on http://www.insideidtheft.info/default.aspx
We can't stop Political telemarketing, but at least they don't reverse the charges.
http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20081218052643599
Th: PM's SMS might violate privacy: consumer advocate
Thursday, December 18 2008 @ 05:26 AM EST Contributed by: PrivacyNews
Consumer advocate Saree Ongsomwang on Thursday reminded about the possible offence on the privacy after Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva chose to stay in touch with his constituents via text messaging.
Saree said under the telcommunication law, mobile phone operators are banned from releasing the list of subscribers without their consent.
She said Abhisit should opt to keep contacts with the people via television and other public communication outlets in order to avoid infringing on the consumer's right.
The Democrat Party should not place financial burden on mobile phone users, she said.
Democrat MP Korn Chatikavanij, tipped to become the finance minister, asked every mobile phone operator to transmit a text message to subscribers on Thursday.
Source - The Nation
The election nonsense continues...
http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20081218020804281
Ohio official in 'Joe the Plumber' flap resigns
Thursday, December 18 2008 @ 05:28 AM EST Contributed by: PrivacyNews
An Ohio agency director resigned Wednesday in the wake of a finding that she improperly used state computers to access personal information on the man who became known as "Joe the Plumber" during the presidential campaign.
Two other officials who were suspended from their positions for their role in the computer search will not be returning to their jobs, [Is that “spin speak” for “They were fired?” Bob] an agency spokeswoman said.
Department of Job and Family Services Director Helen Jones-Kelley said in a statement accompanying her resignation that she won't allow her reputation to be disparaged [Oops! Too late! Bob] and that she is concerned for her family's safety.
Source - Houston Chronicle
Making vast plans for security is worthless if you only have half-vast implementation. Like many government procedures, there is no connection between the strategic vision and the tactical implementation. (Think of this as installing a smoke alarm with no speaker...)
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08%2F12%2F18%2F0437246&from=rss
IRS Doesn't Check Cyberaudit Logs
Posted by samzenpus on Thursday December 18, @07:57AM from the check-your-work-twice dept. Security United States
An anonymous reader writes
"The US Internal Revenue Service's IT staff hasn't routinely checked its cybersecurity audit logs, according to a report released this week by the agency's inspector general's office. The report is not exactly flattering for the IRS. The report, with large chunks redacted, recommends the IRS allow independent review of audit logs and establish procedures to save audit logs. It also recommended that the IRS regularly test its Internet gateways for compliance with standard security configurations."
Simple but effective? Their survey is based on the limited information available from disclosures. The Attornies General in states that mandate reporting could do the same thing, easily.
http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20081218053309470
UK: Who’s been losing your data?
Thursday, December 18 2008 @ 05:33 AM EST Contributed by: PrivacyNews
You hand over your personal details to councils, hospitals, employers and businesses all the time. But these institutions don’t always keep that data safe. In fact, since HMRC lost its entire database of child benefit claimants last year, high profile data losses have hit the headlines with worrying regularity. But how does this affect you and your family? target="_blank">Click here to find out how likely it is that a government department or corporate entity has been losing your data recently.
Source - Open Rights Group
“Everyone is doing it!” If you can't get Congress to do it, first get someone else to do it so you can point to them and demand we “keep up.”
http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20081217133913785
International data protection agreement reached
Wednesday, December 17 2008 @ 01:39 PM EST Contributed by: PrivacyNews
Efforts to improve data protection and data sharing practices between the United States and the European Union took a significant step forward with the declaration of a new set of common principles late last week.
The French EU Presidency, the European Commission, and the U.S. Homeland Security, Justice and State departments agreed to a Statement on Information Sharing and Privacy and Personal Data Protection at a meeting in Washington. The statement marks new progress on a set of principles intended to advance data privacy and data sharing in law enforcement circles.
Source - FCW
[From the article:
A central component of the PNR agreement was a set of data protection principles that shield private companies and other countries from punishment for cooperating with antiterrorism data-gathering measures.
Do you suppose they only advertised in LA? Is this the next bandwagon for DAs to hop on?
http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20081217084026993
AT&T, T-Mobile settle over voicemail security advertising
Wednesday, December 17 2008 @ 08:40 AM EST Contributed by: PrivacyNews
AT&T and T-Mobile have agreed to pay fines to the Los Angeles District Attorney over claims they made that their voicemail systems were secure from hackers that turned out to be untrue. As part of a permanent injunction issued against the two companies last week, AT&T will pay $59,300 while T-Mobile will pay $25,000, and they have also agreed to stop advertising their systems as secure.
Source - Ars Technica
Be afraid, be very afraid! Can you say: “Blue screen of nuclear death?”
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08%2F12%2F18%2F006226&from=rss
British Royal Navy Submarines Now Run Windows
Posted by samzenpus on Thursday December 18, @03:53AM from the deep-blue-screen dept. Windows The Military Technology
meist3r writes
"On his Government blog, Microsoft's Ian McKenzie announced today that the Royal Navy was ahead of schedule for switching their nuclear submarines to a customized Microsoft Windows solution dubbed 'Submarine Command System Next Generation (SMCS NG)' which apparently consists of Windows 2000 network servers and XP workstations. In the article, it is claimed that this decision will save UK taxpayers £22m over the next ten years. The installation of the new system apparently took just 18 days on the HMS Vigilant. According to the BAE Systems press release from 2005, the overall cost of the rollout was £24.5m for all eleven nuclear submarines of the Vanguard, Trafalgar and Swiftsure classes. Talk about staying with the sinking ship."
The concept is interesting, but PS3s?
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08%2F12%2F17%2F2251232&from=rss
How To Build a Homebrew PS3 Cluster Supercomputer
Posted by timothy on Wednesday December 17, @06:18PM from the slot-a-tab-b dept. Supercomputing PlayStation (Games) Hardware
eldavojohn writes
"UMass Dartmouth Physics Professor Gaurav Khanna and UMass Dartmouth Principal Investigator Chris Poulin have created a step-by-step guide designed to show you how to build your own supercomputer for about $4,000. They are also hoping that by publishing this guide they will bring about a new kind of software development targeting this architecture & grid (I know a few failed NLP projects of my own that could use some new hardware). If this catches on for research institutions it may increase Sony's sales, but they might not be seeing the corresponding sale of games spike (where they make the most profit)."
For my Statistics classes (and others)
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/020098.html
December 17, 2008
Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2009
News release: "The U.S. Census Bureau released today the new Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2009. First published in 1878, “Uncle Sam’s Almanac” is a summary of statistics on a wide range of important topics, from A (aquaculture) to Z (zinc production). Whether one seeks numbers on biofuel or banking, foreign trade or foreign aid, cars or bars, there is no better one-stop shop for statistics... The 128th edition contains more than 1,400 tables of social, political and economic facts about our nation and the world. Among topics covered in the 49 new tables in this edition are the religious composition of our nation’s population, osteopathic physicians, online news consumption, expenditures for wildlife-related recreation and women in parliaments around the globe. Although the emphasis is on national-level statistics, some tables present state- and even city- and metropolitan-level data as well."
Something for the Computer Forensics class
http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08%2F12%2F17%2F167220&from=rss
Plethora of New User Space Filesystems For Mac OS X
Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday December 17, @11:46AM from the because-you-can dept. OS X Data Storage
DaringDan writes
"As part of the recent MacFUSE 2.0 release Amit Singh has added support for an insane number of filesystems on the Mac. This video from Google and this blog post pretty much explain everything in detail but to sum-up Singh has written a new filesystem called AncientFS which lets you mount a ton of UNIX file formats starting from the very first version of UNIX. Even more interesting is that they have also taken Linux kernel implementations of filesystems like ufs, sysv-fs, minix-fs and made them work in user-space on the Mac, which means its now possible to read disks from OSes like FreeBSD, Solaris and NeXT on OS X. ext2/ext3 don't seem to be on the list but apparently the source for everything is provided, so hopefully some enterprising soul can apply the same techniques to ext2. One of their demos even has the old UNIX kernel compiled directly on the Mac through the original PDP C compiler by somehow executing the PDP binaries on OS X!"
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