http://www.databreaches.net/?p=9506
UK: Government personal data handling has improved, says report
January 19, 2010 by admin Filed under Commentaries and Analyses, Non-U.S., Of Note
Measures put in place by the Government to better protect individuals’ personal data have been successful but more work is needed, according to the first annual internal report due under the new regime.
After a series of embarrassing losses of personal information, including the 2007 loss of discs containing the names, addresses and bank details of 25 million child benefit claimants, the Government conducted a Data Handling Review (DHR).
Read more in Out-Law.com
From the report: [I've cut a few Bob]
Identify All Holdings of Protect Personal Data: [Basic, but it's clear many organizations do not have this 100% under control. Bob]
Apply Suffolk Matrix [Addresses access control by sensitivity of data Bob]
Protection [Encryption Bob] of Removable Media
Strong Protection for Unencrypted Media
Log & Monitor Access to Protected Information
Have a Forensic Readiness Policy
See:
The report (30-page / 850KB PDF)
The Data Handling Review (46-page / 218KB PDF)
Everyone wants to be Jack Bauer. I even believe we need a few Jack Bauers, but we would need to back them up with lots of bureaucratic staff and ensure they learn from their mistakes rather than try to justify them after the fact.
http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=7091
FBI broke law for years in phone record searches
January 19, 2010 by Dissent Filed under Featured Headlines, Govt, Surveillance
John Solomon and Carrie Johnson report:
The FBI illegally collected more than 2,000 U.S. telephone call records between 2002 and 2006 by invoking terrorism emergencies that did not exist or simply persuading phone companies to provide records, according to internal bureau memos and interviews. FBI officials issued approvals after the fact to justify their actions.
E-mails obtained by The Washington Post detail how counterterrorism officials inside FBI headquarters did not follow their own procedures that were put in place to protect civil liberties. The stream of urgent requests for phone records also overwhelmed the FBI communications analysis unit with work that ultimately was not connected to imminent threats.
A Justice Department inspector general’s report due out this month is expected to conclude that the FBI frequently violated the law with its emergency requests, bureau officials confirmed.
Read more in The Washington Post.
Is this fundamentally different that eyeballing the plates and matching them against a paper list? If all the technology does is make the police officer more efficient, what's the big deal?
http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=7098
ME: Surveillance sets off civil liberty alarms
January 19, 2010 by Dissent Filed under Surveillance, U.S.
The Associated Press reports:
Privacy advocates are criticizing a new surveillance system used by South Portland police that reads license plates, a system police defend as a tool to help solve crimes, find wanted individuals, and locate missing people.
[S]tate Senator Dennis Damon, a Trenton Democrat, said he is concerned that the system could be used to gather information about residents [Understood, but we used to know the neighborhood cops and they knew us. Is that so different? Bob] and that police could drive through a lot and record all the vehicles parked there…. Damon has introduced legislation, presented to him by the Maine Civil Liberties Union, to ban technology that’s used to gather broad information about private citizens.
Similar systems are used in about 25 states. South Portland police bought the system last fall with help from a federal grant.
Read more in The Boston Globe.
If I didn't know better, I'd suspect the UK Government of exploiting the IE holes to spy on its citizens. Oh, wait! I don't know better.
http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=7094
UK Government will not warn again Internet Explorer
January 19, 2010 by Dissent Filed under Internet
Emma Barnett reports:
The British Government will not issue a warning against using Microsoft Internet Explorer, breaking rank with the French and German governments.
Both France and Germany’s governments have respectively advised computer users to download an alternative web browser to the most popular browser in the world, after a security flaw was detected.
The French government issued an advisory to computer users, recommending that they switch to a different web browser, such as Firefox or Google Chrome. It follows a similar move by the German government, after it was discovered that Internet Explorer contained a serious security flaw that could be exploited by hackers and cybercriminals.
Read more in the Telegraph.
(Related) Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!
http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/microsoft-switch-from-ie-and-your-risk-increases-664429
Microsoft: Switch from IE and your risk increases
It's not like we need US lawyers for most of this legal stuff. (Slumdog Lawyers?) Question: Could I (a non-lawyer) put together a business plan to supply legal scut work for US forms?
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/023283.html
January 18, 2010
UK Times Provides Inside View of India’s Legal Outsourcing "Industry"
UK TimesOnline: "Nestled amid the bustle of north Mumbai, the headquarters of Pangea3, one of India’s biggest legal outsourcing companies, is enough to give a British corporate lawyer used to the slick environs of the City or Canary Wharf the heebie-jeebies...an army of young Indian graduates, most of them from the country’s top law and engineering schools, sits before a barrage of computer terminals. Many are working on legal documents digitally accessed from the servers of blue-chip Western clients via transcontinental fibreoptic cables. Others are engaged in research for upcoming litigation to be fought out in American courtrooms, or are analysing patent filings registered by British companies... Much of the work that Pangea3 and similar firms deal with, such as drafting derivatives contracts or conducting due diligence for mergers and acquisitions, was once the preserve of trainees and associates at big City law firms. Some of those firms racked up annual revenues of more than £1 billion during the boom years, in part by billing out teams of junior lawyers for up to £300 an hour for even the most routine tasks."
Because the e-Discovery process amuses me. Why do any of these points ever rise to the level of “issue”
Raising the Bar – Judge Scheindlin Defines Gross Negligence in Spoliation
… failures she generally considers to be gross negligence, and not just simple negligence:
After a discovery duty is well established, the failure to adhere to contemporary standards can be considered gross negligence. Thus, after the final relevant Zubulake opinion in July, 2004, the following failures support a finding of gross negligence, when the duty to preserve has attached:
to issue a written litigation hold,
to identify the key players and
to ensure that their electronic and paper records are preserved,
to cease the deletion of email or
to preserve the records of former employees that are in a party’s possession, custody, or control, and
to preserve backup tapes when they are the sole source of relevant information or relate to key players.
Why was this so hard to believe?
Newton's Apple Story Goes Online
Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday January 18, @04:01PM from the ouch-an-idea dept.
Hugh Pickens writes
"Although many historians are skeptical of the story, Rev. William Stukeley, a physician, cleric, and prominent antiquarian, wrote that he was once enjoying afternoon tea with Sir Isaac Newton amid the Woolsthorpe apple trees when the mathematician reminisced that he was just in the same situation as when the notion of gravitation came into his mind. It was occasioned by the fall of an apple, as he sat in contemplative mood. The original version of the story of Sir Isaac Newton and the falling apple first appeared in Stukeley's 1752 biography, Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton's Life. Now BBC reports that UK's Royal Society has converted the fragile manuscript into an electronic book, which anybody with internet access will now be able to read and decide for themselves. 'The story of Newton and the apple, which had gradually become debunked over the years. It is now clear, it is based on a conversation between Newton and Stukeley,' says Martin Kemp, emeritus professor of the history of art at Oxford University's Trinity College. 'We needn't believe that the apple hit his head, but sitting in the orchard and seeing the apple fall triggered that work. It was a chance event that got him engaged with something he might have otherwise have shelved.'"
I want one! I may even allow my students to play with it.
Willow Garage Gives Away 10 Free Robots to Jumpstart Open Source Revolution
January 18th, 2010 by Aaron Saenz
From the Call for Proposals:
Eligible applicants include faculty, staff scientists, researchers, engineers, and graduate students within academic institutions and non-profit or for-profit organizations, worldwide.
You should use at least two of these
3 Awesome Tools To Add More Functionality To Your USB Drives [Windows]
By Varun Kashyap on Jan. 18th, 2010
If your sole need is to encrypt files on your USB drive than you can look into USB safeguard. It uses AES 256 to encrypt data on your USB drive and all you have to do is to copy the downloaded executable onto your USB drive and set a password.
USB Agent … is a neat little application that can help you launch applications automatically whenever you plug in a USB device.
USB Dumper (Direct download, read below before clicking)
USB Dumper lets you backup the contents of your USB drive automatically when you connect it to your computer. Just plug your device in and USB Dumper copies all the files to a desired location on the filesystem. The dump folder is named using the date on which the backup was made.
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