In the era of electronic medical records, the entire medical history goes with the name?

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20090429112838586

Andrew Speaker, who had TB, sues CDC over privacy

Wednesday, April 29 2009 @ 11:28 AM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews

An Atlanta lawyer who was misdiagnosed with a severe strain of tuberculosis, when he had a more treatable form, has sued the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for invasion of privacy.

Source - AJC Previous Coverage - Chronicles of Dissent

[From the article:

“They had no right to stand up and talk about my private medical information,” Speaker said Wednesday. “It gave them an opportunity to create a big story they could use to get funding.”

… At no time, the suit said, did the CDC disclose that Speaker had been told he was not contagious and the XDR diagnosis was preliminary and contradicted by all other findings that showed he had a less drug-resistant strain.

Instead, the CDC unlawfully released details of Speaker’s medical history, his alleged condition, details of his wedding and his identity, “none of which needed to be released to the general public in order to accomplish any legitimate public health purpose.”

If for no other reason, look at the FBIs history of failed IT projects.

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20090430060543622

Massive FBI Data-Mining Project Needs Congressional Oversight

Thursday, April 30 2009 @ 06:05 AM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) called on Congress today to examine the Investigative Data Warehouse (IDW) -- a massive FBI data-mining project that includes a billion of records, many of which contain personal information on American citizens. Supporting its request, EFF provided Congress with its new report on IDW, published today with information obtained through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation.

[...]

For the full letter to Senator Leahy: http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/foia_idw/leahy_IDW_ltr.pdf

For EFF's report on the IDW: http://www.eff.org/issues/foia/investigative-data-warehouse-report

For this release: http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2009/04/28

I wonder if fewer requests for wiretaps translates to fewer wiretaps.

http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/021240.html

April 29, 2009

US Courts: Wiretap Applications Decline in 2008

"A total of 1,891 applications to federal and state judges for orders authorizing the interception of wire, oral or electronic communications were reported in 2008. No applications were denied. [Rubber stamp? Bob] This is a 14 percent decrease in the total of applications reported, compared to 2007. Fewer states—22 states compared to 24 in 2007—reported wiretap activity and the number of applications approved by state judges, 1,505, was down 14 percent from 2007. Federal judges approved 386 applications, down 16 percent from 2007. Orders for 28 wiretaps were approved for which no wiretaps actually were installed. Additional data on applications for wiretaps for the period January 1 through December 31, 2008, is available online in the 2008 Wiretap Report."

[From the report:

In 2008, two instances were reported of encryptions encountered during state wiretaps; neither prevented officials from obtaining the plain text of the communications.

Is Warner determined to cut its own throat?

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/04/29/2151256&from=rss

Warner Music Forces Lessig Presentation Offline

Posted by timothy on Wednesday April 29, @06:14PM from the streisand-times-one-million dept. The Courts Censorship

An anonymous reader writes

"Larry Lessig, known (hopefully) to everyone around here as a defender of all things having to do with consumer rights and fair use rights when it comes to copyright, is now on the receiving end of a DMCA takedown notice from Warner Music, who apparently claimed that one of Lessig's famous presentations violated on their copyright. Lessig has said that he's absolutely planning on fighting this, and has asked someone to send Warner Music a copy of US copyright law that deals with 'fair use.'"

Reader daemonburrito notes that the (rehosted) "video remains available at the time of this submission."

I'm not aware of any legitimate product/process using autorun that couldn't be modified to use a manual start. Commenters seem to agree (mostly)

http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/04/29/2110241&from=rss

Microsoft To Disable Autorun

Posted by timothy on Wednesday April 29, @05:28PM from the mounting-is-fine-but-opening-is-obnoxious dept. Windows Security IT

jchrisos writes

"Microsoft is planning to disable autorun in the next Release Candidate of Windows 7 and future updates to Windows XP and Vista. In order to maintain a 'balance between security and usability', non-writable media will maintain its current behavior however. In any case, if it means no more autorun on flash drives, removable hard drives and network shares, that is definitely a step in the right direction. Will be interesting to see what malware creators do to get around this ..."

Quasi-forensics?

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/use-overdisk-to-see-what-is-using-your-hard-drives-space-windows/

See What Is Using Your Hard Drive’s Space (Windows)

Apr. 29th, 2009 By Karl L. Gechlik

… OverDisk can analyze your hard drive or just a folder and break down what’s actually taking up your space.