Understandable. We are a nation of snoops... (It could have been worse. They could have videoed the file and put it on Youtube)

http://www.phiprivacy.net/?p=96

UCLA workers snooped in Spears’ medical records

Charles Ornstein reports in the Los Angeles Times:

UCLA Medical Center is taking steps to fire at least 13 employees and has suspended at least six others for snooping in the confidential medical records of pop star Britney Spears, who was recently hospitalized in its psychiatric ward, a person familiar with the matter said today.

An additional six physicians also face discipline for peeking at her computerized records, the person said.

Wholesale snooping?

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20080314082902511

UT: Laptop with patient information stolen from University Health Care

Friday, March 14 2008 @ 08:29 AM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Breaches

Thousands of people are being cautioned to keep their eyes on their credit reports tonight. A laptop with names, Social Security numbers and personal health information was stolen from University Health Care in Salt Lake City.

The laptop was reported missing Feb. 25. University Health Care began mailing out letters to people affected by it this week.

... Some 4,800 patients are feeling that frustration tonight because their personal information was on a laptop stolen from a locked office. "In some cases, there were names and addresses of patients. In some cases, names and Social Security numbers, [and] in some cases, names and health policy information," Nelson said.

Source - KSL

Interesting (Look at about 12:45 on the video)

http://www.phiprivacy.net/?p=100

Mar-15-2008

IOM Project Survey Findings on Health Research and Privacy

From the 15th National HIPAA Summit, Dr. Alan Westin’s talk is now online for free viewing.

So perhaps there is a (peta)bit of disagreement?

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/03/law-checking-wsj-article-domestic-spying

Law-Checking WSJ Article on Domestic Spying

Posted by Kurt Opsahl March 10th, 2008

The Wall Street Journal's detailed article on domestic spying (Wall Street Journal, NSA's Domestic Spying Grows As Agency Sweeps Up Data (March 10, 2008), p. A1) provides critical detail and confirmation of the NSA's wholesale acquisition of domestic communications, and helps us understand the Administration's word games. It also shows that the Administration is relying upon erroneous views of electronic communications privacy law, including some that contradict the Department of Justice's own published interpretations.

The article contains an infobox listing material that "the NSA can look at without a judicial warrant." Contrary to the NSA's claim, information like email subject lines, internet searches and cellphone location information all require a warrant under law. Moreover, even where a "probable cause" warrant is not necessary, the NSA still needs to obtain an appropriate court order.

Couple this with the ban on drug testing student athletes and perhaps the pendulum is swinging back?

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20080314194904158

Court ruling limits employment drug testing

Friday, March 14 2008 @ 07:49 PM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Workplace Privacy

A city can't require all job applicants to be tested for narcotics and must instead show why drug use in a particular job would be dangerous, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.

The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled against the city of Woodburn, Ore., which argued it was entitled to maintain a drug-free workplace by requiring job candidates to be screened for drugs and alcohol.

The city was sued by Janet Lanier, whose job offer as a part-time page at the city library was withdrawn in 2004 when she refused a drug and alcohol test. A federal judge ruled the policy unconstitutional and awarded Lanier $12,400 in damages and $44,000 in legal fees, her lawyer said.

Source - San Francisco Chronicle Related - Court Opinion [pdf] h/t, The Canadian Privacy Law Blog

Forward this one to your CIO. (I may need to suspend my programmed trading)

http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/03/14/Just-patched-Excel-makes-calculation-mistakes_1.html?source=rss&url=http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/03/14/Just-patched-Excel-makes-calculation-mistakes_1.html

Just-patched Excel makes calculation mistakes

One of the patches issued Tuesday causes Excel to make incorrect calculations when a Real Time Data source is used

By Gregg Keizer, Computerworld March 14, 2008

... In a warning posted Thursday, Bill Sisk, security response communications manager, said that the fixes outlined in the MS08-014 bulletin "causes Microsoft Excel 2003 calculations to return an incorrect result when a Real Time Data source is used."

Tools & Techniques: For my Security class...

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/15/1242252&from=rss

Man-in-the-Middle Attack on MySpace with Cain

Posted by CmdrTaco on Saturday March 15, @09:00AM from the caught-with-yer-pants-down dept. Security The Internet IT

Slimjim100 writes

"Last year at ChicagoCon 2007, Brian Wilson gave a great talk entitled "Cain & Abel: Windows Can Hack, Too!" Although the presentation and audio recording of the talk can be downloaded from the ChicagoCon site at Library, I had totally forgotten to publish his videos. Just in case things didn't go as planned during the live event or his laptop crapped out on him, Brian made a video of the MITM attack he demonstrated using Cain. You get to see how Myspace and other social networking sites are not designed with security in mind."

For my graphic arts students. Import this, remove all the “Specimen” junk, and print me a few thousand copies...

http://www.moneyfactory.gov/newmoney/files/5_Materials/5_Glossy%20FRONT.pdf

A most interesting area. Encrypting your backups should keep them secure, so the big question is: How quickly do you need to recover when things head south?

http://www.midmarket.eweek.com/c/a/News/Online-Backup-by-the-Numbers/

Online Backup by the Numbers

DATE: 2008-03-14 By Karen D. Schwartz

Backing up data online can mean less hassle, more reliability and lower costs. Here are some things to consider when looking at online backup options.

... Good candidates are companies with RTOs (Recovery Time Objectives) of less than one day for a full recovery, little or no backup infrastructure, little or no IT staff to manage backup operations, and compliance or litigation support requirements that can't be easily met with the current set-up.

... Data protection—the very reason to consider online backup in the first place—also should be examined closely.

"You would think every online backup vendor keeps more than one backup of customers' data, but that's not always the case," Taneja said. "They have a backup of your data at their location, but do they have a system that backs their environment up as well? That's an important question to ask."

Youtube isn't surprising, but Fox is #2???

http://venturebeat.com/2008/03/14/comscore-youtube-dominance-grows/

Comscore: YouTube dominance grows

Anthony Ha March 14th, 2008

... Google (which owns YouTube) accounted for 34.3 percent of the online videos watched in January, up 1.7 percent from December, according to ComScore. Not surprisingly, YouTube videos made up almost all of that viewership — 96 percent, to be exact.

Google’s closest competitor was Fox Interactive Media, which accounted for 6 percent of videos watched. (See the the chart below.)

Of course I am bias free... No matter what those ignorant liberal democrats say...

http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/14/2048236&from=rss

Microsoft Developing News Sorting Based On Political Bias

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday March 14, @09:21PM from the next-measure-the-magnitude-of-political-affiliation dept. Microsoft Politics

wiredog writes

"The Washington Post is reporting that Microsoft is developing a program that classifies news stories according to whether liberal or conservative bloggers are linking to them and also measures the 'emotional intensity' based on the frequency of keywords in the blog posts."

If you would like to jump right to the tool you can check out "Blews" on the Microsoft site.

Economics: Why does the UK have the lead?

http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/017812.html

March 14, 2008

The Knowledge Economy: How Knowledge is Reshaping the Economic Life of Nations

News release: "The Work Foundation today publishes a report outlining its research thus far into the knowledge economy, 18 months into a three-year, £1.5 million research programme which will conclude in April 2009. The Knowledge Economy: How Knowledge is Reshaping the Economic Life of Nations argues that the phenomenon of the knowledge economy is driven by the demand for higher value-added goods and services created by more sophisticated, more discerning and better educated consumers and businesses. These pressures have interacted with both technology and globalisation, accelerating the process of change and enabling new and disruptive patterns of supplying consumers. The report covers:

• Work: knowledge-based industries and knowledge-related occupations have provided most of the new jobs over the past decade

• Trade: The UK has emerged as a world leader in trade in knowledge services with the biggest trade surplus of the major OECD economies. While the City of London and financial services remain important, two thirds of this trade comes from business services, high tech, and education and cultural services.

• Innovation: innovation in the knowledge economy comes from both the successful exploitation of R&D undertaken in the UK and overseas and from wider forms of innovation design and development, marketing and organisational change.

• Small firms: Provisional findings show that in the decade between 1995 and 2005, small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) have become much more concentrated in ‘knowledge intensive sectors’ - high skill, high tech sectors, such as accountancy, legal and consultancy services, architectural, engineering and technical services, and advertising. They have increased the numbers of people they employ by 17 per cent or 445,000 people.

• Offshore Outsourcing: Thus far, offshoring has had no measureable impact on knowledge economy jobs. Occupations theoretically at risk from offshore outsourcing continue to add numbers overall in the UK. Meanwhile, the trade in knowledge services remains overwhelmingly with richer countries, rather than developing nations such as India."

Related?

http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/017810.html

March 14, 2008

Celebrating James Madison and the Freedom of Information Act

DOJ Office of Information and Privacy: "On March 16 we celebrate the anniversary of James Madison's birthday. Madison, traditionally viewed as the Father of the United States Constitution, is also seen by many as a defender of open government. He once wrote, "[a] popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps, both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives." In a similar vein, he asserted that "the advancement and diffusion of knowledge" is "the only Guardian of true liberty." ... With Madison's views on the importance of an informed citizenry in mind, the occasion of James Madison's birthday is an excellent opportunity for federal agencies to review their FOIA operations to ensure that this vital government function is receiving the attention it deserves."

How to sound like you did the research?

http://www.killerstartups.com/Web-App-Tools/LexiSumcom---Browse-Wikipedia-as-you-Type/

LexiSum.com - Browse Wikipedia as you Type

Lexisum is a innovative new site that does something oddly useful. It browses Wikipedia as you type. So, let’s say you’re writing an article on fungus. Type in the word, ‘’Fungus’, and the wikipedia entry of fugus immediately pops up. It’s helpful if you’re writing a paper and need a little extra help. If you happened to forget a term, or didn’t fully understand what your professor meant by suzerainty, type it in and Wikipedia will help you out. Only a partial imprint of the article appears. If you want to read the full thing, click on a link below the article to bring you to the actual Wikipedia page.

... and it’s also available in nine languages.

http://www.lexisum.com/

...or perhaps Hustler is simply using the media hype for publicity?

http://www.accesshollywood.com/article/8771/prostitute-in-spitzer-scandal-scores-million-dollar-offer-to-bare-all/

Prostitute In Spitzer Scandal Scores Million Dollar Offer To Bare All

Mar 14, 2008 NEW YORK, New York -- ORIGINAL ARTICLE: Mar 14, 2008 14:34 PM

As her instant celebrity status continues to climb in the wake of the Eliot Spitzer prostitution scandal, Ashley Alexandra Dupre has now received a $1 million offer to bare it all.

Virgin clearly is...

http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9893529-7.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5

Virgin Mobile turns Spitzer woes into ad copy

Posted by Leslie Katz March 13, 2008 1:35 PM PDT

Virgin Mobile Canada knows how frustrated people can get with the lack of personalized service these days. Faster than Eliot Spitzer could say, "Um, oops," the company came out with a print ad that features the newly former New York governor, aka Client #9, musing as follows under a thought bubble: "I'm tired of being treated like a number..."

Of course, a lawyer would never stoop so low...

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20080315074610407

A Lawyer's Call for Privacy

Saturday, March 15 2008 @ 07:46 AM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Other Privacy News

.... Don D. Buchwald, working for $100 an hour as a court-appointed attorney for Ashley Dupré, the prostitute linked with Gov. Eliot Spitzer, defended his client’s privacy in this letter sent to the media. He says that Dupré was “thrust into the public glare at age 22 without her consent” and that “some publications, in violation of journalistic norms, have used the occasion as an excuse to exploit Dupré’s persona for commercial purposes by, among other things, displaying a montage of suggestive photographs of Ms. Dupré that has nothing to do with the Spitzer story,” and in “violation of her privacy rights and federal copyright law.”

Source - innovationnewspapers.com

Note -- copy of press release by lawyer to media reproduced in story.

See, you don't need an expensive laptop to compromise data... (How do they know this was created by the police? They admitted it in this case.)

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20080313065625230

UK: Police suffer memory loss

Thursday, March 13 2008 @ 06:56 AM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Breaches

A POLICE memory stick containing confidential information about offenders known to the police has been found by a member of the public.

The stick contained offenders' names, addresses and convictions and was found lying in a gutter outside a betting shop in Stevenage, according to a national newspaper.

It said a passer-by picked up the stick containing 330 megabytes of data, equivalent to 165,000 pages, and was able to access the confidential information at home, as it was not encrypted.

Source - The Comet

Interesting, no?

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20080314065715406

Is the Fifth Amendment Password Protected?

Friday, March 14 2008 @ 06:57 AM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: In the Courts

We are cautioned to create undecipherable passwords and personal identification numbers to protect our privacy, identity and property. On the flip side, these protections may be put to the test in a criminal investigation.

Until recently, the Fifth Amendment provided guidance in responding to demands for keys to lock boxes and combinations for safes. Now suspects are being asked to disclose information that will access computer hard drives and open encrypted files. How far will the Constitution protect the right against self-incrimination in light of increasingly sophisticated means of securing computer contents?

Source - Law.com

[From the article:

The judge concluded that revealing the password was the same as turning over the contents of the laptop. It was an act of production that became testimonial. Giving up the password would establish or confirm that the files existed, were within defendant's possession or control (custody) and authentic. The grand jury's subpoena put Boucher in the dicey position of potentially implicating himself, committing perjury or being held in contempt.

Pass this to your Security Manager

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/17/1628210&from=rss

A Look at the State of Wireless Security

Posted by Soulskill on Sun Feb 17, 2008 02:30 PM from the tubes-of-the-ether dept.

An anonymous reader brings us a whitepaper from Codenomicon which discusses the state and future of wireless security. They examine Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, and also take a preliminary look at WiMAX. The results are almost universally dismal; vulnerabilities were found in 90% of the tested devices[PDF]. The paper also looks at methods for vendors to preemptively block some types of threats. Quoting: "Despite boasts of hardened security measures, security researchers and black-hat hackers keep humiliating vendors. Security assessment of software by source code auditing is expensive and laborious. There are only a few methods for security analysis without access to the source code, and they are usually limited in scope. This may be one reason why many major software vendors have been stuck randomly fixing vulnerabilities that have been found and providing countless patches to their clients to keep the systems protected."

Ditto

http://nvd.nist.gov/

National Vulnerability Database Version 2.1

NVD is the U.S. government repository of standards based vulnerability management data represented using the Security Content Automation Protocol (SCAP). This data enables automation of vulnerability management, security measurement, and compliance. NVD includes databases of security checklists, security related software flaws, misconfigurations, product names, and impact metrics. NVD supports the Information Security Automation Program (ISAP).

Ditto?

http://www.modsecurity.org/blog/archives/2008/02/web_hacking_inc.html

Web Hacking Incidents Database Annual Report for 2007

Posted by ofer on February 17, 2008.

Breach Labs which sponsors WHID has issued an analysis of the Web Hacking landscape in 2007 based on the incidents recorded at WHID. It took some time as we added the new attributes introduced lately to all 2007 incidents and mined the data to find the juicy stuff:

This won't worry my readers as most have loyalty cards issued in the name of a certain DU Law School professor. It probably will confuse Kroger – he buys thousands of dollars worth of groceries in dozens of stores around the state...

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20080313070738768

Online Coupons Tied To Loyalty Cards Raise Privacy Concerns

Thursday, March 13 2008 @ 07:07 AM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Businesses & Privacy

AOL IS EXPECTED TO ANNOUNCE today a free consumer service that ties online coupons to loyalty cards, and privacy experts are less than pleased. However, supporters say that while the cards record purchases and shopping habits, the technology helps marketers focus campaigns on products that shoppers really need.

The Kroger Co. [King Soopers in Colorado Bob] becomes the first to sign up for AOL's Shortcuts. The grocery chain will offer the service at 2,481 stores--such as Kroger, Ralphs, King Soopers and Fry's--in 31 states across the country. General Mills signed on to offer coupons for Cheerios, Green Giant and Yoplait beginning today. Kimberly-Clark and Kraft will begin offering discounts on items by the end of the month.

Source - MediaPost

This sounds like fun!

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20080313132816926

Computer searches under F.R.C.P. 34(a) by private litigants; a Fourth Amendment issue?

Thursday, March 13 2008 @ 01:28 PM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: In the Courts

Under the 2006 amendments to F.R.C.P. 34(a), it is now possible in a civil case for a litigant to get access to an opponent's computer or a computer network to conduct their own search for electronic evidence if certain standards are met. See Nolan M. Goldberg, Is Your Data Wide Open to Your Opponent?, in the NLJ.

Source - FourthAmendment.com

Will this increase Steroid use?

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20080313174031688

WA high court says random school drug testing unconstitutional

Thursday, March 13 2008 @ 05:40 PM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Minors & Students

The state Supreme Court ruled Thursday that random drug testing of student athletes is unconstitutional, finding that each has "a genuine and fundamental privacy interest in controlling his or her own bodily functions."

The court ruled unanimously in favor of some parents and students in the lower Columbia River town of Cathlamet who were fighting the tiny Wahkiakum School District's policy of random urine tests of middle school and high school student athletes.

The high court wrote, "we can conceive of no way to draw a principled line permitting drug testing only student athletes."

Source - Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Related - FourthAmendment.com

How the law is enforced...

http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/017806.html

March 13, 2008

DOJ OIG: A Review of the FBI’s Use of Section 215 Orders for Business Records

Department of Justice Office of Inspector General: A Review of the FBI’s Use of Section 215 Orders for Business Records in 2006, March 2008, Unclassified (99 pages, PDF)

• Related postings on Section 215 of the Patriot Act

Ditto

http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/017805.html

March 13, 2008

DOJ OIG: A Review of the FBI’s Use of National Security Letters

Department of Justice Office of Inspector General: A Review of the FBI’s Use of National Security Letters: Assessment of Corrective Actions and Examination of NSL Usage in 2006, March 2008, Unclassified, (187 pages, PDF)

• Related postings on National Security Letters

Quotable (but weird) statistics?

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20080313065123602

Business responsible for protecting 85% of world's data

Thursday, March 13 2008 @ 06:51 AM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Businesses & Privacy

More information is now created online about people, rather than by those individuals themselves, according to a study from storage specialist EMC.

The supplier calls the volume of online data referring to a specific person their “digital shadow". This footprint will often consist of details uploaded by a user themselves, but the presence of financial records, captured security images and web surfing histories are becoming increasingly significant.

And while 70 per cent of the digital world is created by individuals, the responsibility for protecting and maintaining 85 per cent of this information lies with businesses.

Source - iwr

A valuable new resource?

http://techdirt.com/articles/20080313/061405533.shtml

USENIX To Free Its Papers

from the open-science dept

Matt Blaze points out that USENIX, one of the world's most important computer science conferences, has decided to make all of its papers and proceedings freely available to the public immediately upon publication. Blaze is right that this is a great development. In the past, when paper distribution was the norm, it was unavoidable that academic publishers would charge money to cover the costs of printing and distributing the papers they published. But the web has made these costs close to zero. And given that the authors generally donate their papers to journals and conferences free of charge, and that authors want their papers to be read as widely as possible, it seems a little unreasonable for those conferences to turn around and charge money for web access to those same papers. This is especially true because, while most journals and conferences still print paper copies of their publications, scholars increasingly prefer the convenience of downloading papers from the web and printing them on demand. It seems especially perverse to cripple a cheap and convenient distribution mechanism in order to prop up an outdated one that is increasingly falling into disuse. The USENIX announcement is the latest sign of growing momentum for free online publication of scientific papers. While we shouldn't expect it to happen overnight, it's only a matter of time before free, web-based publication of scientific papers is the norm, rather than a news-making exception.

[...and from F-Secure:

All Usenix conference proceedings can be found at:

http://www.usenix.org/publications/library/proceedings/

Also a new resource...

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/book-info-where-you-need-it-when-you.html

Book info where you need it, when you need it

3/13/2008 10:10:00 AM

Posted by Frances Haugen, Associate Product Manager and Matthew Gray, Software Engineer, Book Search

Here at Google Book Search we love books. To share this love of books (and the tremendous amount of information we've accumulated about them), today we've released a new API that lets you link easily to any of our books. Web developers can use the Books Viewability API to quickly find out a book's viewability on Google Book Search and, in an automated fashion, embed a link to that book in Google Book Search on their own sites.

As an example of the API in use, check out the Deschutes Public Library in Oregon, which has added a link to "Preview this book at Google" next to the listings in their library catalog. This enables Deschutes readers to preview a book immediately via Google Book Search so that they can then make a better decision about whether they'd like to buy the book, borrow it from a library or whether this book wasn't really the book they were looking for.

More on the cost of a security breach...

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20080312192600690

(follow-up) Certegy offers deal to ID theft victims

Wednesday, March 12 2008 @ 07:26 PM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Breaches

Certegy Check Services notified millions of Americans last fall that a rogue employee had stolen and sold their personal financial information. Now the St. Petersburg company is preparing to unleash some more bad news: a proposed legal settlement that some critics say will do little to fight identity theft.

The preliminary deal between Certegy and class-action attorneys, currently under review by U.S. District Court Judge Steven D. Merryday in Tampa, would offer partial relief to some of the 8.4-million Americans - including 460,000 Floridians - whose data were methodically stolen over a five-year period. Among the benefits:

- Credit monitoring. [...]

- Bank account monitoring. [...]

- Identity-theft reimbursement. [...]

- Fee reimbursement. [...]

- Heightened security. [...]

"It is an excellent (settlement), providing valuable and important benefits for class members," plaintiffs' attorneys wrote in a court filing. But privacy and data-security experts contacted Tuesday disagreed.

... Lillie Coney, associate director of the nonprofit Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C., said the settlement "makes you wonder who represented the consumers."

Source - St. Petersburg Times

New legal term?

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20080312210445421

Ph: Internet new battlefield for citizens’ right to privacy

Wednesday, March 12 2008 @ 09:04 PM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Non-U.S. News

Chief Justice Reynato Puno Wednesday justified the adoption by the Supreme Court of the writ of habeas data last month, saying that the Internet age had opened a new battlefield for citizens fighting to protect their right to privacy.

Speaking at a forum hosted by the National Union of People’s Lawyers in Quezon City, Puno stressed that computer technology continued to erode personal privacy and diminished a person’s ability to control the flow of information.

“There is, therefore, a pressing need to provide for judicial remedies that would allow the summary hearing of the unlawful use of data ... and to remedy violations of the right to privacy,” he said.

Source - Inquirer.net

You don't suppose this has anything to do with the rash of laptop thefts?

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20080312114523217

Dutch interior affairs minister says widely used security pass can be hacked

Wednesday, March 12 2008 @ 11:45 AM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Non-U.S. News

The Dutch interior affairs minister said Wednesday that a computer chip widely used in security cards in the Netherlands and beyond can easily be hacked.

The "Mifare" chip technology is owned and licensed by NXP Semiconductors and is frequently used in public transport systems such as London's "Oyster" card. It is also used by corporations and governments in "swipe" access cards.

Source - The Age

Two bad decisions in Oklahoma? First, cutting off access via the Court's site wont cut of access elsewhere...

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20080312123837988

OK: Court rules cut off online access to records

Wednesday, March 12 2008 @ 12:38 PM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: In the Courts

The Oklahoma Supreme Court has adopted rules cutting off public access to court records now available on the Internet.

When the rules go into effect on June 10, online access to court documents in the Supreme Court and district courts would be limited to court dockets only.

"The individual pleadings and other recorded documents filed of record in state court actions shall not be publicly displayed on the Internet," according to an order signed by Chief Justice James R. Winchester and four other justices.

The order, released on Tuesday, described the new rules as an effort to balance the rights of privacy of individuals and public access.

Source - The Norman Transcript

This one opens the door to entrepreneurs who sell those “upside-down” tripods that let you point your camera up from ground level without getting that crick in your back...

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20080312122047993

OK: Court Drops Case of 'Peeping Tom' in Target; Says Victim Was Not in Private Place

Wednesday, March 12 2008 @ 12:20 PM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: In the Courts

A man accused of using a camera to take pictures under the skirt of an unsuspecting 16-year-old girl at a Tulsa store did not commit a crime, a state appeals court has ruled.

The state Court of Criminal Appeals voted 4-1 in favor of Riccardo Gino Ferrante, who was arrested in 2006 for situating a camera underneath the girl's skirt at a Target store and taking photographs.

Ferrante, now 34, was charged under a "Peeping Tom" statute that requires the victim to be "in a place where there is a right to a reasonable expectation of privacy." Testimony indicated he followed the girl, knelt down behind her and placed the camera under her skirt.

In January 2007, Tulsa County District Judge Tom Gillert ordered Ferrante's felony charge dismissed. That was based upon a determination that "the person photographed was not in a place where she had a reasonable expectation of privacy," according to the appellate ruling issued last week.

Source - MyFox Toledo

Could be an interesting read, if I didn't expect a full background check of every reader...

http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/12/1427252&from=rss

Air Force Cyber Command General Answers Slashdot Questions

Posted by Roblimo on Wednesday March 12, @11:41AM from the 30-pushups-and-50-lines-of-code-before-breakfast dept.

Here are the answers to your questions for Major General William T. Lord, who runs the just-getting-off-the ground Air Force Cyber Command. Before you ask: yes, his answers were checked by both PR and security people. Also, please note that this interview is a "first," in that Generals don't typically take questions from random people on forums like Slashdot, and that it is being watched all the way up the chain of command into the Pentagon. Many big-wigs will read what you post here -- and a lot of them are interested in what you say and may even use your suggestions to help set future recruiting and operational policies. A special "thank you" goes to Maj. Gen. Lord for participating in this experiment, along with kudos to the (necessarily anonymous) people who helped us arrange this interview.

Isn't this illogical on the face? Are they saying that the digital information (for example) that routes an e-mail to its destination is not retained? Because clearly it exist on storage at the time of creation (and until it is flagged for deletion)

http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/03/12/Data-creation-outstrips-storage-for-the-first-time_1.html?source=rss&url=http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/03/12/Data-creation-outstrips-storage-for-the-first-time_1.html

Data creation outstrips storage for the first time

A new IDC report shows that data is being created at a faster rate than previously thought, and yearly data production is exceeding available storage space

By Jon Brodkin, Network World March 12, 2008

Digital information is being created at a faster pace than previously thought, and for the first time, the amount of digital information created each year has exceeded the world's available storage space, according to a new IDC report.

This sounds like a great research paper for my e-commerce class... Okay, maybe not.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/S/SPITZER_HIGH_TECH_PROSTITUTION?SITE=VALYD&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Prostitution Advances in a Wired World

By HILLARY RHODES Associated Press Writer Mar 12, 11:09 AM EDT

It may be the world's oldest profession, but prostitution is using some 21st-century tricks.

The prostitution scandal involving New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer lays bare some of the inner workings of modern-day sex work: text messaging to clock in the client, electronic fund transfers, a Web site featuring color photos, prices and rankings.

There's always been a distinction between indoor and street-level prostitution, and advances in technology have increasingly separated the two, said Ronald Weitzer, author of "Sex for Sale: Prostitution, Pornography and the Sex Industry."

Not only can prostitutes and escort services now run more efficient businesses, but they can leverage word-of-mouth advertising in new ways to build their brands and troll for clients. Online social communities built around the escort and sex worker industries can solidify customer loyalty. [See, you can't talk about sex without automatically generating puns... Bob]

... "If we didn't have so many clients, we wouldn't be prostitutes." [Best quote in the article Bob]

Related? I'm sure you'll want to add this to your “Favorite Sites” list...

http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9892733-7.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5

March 12, 2008 5:45 PM PDT

Meet Spitzer's 'Kristen' on MySpace

Posted by Steven Musil

It's probably a safe bet that you won't find Eliot Spitzer listed among "Kristen's" friends on MySpace, even though the alleged prostitute in the sex scandal seems to have quite a few.

... Thanks to her MySpace page, we have a chance to meet "Kristen," a 22-year-old aspiring musician whose real name was revealed by the New York Times as Ashley Alexandra Dupre.

Is this a big deal?

http://ralphlosey.wordpress.com/2008/03/10/sanctions-have-been-lifted-against-the-qualcomm-six-and-a-new-trial-ordered-where-they-may-now-speak-freely-to-defend-themselves/

Sanctions Have Been Lifted Against the “Qualcomm Six” and a New Trial Ordered Where They May Now Speak Freely to Defend Themselves

Just when you thought the Qualcomm case was finally over, it’s back with a vengeance. In an Order dated March 5, 2007, Judge Rudi Brewster vacated Magistrate Barbara Major’s Sanctions Order of January 8, 2007, but, as will be explained, the Sanctions Order was only vacated as to the attorneys sanctioned, and not as to Qualcomm. This may seem like a bad deal for Qualcomm, but actually it is a great result for them.

Use it before we lose it...

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/crgslst_the_endangered_sexy_craigslist_search_tool.php

Crgslst: The Endangered, Sexy Craigslist Search Tool

Written by Marshall Kirkpatrick / March 12, 2008 12:51 PM

Denver, Colorado based Superhero.es has built crgslst, a very slick multi-city search tool for Craigslist. Craigslist itself doesn't offer a multi-search service. By combining the publicly available RSS feeds from Craigslist with AJAX, crgslst fills this need "so fast, we left the vowels behind."

Unfortunately, crgslst may be in violation of the Craigslist terms of use and could face the same shutdown that other similar projects have in the past. This situation brings up a number of questions about intellectual property, RSS and mashups.

Nothing specific to blogging, so I guess this isn't a not-so-subtle hint...

http://education-portal.com/articles/10_Universities_Offering_Free_Writing_Courses_Online.html

10 Universities Offering Free Writing Courses Online

Whether you are currently writing professionally or are looking to break into the field, formal writing courses can help you to hone your skills. If you don't have the money or the time for campus-based courses, there are plenty of universities offering free writing courses online.

...and I'd never put up just one list...

http://lifehacker.com/336650/ten-universities-with-free-online-courses

Ten Universities with Free Online Courses

The web has democratized a lot of things since its birth, including the learning previously available only with a hefty tuition check. College site Education Portal has a handy list of the colleges that offer the most comprehensive course material online, including open-course trailblazers like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Tufts University, and programs like Stanford's lecture podcasts on iTunes U. You can't get a sheepskin for free, but you can further your knowledge and training for less than even the cost of a book. For way more college-based free learning, check out Wendy's comprehensive guide to the .edu underground.

Universities With the Best Free Online Courses

...as luck would have it, I've found yet another...

http://www.dumblittleman.com/2008/03/30-useful-websites-you-probably-didnt.html

30+ Useful Websites You Probably Didn't Know About

Posted on 3/12/2008

[An example:

Search Public Records. Links to over 41,000 searchable public record databases. United States, Canada, Australia, and Europe.

This was originally reported as 3,000 names. In almost all circumstances that number grows.

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20080311190646316

(update) 40,000 names, Social Security numbers on stolen computer

Tuesday, March 11 2008 @ 07:06 PM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Breaches

FULLERTON Police today filed possession of stolen property charges against a prison parolee who was arrested for having a computer – with more than 40,000 names, addresses and Social Security numbers of California residents, [bad writing Bob] Sgt. Linda King said.

Todd Irvine, 43, was taken into custody after Fullerton detectives served a search warrant at his La Habra residence in the 700 block of La Serna Avenue.

The original window-smash-style commercial burglary of Systematic Automation Inc., a data processing firm in Fullerton, allegedly occurred on Feb. 11, King said. The suspect was arrested Friday.

The firm prints individualized annual statements customized for employees with a summary of their health and other employee benefits. Nineteen companies, Systematic Automation customers, had employee information stored on the stolen hard drive.

Source - ocregister

[From the article:

Fullerton detectives learned the stolen computer had been accessing the Internet. Detectives located an IP address for the computer on La Serna Avenue in La Habra. [Suggesting the laptop had some “phone home” software installed... Bob]

When is a laptop theft more than a laptop theft? (and can anyone ethically assume otherwise?)

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=2008031119580664

(follow-up) UK: MoD confirms data of 63,000 recruits at risk

Tuesday, March 11 2008 @ 07:58 PM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Breaches

MORE than 63,000 potential recruits whose names, addresses, passport numbers and other personal details were on a Ministry of Defence laptop stolen in Birmingham in January went on to serve in the forces and could now be prime terrorist targets, The Herald has learned.

The revelation, in the wake of one foiled Islamic extremist plot to abduct and murder a British soldier in the same city, shows that more than 10% of the 600,000 named on the laptop's hard-drive [Aren't they all at risk? Bob] subsequently enlisted, although the MoD says it does not have information to hand on how many are still in uniform.

... The MoD said yesterday there is no evidence that any of the bank, national insurance, passport or home address details on any of these databases has since been used for identity-theft criminal activity or by extremists seeking "soft" targets.

Emergency telephone numbers have been issued to affected service personnel for use if they suspect anyone is shadowing them or their families.

Source - The Herald Related - 11,000 military ID cards lost or stolen

[From the Article:

The missing Birmingham database dates back to 1997 and is one of three military laptops containing potentially damaging personal details stolen since 2005.

The MoD delayed telling thousands of RAF and Royal Navy servicemen and women that their personal details had been compromised by the theft of a laptop in Manchester two years ago because it believed the hard-drive was encrypted.

Tools & Techniques (Also says some interesting things about risk...)

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/11/1616220&from=rss

Casino Insider Tells (Almost) All About Security

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday March 11, @01:02PM from the tech-of-the-gambling-floor dept. Security Technology

An anonymous reader writes

"ComputerWorld has up a story on casino security technology, exploring the world of facial recognition technology and various other systems in casinos such as the Bellagio, Treasure Island, and Beau Rivage. Industry veteran Jeff Jonas reveals some of the secret scams he learned from the casino industry such as the infinite hundred dollar bill, the hollowed out chip cup, the palm (trading cards), the specialty code (inserted by rogue programmer into video poker machine) and the cameraman, as well as detailing how casinos strike back against fraudsters and cheats.'"

[From the article:

"They didn't detect this as it happened," Jonas said. "Most of the videos the casinos collect are just used forensically. When the table loses a quarter of a million dollars they go back and replay it nice and slow, see that little piece of video, and it's time to make some calls. In the old days it was the kneecaps, but those were the old, old days." [Video surveillance is rarely preventative. Bob]

... The infinite hundred-dollar bill: One team took US$1.2 million off a casino in two weeks when it discovered that a new hundred-dollar bill could be fed into a certain slot machine and, if you hit a button at just the right time, the machine would give the player US$100 worth of credit while spitting the actual US$100 bill right back into the player's hands. [My kind of hack Bob]

Find 'em, kill 'em (What else is there?)

http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/017784.html

March 11, 2008

Air Force Releases Strategic Vision for Cyber Command

News release: "Because warfighters rely on cyberspace to conduct the command and control of its forces, officials have outlined the strategic vision for the new Air Force Cyber Command. "Mastery of cyberspace is essential to America's national security," said Maj. Gen. William T. Lord, AFCYBER (provisional) commander who's charged with bringing the command to operational status later this fall... He said the Air Force Cyber Command Strategic Vision lays the foundation for the work that is ahead and postures the command to be fully operational in 2009. The document also details the meaning behind its vision statement: "Secure Our Nation by Emplying World-Class Cyberspace Capabilities to Control Cyberspace, Create Integrated Global Effects and Deliver Sovereign Options."

Related (Technologies evolve, governments react)

http://techdirt.com/articles/20080304/164039436.shtml

Chinese Going Off The Official Telco System To Call Taiwan

from the time-for-the-great-voice-firewall dept

Paul Kedrosky points us to the news that, for the first time in 11 years, the "official" volume of phone calls from China to Taiwan has dropped rather significantly. Both the Digitimes report and Kedrosky suspect (reasonably) that this shows how many Chinese are jumping to use services like Skype to make these calls. Skype has long had a popular following in China, so this shouldn't be a huge surprise -- but it does make you wonder if the Chinese government will follow the path of various countries like Bangladesh, Belarus, Namibia and Jordan in banning Skype. We've already seen some experiments in China with blocking or banning certain types of calls. If the government feels that too many people are using these services, don't be surprised to see a wider ban enacted.

Related

http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/03/12/BlackBerry-under-security-scrutiny-in-India_1.html?source=rss&url=http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/03/12/BlackBerry-under-security-scrutiny-in-India_1.html

BlackBerry under security scrutiny in India

Government in the region is demanding access to encryption algorithms, messages on its service

By John Ribeiro, IDG News Service March 12, 2008

Indian government officials, telecommunications service providers, and executives of Research in Motion (RIM) are expected to meet on Friday to work out a solution to demands from the Indian government that it should have access to, and the ability to intercept, mails sent over RIM's BlackBerry service, according to a report on Wednesday in an Indian newspaper, Business Standard.

Related (Of course, we also do this to ourselves... Think of this as outsourcing record keeping to Google?)

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1720932,00.html

How Google Earth Ate Our Town

Monday, Mar. 10, 2008 By ROB SHAW

... The city's planning department has, over the past five years, steadily fed Google a wealth of information about its buildings, property lines, utilities and streets. The result is earth.nanaimo.ca, a clearinghouse of city data viewed through the robust and freely available Google Earth 3D mapping program. The site sorts and maps every business, from restaurants to car dealers, while a click of the mouse brings up the lot size for every property in the city, including the building permit number and zoning history.

Now your dossier is much more complete...

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20080311115203764

Google wins Commission approval, closes DoubleClick deal

Tuesday, March 11 2008 @ 11:52 AM EDT
Contributed by: PrivacyNews
News Section: Businesses & Privacy

Google's acquisition of online advertising firm DoubleClick has been passed by European competition regulators and has been completed. The deal had already been passed by competition authorities in the US.

The European Commission has more stringent competition rules than US authorities but it has said that the merger is permissible because Google and DoubleClick are not direct competitors and there is enough competition in the market for online advertising services.

Google confirmed that the deal has now been completed.

Source - Out-Law.com

Related - C|net

Don't forget to back it all up!

http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/12/1234228&from=rss

Stored Data to Exceed 1.8 Zettabytes by 2011

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday March 12, @08:44AM from the less-than-eighty-percent-porn dept. Data Storage IT

jcatcw writes

"By 2011, there will be 1.8 zettabytes of electronic data stored in 20 quadrillion files, packets or other containers because of, among other things, the massive growth rate of social networks, and digital equipment such as cameras, cell phones and televisions, according to a new study by IDC. Data is growing by a factor of 10 every five years. According to John Gantz, IDC's lead analyst, "at some point in the life of every file, or bit or packet, 85% of that information somewhere goes through a corporate computer, website, network or asset," meaning any given corporation becomes responsible for protecting large amounts of data that it and its customers may not have created. The study, which coincided with the launch of a " digital footprint" calculator, also found that as the world changes over to digital televisions, analog sets and obsolete set-top boxes and DVDs "will be heaped on the waste piles, which will double by 2011.""

There has always been an assumption that music and math were related...

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/12/0141202&from=rss

The Geometry of Music

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday March 12, @05:26AM from the fantasia-with-strings dept.

An anonymous reader notes a Time.com profile of Princeton University music theorist Dmitri Tymoczko, who has applied some string-theory math to the study of music and found that all possible chordal music can be represented in a higher-dimensional space. His research was published last year in Science — it was the first paper on music theory they ever ran. The paper and background material, including movies, can be viewed at Tymoczko's site.

I'm not sure if this is an historical analysis or just a cheap bid to sell magazines...

http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/politics/2008/03/11/a-timeline-of-politicians-and-prostitutes.html

A Timeline of Politicians and Prostitutes

Posted March 11, 2008

Compiled by the U.S. News & World Report library staff

Related Making money off the news... (The New York Times web site was almost crashed due to the volume of interest in this story...)

http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/03/client-9-client.html

Client 9 Domains Snatched Minutes After Spitzer Scandal Breaks

By Betsy Schiffman March 11, 2008 | 1:58:44 PM

Just minutes after the New York Times published a story online yesterday about a high-class prostitution ring and the involvement of so-called "Client 9," Nick Galbreath, a 37 year-old software engineer in Manhattan, registered the client9.com domain for $10.13.

"The original story didn't name [Governor Eliot] Spitzer directly, but I thought [Client9.com] sounded catchy, so I bought it."

Related Interesting stuff, but you have to read between the lines. Note that transactions BELOW the “$10,000 reporting threshold” were used to build this case. Making me wonder why they were reported if they were below the threshold?

http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=8211

March 11th, 2008

How an information system helped nail Eliot Spitzer and a prostitution ring

Posted by Larry Dignan @ 9:02 am

Is this the start of a vast conspiracy to get men to do the shopping?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080311/ap_on_fe_st/beer_tasting;_ylt=AhsqphBUpdrRWyHSZRbd78Ks0NUE

Sample the beer before you buy it

Tue Mar 11, 7:33 AM ET

OLYMPIA, Wash. - Washington lawmakers have approved a pilot program that will allow beer and wine tasting in 30 grocery stores statewide in an effort to market local products.

... The one-year program, strongly supported by the state's microbrewery and wine industries, allows shoppers to sample as much as 4 ounces of beer or wine.

As my web site class winds down, a few students are (as usual) considering putting their site online...

http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/017774.html

March 11, 2008

Tail Report - Survey of Web Revenue

"Tail Report has launched with the goal to map out how money is made in the blogosphere. Tail Report works by asking users to anonymously submit information about their site's traffic, rank and monthly revenue. In return, the user receives a custom report detailing what other websites are making and how their revenue compares based a number of factors, such as traffic, rank, number of RSS subscribers, age, number of employees, content, and ad networks."

This is not the only “Gas price reporter”

http://www.killerstartups.com/Web-App-Tools/Gasnearucom---Compare-Local-Gas-Prices/

Gasnearu.com - Compare Local Gas Prices

The site asks you to enter in your zip code, and then returns a list of results that sort the gas stations in your area, from least expensive to most expensive per gallon. GasNearU organizes the petroleum company and station, the address, the price for unleaded gasoline, and, if applicable, the prices from plus, premium, and diesel. The price results are current and updated daily.

http://www.gasnearu.com/index.php

“What a country!” (Worth reading the article)

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20080310103720975

TJX Demonstrates Data Protection Doesn’t Matter

Monday, March 10 2008 @ 10:37 AM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Breaches

As much as security vendors and practitioners would like it to be true there is no truth in the assertion that failed security leads to a drop in a company’s stock value. Studies abound that show a correlation of perhaps four to eight percent declines with major data breaches but it is hard to stick to that argument in light of TJX’s spectacular failure to secure their operations and yet suffer no consequences.

... On top of all of this TJX is violating all of supposed best practices in data breach disclosure. Most advice you will hear from PR pros says that you should be completely forthcoming in what you say about your breach. You should come clean right away, explain to your stakeholders exactly what happened and how it can never happen again thanks to new processes and controls you are instituting.

Has that happened at TJX? No. TJX, is re-writing the book on how to handle a major breach. In that book the instructions are: admit no fault, trickle information out piecemeal, create confusion over facts, and never reveal the hacker’s techniques.

Source - CIO Update, March 5

This is a growing trend. I wonder who is providing these devices? (and why no one notices that they have been replaced?)

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20080310142956811

Ca: Customers warned after three Park Royal stars (sic) have PIN pads stolen

Monday, March 10 2008 @ 02:29 PM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Breaches

Customers who recently made debit card purchases at any of three Park Royal stores should change their PIN numbers immediately, West Vancouver police say.

PIN pads went missing from two La Senza outlets and the Aldo shoe boutique during the lunch period on Friday.

The Park Royal mall was the subject of a debit card fraud investigation last summer after PIN pads were removed and replaced with others containing undetectable, covert electronic systems that could steal customers' financial information.

Source - The Province

Okiay, so maybe prison isn't a deterrent to cyber-crime...

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20080310075300213

Petersburg man to be sentenced for fraud (update 1)

Monday, March 10 2008 @ 07:53 AM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Breaches

In 2006, Charles A. Mitchell of Petersburg found a convenient solution to his holiday shopping needs. He spent more than $34,000 on friends and family -- including $800 for Godiva chocolates -- using the names and account numbers of 60 American Express card customers obtained by duping a Thai restaurant in Charlotte, N.C.

...Court records show that Mitchell used a cell phone smuggled in to him at the Federal Correctional Institution Petersburg, where he was serving 71 months for his earlier crimes. He used the cell phone to call the Thai House restaurant in Charlotte and posed as a credit-card-processing company representative.

He told an employee that the system had failed to process the restaurant's credit-card transactions and that he needed the information if they were to be paid. He obtained the card information for about 60 people who dined at the restaurant.

Source - inRich.com

Update: Mitchell was sentenced to an additional 64 months behind bars yesterday.

...because...

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20080310004850342

Data “Dysprotection:” breaches reported last week

Monday, March 10 2008 @ 07:27 AM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Breaches

A recap of incidents or privacy breaches reported last week for those who enjoy shaking their head and muttering to themselves with their morning coffee.

Source - Chronicles of Dissent

Why you should carefully considr what Marketing is doing?

http://blogs.computerworld.com/microsoft_filing_in_junk_pc_lawsuit_is_full_of_holes

March 10, 2008 - 10:47 A.M.

Microsoft filing in 'junk PC' lawsuit is full of holes

Preston Gralla Seeing Through Windows

Microsoft's attempt to get a judge to throw out the Vista "junk PC" suit shows off every aspect of the lawyer's art: It's misleading, factually incorrect, and stresses legalisms over common sense. It also flatly contradicts emails from Microsoft officials. Here are the details, including excerpts from Microsoft's filing.

Perhaps all we will get is a hint...

http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9889825-7.html

March 10, 2008 9:55 AM PDT

FCC hints at taking action against Comcast

Posted by Marguerite Reardon | 8 comments

The Federal Communications Commission is edging toward taking action against cable operator Comcast for monkeying with its customers' peer-to-peer traffic, according to several news reports.

Why you should not be on the “bleeding edge” of technology?

http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/10/2013251&from=rss

MacBook Air Confuses Airport Security

Posted by Zonk on Monday March 10, @11:26PM from the when-consumer-electronics-attack dept. Portables (Apple) It's funny. Laugh. Apple

Ant writes

"MacNN reports that the thin design of Apple's MacBook Air is causing some confusion for the technically ignorant, according to one blogger who says that the ultra-portable caused him to miss his flight. When going through the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) airport security checkpoint, blogger Michael Nygard was held up as security staff gathered around his MacBook Air, trying to make sense of the slender laptop/notebook. One of the less technically knowledgeable staff points out the lack of standard features as cause for alarm..."

Hey! Don't I have a right as a citizen to surveil anyone I want?

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20080310121033591

EPIC Urges Investigation of "Stalker Spyware"

Monday, March 10 2008 @ 12:10 PM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Internet & Computers

EPIC filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission against several purveyors of stalker spyware. Stalker spyware products are over the counter surveillance technologies sold for individuals to spy on other individuals -- and can be used by abusers to spy on their victims. The complaint alleges that these companies engage in unfair and deceptive practices by: (1) promoting illegal surveillance by abusers of their victims; (2) promoting "Trojan Horse" email attacks; and (3) failing to warn their costumers of legal dangers of misuse of stalker spyware. The EPIC complaint asks the FTC to stop these practices, seek compensation for victims, and investigate other harms that stalker spyware may cause.

Source - Complaint [pdf]

Related?

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20080311061454338

The NSA: The Total Information Awareness Agency

Tuesday, March 11 2008 @ 06:14 AM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Surveillance

Remember when, about five years ago, a program called Total Information Awareness (TIA) came to light. TIA was a plan to create a massive government database of personal information which would then be data mined. The program led to a public outcry, with William Safire writing a blistering op-ed in the New York Times attacking TIA. In 2003, Congress voted to deny it funding.

...The Supreme Court has already limited the reach of the Fourth Amendment, making it possible for the government to collect records from businesses with no oversight and few limits. The courts today are finding many ways to dismiss lawsuits challenging the NSA surveillance -- through an expansive application of the state secrets doctrine or through uncharitable views of plaintiffs' standing to bring a challenge. The Executive Branch, it seems, can do whatever it wants. All of this strikes me as a tremendous failure of our political system.

Source - Concurring Opinions blog

Related, but a bad headlin. How is this different from a police officer using a Mark I eyeball? (The problem was: what do they do with the data after the scan?)

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20080311073216260

German court strikes down police license-plate scanning tactic

Tuesday, March 11 2008 @ 07:32 AM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Non-U.S. News

Germany's highest court on Tuesday ruled that a police practice of automatically scanning license plates and checking them against lists of suspects violates the country's constitution.

The Federal Constitutional Court said in its ruling that the practice violates privacy rights.

Source - PR-inside.com

[From the article:

The court agreed with their argument that the two states' regulations on the surveillance technique were too broad, and could allow authorities to do things such as profile individuals' movements.

Resource?

http://www.phiprivacy.net/?p=66

AU: New privacy guidance to assist private health service providers

Posted by Dissent on Mar 11, 2008

From the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, this media release:

The Australian Privacy Commissioner, Karen Curtis, has today issued new privacy guidance materials for medical practitioners and other health service providers and the public.

... Released on the Office’s website, the guidance materials consist of five information sheets for healthcare in the Australian private sector, and seven FAQs for members of the public.

I wonder if we have contingency plans... My students would.

http://software.silicon.com/security/0,39024655,39170300,00.htm

Nato: Cyber terrorism 'as dangerous as missile attack'

Countries' recovery strategy - "weak"

By Nick Heath Published: 7 March 2008 11:16 GMT

Nato's cyber defence chief has warned that computer-based terrorism poses the same threat to national security as a missile attack.

Suleyman Anil, head of Nato Computer Incident Response Capability Co-ordination Centre, said a determined cyber attack on a country's online infrastructure would be "practically impossible to stop".

Rate a Teacher/Lawyer/Cop (Students/Clients/Criminals are off-limits)... Is this a trend that truly impacts privacy?

http://techdirt.com/articles/20080305/075621447.shtml

Police Accountability Is A Good Thing

from the public-scrutiny dept

Jim Lippard points out that a site called Rate My Cop is generating some controversy from Arizona police departments who apparently consider the site an invasion of officers' privacy. The site doesn't have pictures, addresses, or other personal information on the site. It only lists officers' names and the department they work for. But this is still too much for the Tempe police department. "If everybody went home everyday and you had the whole world ranking your job, we do make mistakes, but other days we do great things," said one Tempe police officer. I've have a lot more sympathy for the guy if this wasn't true of a ton of other professions. When I do a stupid blog post, you guys all leave comments saying so. Most restaurants and retail business have complaint cards so customers can complain about bad service. There are a ton of sites where consumers rate hotels, bands, restaurants, books, and a ton of other stuff -- such as rating teachers (although some people do want to make that illegal too). The big difference is that police officers have the force of law behind them, so they need to be held to a higher standard than other professions. The worst thing my blog posts can do is annoy our readers and hurt Techdirt's traffic. When a police officer screws up, the result can be innocent people being harrassed, humiliated, arrested, injured or killed. The cops who do those things are a small minority, obviously. But that's precisely why we need sites like this to help bring some public attention to the few bad apples who are out there.

Interesting study...

http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/03/10/Study-H-1Bs-go-with-job-creation_1.html?source=rss&url=http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/03/10/Study-H-1Bs-go-with-job-creation_1.html

Study: H-1Bs go with job creation

National Foundation for American Policy survey finds that companies applying for H-1B visas create jobs not filled by foreign workers, but opponents contest figures

By Grant Gross, IDG News Service March 10, 2008

... For every H-1B position requested, tech companies listed on the S&P 500 stock index increased their employment by five workers in an analysis of 2002 to 2005, according to a study by the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP). For tech firms with fewer than 5,000 employees, each H-1B request corresponded with an average increase of 7.5 workers, the group said.

Tools & Techniques

http://digg.com/software/Dropping_22TB_of_patches_on_6_500_PCs_in_4_hours_BitTorrent

Dropping 22TB of patches on 6,500 PCs in 4 hours: BitTorrent

arstechnica.com — BitTorrent is often maligned, but overlooking it might be foolish. One IT department found that it can speed patching and image updates so much, that rollouts that once took four days now only take four hours.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080309-dropping-22tb-of-patches-on-6500-pcs-in-4-hours-bittorrentdropping-22tb-of-patches-on-6500-pcs-in-4-hours-bittorrent.html

Diversion?

http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9890771-7.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5

March 10, 2008 11:21 PM PDT

Hulu to offer lulu of a video selection

Posted by Greg Sandoval

... Hulu said in a statement that it will offer free videos from more than 50 top broadcast and cable networks, movie studios and Web content providers when it launches.

http://www.hulu.com/

128 years later we get: “I've fallen and I can't get up!”

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/03/dayintech_0310

March 10, 1876: 'Mr. Watson, Come Here ... '

By Randy Alfred Email 03.10.08 | 12:00 AM

1876: Alexander Graham Bell makes the first telephone call in his Boston laboratory, summoning his assistant from the next room.