http://www.myfoxphilly.com/dpp/video/Amy_Feldman_FBI_Webcam_05_11_10
Amy Feldman: FBI Can View Webcam Pics
A judge has ruled the FBI can view computer evidence gathered in the Lower Merion Webcam investigation.
Attorney Amy Feldman says "now the fun begins because now what you're looking at is criminal charges."
Sort of the reverse of the Lower Merion school district's approach...
http://techdirt.com/articles/20100504/1750309302.shtml
Students Who Caught Gym Teacher Stealing Money From Lockers May Get Punished
from the that-doesn't-seem-right... dept
A few years back, we had a story about some students using a mobile phone camera to record a teacher's outburst on film. Rather than disciplining the teacher who appeared way out of line, and who had pulled a chair out from under a student, the school disciplined the students for filming the teacher. In what may be a similar situation, reader Pickle Monger alerts us to the story of some students who got upset about money regularly disappearing from their lockers. After complaining to school officials and getting no help at all, they set up a mobile phone camera to record what happened to the lockers... and actually caught their gym teacher breaking into the lockers to steal the students' money.
So how is the school reacting? Celebrating the ingenuity and the sleuthing skills of the kids in catching a bad teacher stealing money from students? Nope:
A school spokesman said it's possible the student who recorded the cell phone video could get in trouble as well because students are not supposed to use their phones during the day.
School officials said they are not allowed to record video in locker rooms because of privacy.
Now, obviously the situation is a little more complicated due to the privacy issues in a locker room, but there's no indication that there were any privacy problems here at all. The whole purpose was to catch the thief that the school wouldn't catch. Punishing students for breaking those rules, while ignoring the reasons why they did it, teaches a really bad lesson to students.
The future of personal information (including Health Records?) in America?
http://www.databreaches.net/?p=11598
Personal cellphone data ends up for sale at Mexico flea market
May 11, 2010 by admin
Tracy Wilkinson reports:
When the government launched a nationwide campaign to register cellphones, millions of Mexicans refused. And thousands of others registered with a familiar name: Felipe Calderon, the country’s president…. Some said they were convinced that the government would use the information to spy on dissidents or anyone else out of favor. Others said they feared the information would end up in the wrong hands.
[...]
They were proved right last month when the confidential data of millions of Mexicans from official state registries suddenly became available for a few thousand dollars at Mexico City’s wild Tepito flea market.
[...]
In Mexico, unlike the U.S., voter sign-up rolls and motor vehicle registrations are not a matter of public record. Mexicans, in theory at least, expect privacy. So when these databases began turning up in the chaotic Tepito market, Mexicans were not pleased.
Read more in the Los Angeles Times.
What words activate the “pay attention” nerve in organizations? Apparently, “I'm a reporter and I have a few questions...” is a fairly universal stimulus.
http://www.databreaches.net/?p=11587
A failure to protect medical privacy
May 11, 2010 by admin
An editorial from the St. Petersburg Times:
[...]
For more than half a year, strangers’ medical records jammed the home fax machine of Hudson resident Elizabeth Reed. The records described patients’ illnesses, lab results and prescription refill requests. The flow of records so disrupted the family’s home phone service that they resorted to using cell phones. Reed discovered that an incorrect phone number on a doctor’s prescription pad was to blame, but her calls to the doctor’s office, pharmacies and the state Department of Health didn’t stem the tide.
And for months, strangers’ medical records have been delivered in the mail to Elsie Huebner’s Safety Harbor home, including details of a woman’s visit to a psychiatrist, a man’s chest pains, and another man’s oxycodone prescription.
Huebner discovered the medical records came from Aetna and UnitedHealth Group insurance companies, which had mistaken her home address for a medical office where 10 doctors worked. She called the doctors and wrote “Return to Sender” on envelopes. She even contacted the federal agency responsible for enforcing HIPAA. But at best, she got only a form letter response — until the St. Petersburg Times wrote about her problem last week. Now both insurance companies have contacted her and are urgently retrieving the misdirected medical records.
Read more in the St. Petersburg Times.
Is it just my impression or does this type of repeated problem tend to happen more in the healthcare sector than other sectors? Yes, banks erroneously mail records to the wrong party, but I doubt if a bank would continue sending bank records to the same wrong address once they were notified of their mistake. And yet, over the years, I’ve read a number of news stories involving people who continue to receive faxes or mailings with medical records and they are unable to get the sending party to stop. It would be nice if HHS/OCR investigated and actually started fining parties for repeated violations.
I'm see evidence that the courts are taking the impact of these crimes more seriously. No longer viewing them as a 'White Color misdemeanor'
http://www.databreaches.net/?p=11596
Judge won’t accept pleas in Jackson Memorial Hospital ID theft case
May 11, 2010 by admin
Jay Weaver reports:
A husband-and-wife duo charged with running a racket to pilfer patient records from Jackson Memorial Hospital to sell to lawyers for injury claims [or maybe she needs a lever to get the names of the lawyers? Bob] tried to plead guilty Tuesday in Miami federal court.
But U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard said she couldn’t accept their pleas because she didn’t think the prescribed punishment fit their crime under their agreements with the U.S. attorney’s office.
Ruben E. Rodriguez, the leader, faces up to 12 years in prison. His wife, Maria Victoria Suarez, faces up to five years, under their plea agreements.
“These charges are much too serious — much too serious for our community,” Lenard said. “Violations of the law in the healthcare industry have become too much the norm. There are real victims here.”
Read more in the Miami Herald.
Beyond ensuring appropriate disciplinary measures were taken, what good does this do? Some level of deterrence? Get caught porning and we'll post your name on the 'bad boys' list?
http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=10041
Lawsuit Wants SEC to ID Porn Snoopers
May 11, 2010 by Dissent
Jim McElhatton reports:
The Securities and Exchange Commission is facing a federal lawsuit for keeping secret the names of dozens of its supervisors, employees and contractors who spent their workdays looking at pornography on their government computers.
The lawsuit, filed Friday by a Denver- and Washington-based law firm, accuses the SEC of violating federal open-records law by shielding the identities of more than two dozen current and past porn-snooping workers.
“There simply is no privacy right or interest to search pornography on SEC computers, particularly during work hours,” says the 17-page complaint, filed in federal court in Denver.
Read more on NewsMax.com
The case is Steese, Evans & Frankel v. United States Security and Exchange Commission. I’ve uploaded a copy of the complaint, without attachments, here (pdf, 17 pages). They seem to make a strong case for disclosure under FOIA. See what you think.
[From the Complaint:
Among the pornographic and sexually explicit websites frequented by SEC employees using SEC computers during SEC work hours were the following [Ah! All is explained. They want the list of porn sites that follow. Bob]
Before she gets to rule on Privacy matters, we must strip all Privacy from her for the amusement of politicians.
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/024227.html
May 11, 2010
Resources on Supreme Court Nominee Elena Kagan
Elena Kagan Nominated to the Supreme Court: "On April 9, 2010 Justice John Paul Stevens announced that he would retire after nearly 35 years on the bench of the U.S. Supreme Court. President Obama announced the nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan to replace Stevens on May 10, 2010. This is President Obama's second nomination to the nation's highest court, following his selection of Justice Sonia Sotomayor in May 2009. Notably the first female Solicitor General and first female dean of Harvard Law School, if Kagan is confirmed, she will also be the fourth woman to serve on the Court. To serve congressional and public requests for resources pertaining to this historic nomination, the Law Library of Congress has developed a web presentation on Kagan on its Supreme Court Nominations site. Visit our bibliography to find out more about the new Supreme Court nominee." [Emily Carr, Legal Reference Specialist, Law Library of Congress]
Competing with “free”
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/024233.html
May 11, 2010
Windows Announces Free Web Version of Word Coming In June
New York Times: "This latest version of Office, which includes applications like Word, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint, is Microsoft’s long-awaited effort to modernize one of its most lucrative products and to thwart rivals like Google that are nipping at its heels with free Web software. For the first time, Microsoft will provide a free online version of Office that lets people store their documents on the Web rather than on their personal computers... Microsoft has said that Office 2010 will range in price from a limited, free Web version supported by ads to a full-blown version that costs $500, both to be available to consumers in June."
An attempt to describe the 'semantic web' Could be useful for my Data Analysis class
Web 3.0, The Movie [Video]
A tool for my Statistics students? The results could be improved by identifying those who aer inconsistent and dropping them from future surveys.
Using Twitter Data To Approximate a Telephone Survey
Posted by kdawson on Tuesday May 11, @09:30PM
cremeglace writes
"A team led by a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University has used text-analysis software to detect tweets pertaining to various issues — such as whether President Barack Obama is doing a good job — and measure the frequency of positive or negative words ranging from 'awesome' to 'sucks.' The results were surprisingly similar to traditional surveys. For example, the ratio of Twitter posts expressing either positive or negative sentiments about President Obama produced a 'job approval rating' that closely tracked the big Gallup daily poll across 2009. The analysis also produced classic economic indicators like consumer confidence."
By averaging several days' worth of tweets on presidential job approval, the researchers got results that correlated 79% with daily Gallup polling. Lead researcher Noah Smith said, "The results are noisy, as are the results of polls. Opinion pollsters have learned to compensate for these distortions, while we're still trying to identify and understand the noise in our data. Given that, I'm excited that we get any signal at all from social media that correlates with the polls." Here is CMU's press release.
Some things just happen at the wrong time. Where was this technology when I was younger? Perhaps I should buy it for the collector value? (I used to buy it for the articles...)
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hwAUkwmF0wJhSEz6FZpF9Lm5ZJpgD9FKR9R80
Playboy 'readers' get 3-D centerfold in June issue
Some students have strange names...
http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/inogolo-correct-name-pronunciation
Inogolo: Find Out Correct Name Pronunciations
Similar tools: TheNameEngine, HowToSayThatName and PronounceNames.
Interesting interactive graphic
http://www.ge.com/visualization/appliances_energyuse/index.html
How Much Energy Do Your Home Appliances Use? [INFOGRAPHIC]
Another interesting use of graphics
http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/
The Evolution of Privacy on Facebook
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