http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20081203154346498
FL: State agency put Social Security numbers of 250,000 job seekers online
Wednesday, December 03 2008 @ 03:43 PM EST Contributed by: PrivacyNews
The state Agency for Workforce Innovation blamed a "security breach" Wednesday for why it accidentally placed the names and Social Security numbers of 250,000 job-seekers on a "test server" that could have been accessed online.
The names and information were online for 19 days and removed in late October after the state Department of Revenue came across it during "routine work," officials said. The only common denominator among the names placed online was that they all got services over the last six years from one of the 81 Florida "career centers" that provide job-training and resources around the state.
Source - Orlando Sentinel Related - Agency for Workforce Innovation FAQ
[From the article:
“We are thoroughly investigating this matter and are making every effort to enhance the security of our computer systems.”
... "Certainly there is no Web site that is 100 percent secure. But we take very seriously protecting the public's privacy," he said. [Yet they have a “test server” that is Internet accessible? Bob]
"We don't have any reason to believe the information was accessed for unlawful purposes." [and no evidence that it was not accessed for unlawful purposes. Bob]
Another clueless management?
http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20081203190210573
MI: Stolen GISD laptop included fingerprints on 6,000 Genesee County teachers, school workers
Wednesday, December 03 2008 @ 07:02 PM EST Contributed by: PrivacyNews
A Dell laptop stolen from the intermediate school district had been used for background checks on about 6,000 school workers and included their fingerprints and some personal information.
But officials say the info is buried deep in the computer's hard drive [That's a new PR non sequitur to me. Bob] and doesn't contain anything that could be used to steal anyone's identity.
The laptop is one of three belonging to the Genesee Intermediate School District laptops that was used to transmit fingerprints to the Michigan State Police for state-required background checks of teachers, bus drivers and other school workers.
It also holds separate files that include their names, addresses, birthdates and race.
The laptop did not have Social Security numbers and the data was stored in files that require a password to be opened, said Thomas Svitkovich, GISD superintendent.
... The GISD reported the laptop stolen Nov. 3 but believe it may have been stolen as early as Sept. 4 from the Erwin L. Davis Education Center on Maple Avenue in Mundy Township.
Source - mlive.com
[From the article:
Why the three week delay? The district had to work with state police to match names with addresses for the stolen files, Svitkovich said. [Gibberish! Bob]
Are criminal cases moving into Federal courts while other litigation moves to state courts? What is driving this? (Easy wins for the Feds?)
http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20081204061928256
OH: Feds take ID theft case; local counts tossed
Thursday, December 04 2008 @ 06:19 AM EST Contributed by: PrivacyNews
With federal prosecutors in Ohio filing more than a dozen charges against an Indianapolis woman, prosecutors in Allen County moved to dismiss their 66 charges against her.
In January, Kimberly K. Foulks [aka Kimberly Snyder], 39, was stopped by Fort Wayne police on Interstate 69 for a lane violation and arrested on outstanding warrants. Inside her car, they found Ohio identification cards with different names, gift cards and checkbooks under different names.
Further investigation led to storage units in Fort Wayne and Indianapolis with altered birth certificates, more identifications, and merchandise such as DVDs, electronics and jewelry, according to court documents.
Source - Journal Gazette
Related. This “small scale” Identity Theft must be more widespread than I thought.
http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20081204061615617
GA: Suwanee auction uncovers ID theft
Thursday, December 04 2008 @ 06:16 AM EST Contributed by: PrivacyNews
A Barrow County couple may have unwittingly found evidence of a massive identity theft operation at a Suwanee auction Tuesday, police said.
The couple, who police did not identify, placed a winning bid of $10 for four boxes advertised as "household items" at a Suwanee storage business. Instead, the boxes revealed hundreds of stolen driver's licenses, fake credit cards and IDs, checkbooks, tax returns and other personal information, Suwanee police Sgt. Shane Edmisten said.
... The fake IDs are replicas of California licenses, while the real documents are mostly from Georgia, though it doesn't appear any belong to Gwinnett residents, Edmisten said.
Police worked Wednesday to track down the renter of Unit No. 1006 at a U-Store-It facility on Lawrenceville-Suwanee Road. No suspects have been named.
Source - Gwinnett Daily Post
“Ja, ve know many sings about you!”
http://www.cfnews13.com/News/Technology/2008/12/3/the_phone_that_feels_the_flu_before_you_do.html
The phone that feels the flu before you do
Wednesday, December 03, 2008 5:10:44 PM
... A maker of over-the-counter cold and flu remedies released a program this week for the T-Mobile G1, also known as the "Google phone," that warns the user how many people in an area are sneezing and shaking with winter viruses.
The "Zicam Cold & Flu Companion" will say, for instance, that 8 percent to 14 percent of the people in your ZIP code have respiratory illnesses, representing a "Moderate" risk level. To give germophobes and hypochondriacs even more of a thrill, it also says what symptoms are common, like coughing and sore throat.
Matrixx Initiatives Inc., the Arizona company that makes products under the Zicam brand, gets the information on disease levels from Surveillance Data Inc. -- which gets its data from polling health care providers and pharmacies.
Users can also ask the application about risk levels in other ZIP codes, so they can steer clear of, for instance, Atlanta, one of the five most infected cities in the nation right now, according to Zicam.
The "Companion" is available for free from the Android Marketplace, the repository of downloadable programs for the G1. Later this month, the program will be available for the iPhone, according to Matrixx.
Wait and see. We know what they said they didn't like, but that was from the perspective of the “loyal opposition.”
http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=200812031832269
Experts spell out privacy platform for next Congress
Wednesday, December 03 2008 @ 06:32 PM EST Contributed by: PrivacyNews
The Homeland Security Department's first chief privacy officer recommended today that the new Congress consider strengthening the nation's 34-year-old Privacy Act and a 2002 statute on electronic government services to uphold privacy and civil liberties safeguards for national security.
Source - nextgov
Related. On the other hand...
http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20081203183411285
UK: The Big Brother state – by stealth
Wednesday, December 03 2008 @ 06:34 PM EST Contributed by: PrivacyNews
Personal information detailing intimate aspects of the lives of every British citizen is to be handed over to government agencies under sweeping new powers. The measure, which will give ministers the right to allow all public bodies to exchange sensitive data with each other, is expected to be rushed through Parliament in a Bill to be published tomorrow.
The new legislation would deny MPs a full vote on such data-sharing. Instead, ministers could authorise the swapping of information between councils, the police, NHS trusts, the Inland Revenue, education authorities, the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority, the Department for Work and Pensions and other ministries.
Source - The Independent
[From the article:
Opponents of the move accused the Government of bringing in by stealth a data-sharing programme that exposed everyone to the dangers of a Big Brother state and one of the most intrusive personal databases in the world. The new law would remove the right to protection against misuse of information by thousands of unaccountable civil servants, they added.
... "The power will be exercised only in circumstances where the sharing of the information is in the public interest and proportionate to the impact on any person adversely affected by it." [Is it me, or is that an example of English as a foreign language? Are they saying, “We'll come down on you as hard as we need to?” Bob]
Related. If the Bobbies can't keep DNA data, perhaps they could store it in another database... After all: waste not, want not.
http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20081204055821740
UK: DNA database innocents win landmark European court ruling
Thursday, December 04 2008 @ 05:58 AM EST Contributed by: PrivacyNews
The police in England, Wales and Northern Ireland face having to wipe the profiles of nearly one million innocent people from the DNA database after a landmark European ruling.
Source - Telegraph Related - BBC
Related, Of course, we'd never do anything like that in this country.
http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20081204060659275
Local schools enlist MCLU in opposing student reporting to state
Thursday, December 04 2008 @ 06:06 AM EST Contributed by: PrivacyNews
Last June, the boards overseeing Camden-Rockport K-8 schools and Camden Hills Regional High School questioned why their administrators should release to the Maine Department of Education the names of students who have committed “incidents of prohibited behavior.”
The Five Town Community School District board also voted on June 20 to convince the DOE to abandon demanding such student names from all Maine school districts. Those names, board members agreed, should remain inside school walls, and less at risk from potential data breaches or policy changes.
This fall, the Maine School Administrative District 28 and Five Town CSD boards readdressed the issue, and after hearing again from the DOE that the reporting of the names remains mandatory, they contacted the Maine Civil Liberties Union for help.
Source - Village Soup
[From the article:
Until the last few years, the state did not ask for names, but with refinements in the DOE's data management system to further mesh with the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics, the submission of names became mandatory. The DOE justified the mandate, saying the name collection was purely for creating better aggregate level reporting. [Absurd on the face? We need more detail so we can summarize? Bob]
... After raising the issue, the boards ultimately agreed to comply with the reporting so as not to jeopardize state funding; but the two boards vowed to readdress the issue in the fall.
Related? You will love our operating system, or else?
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08%2F12%2F03%2F2033243&from=rss
Red Flag Linux Forced On Chinese Internet Cafes
Posted by timothy on Wednesday December 03, @04:12PM from the billions-and-billions-served dept. Government Linux
iamhigh writes
"Reports are popping up that Chinese Internet Cafes are being required to switch to Red Flag Linux. Red Flag is China's biggest Linux distro and recently received headlines for their Olympic Edition release. The regulations, effective Nov. 5th, are aimed at combating piracy and require only that cafes install either a legal version of Windows or Red Flag. However, Radio Free Asia says that cafes are being forced to install Red Flag even if they have legal versions of Windows. Obviously questions about spying and surveillance have arisen, with no comment from the Chinese Government."
In the spirit of “No good deed goes unpunished.” Thanks for the laugh, Gary!
http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202426435623
Lawyers' Personal Info Swiped in Burglary of Nonprofit
Mike McKee The Recorder December 3, 2008
Identity theft was on the mind of many of California's appellate lawyers Monday as word spread about the mid-November theft of a disk containing attorneys' names, Social Security numbers and other personal information from a Sacramento-based nonprofit law firm.
In a letter that arrived in most law offices just before the Thanksgiving holiday, the Central California Appellate Program -- which supplies lawyers for indigent appeals in Sacramento's 3rd District Court of Appeal and Fresno's 5th -- advised current and former panel members that the disk was in a safe [Not just the disk or a data on a laptop – these guys took the whole safe! Bob] stolen from an off-site storage facility on Nov. 15 or 16.
It is an easy package to offer. Is the price low enough to make corporation switch?
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10113197-92.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5
IBM offers a 'Microsoft-free' desktop
Posted by Steven Musil
IBM wants corporate customers to cut the cord with Microsoft.
The tech pioneer is launching a Linux-based collection of virtual desktop applications that run on a server without the need for desktop hardware--or Microsoft software, according to a report Wednesday evening on The Wall Street Journal's Web site. The Linux-based software package, which is available now, runs on a back-office server and is accessible to customers on thin clients, the paper reported.
The Virtual Linux Desktop ranges in price from $59 to $289 per user, depending on level of software and service desired, according to the report. IBM estimates the software package could save corporate customers up to $800 per user when compared with the cost of maintaining Microsoft's Vista operating system, Office suite, and collaboration tools, the newspaper said.
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