Centennial Man

Sunday, July 03, 2011

First there is news about the breach (and speculation as to its size) Then the numbers come out and the story is front page news again. So is it smarter to hide the numbers or to be up front and open? Note that almost every “Best Practice” security process was ignored.

What they won’t tell us, they have to tell HHS: the SRHS breach

By Dissent, July 3, 2011

It was only a matter of time until we found out how many people Spartanburg Regional Healthcare System had to notify about the laptop stolen from an employee’s car in March.

The incident has now been posted on HHS’s breach tool and it appears they reported that 400,000 patients were affected.

The employee was authorized to have the laptop, but why did 400,000 patients have data on it? Was it really necessary that so much data be on a laptop that was permitted to be removed from the premises?

And with so much sensitive data on the laptop – Social Security numbers, names, addresses, dates of birth and medical billing codes – why weren’t the data encrypted?

And why was the laptop left in a car where it was stolen at night?

What were Spartanburg’s security protocols?

Hopefully, HHS will not only obtain answers but take forceful steps to ensure that this doesn’t happen again.

I wonder how this worked?

Facebook/Twitter Banned In Thailand For Election

"In the run up to the July 3rd election in Thailand, use of Twitter, Facebook, and other social media are banned for campaigning and other election related purposes. Offenders face a maximum six months in prison and a 10,000 baht ($330) fine. The ban includes sending short telephone texts and forwarding emails. 'There will be a unit of more than 100 officers to monitor this,' said police spokesman Prawut Thavornsiri of the social media ban. 'If we can track the origin of (an online message) right away, we will block the site and make an arrest. But if the sites are registered overseas and we can't check the origin, we'll first block it and ask the IP (Internet Protocol) providers for further investigation,' Prawut said." [Sounds like instructions on how to bypass the censor... Bob]

Opposition Pheu Thai wins election -- Exit polls

(Related) Or you could design the censorship in from the beginning. (And it is easier when all your elections are unanimous)

China Grows Its Own Twitter

"Twitter is banned in China, and the authorities are trying to foster a censored version of the service, but the speed and nature of such services calls into question China's ability to retain control — especially in combustible, highly emotional situations."

I always wanted to build a global economic model...

http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/027670.html

July 02, 2011

NYT: World Bank Is Opening Its Treasure Chest of Data

NYT: "Long regarded as a windowless ivory tower, the World Bank is opening its vast vault of information. True, the bank still lends roughly $170 billion annually. But it is increasingly competing for influence and power with Wall Street, national governments and smaller regional development banks, who have as much or more money to offer. It is no longer the only game in town... For more than a year, the bank has been releasing its prized data sets, currently giving public access to more than 7,000 that were previously available only to some 140,000 subscribers — mostly governments and researchers, who pay to gain access to it. Those data sets contain all sorts of information about the developing world, whether workaday economic statistics — gross domestic product, consumer price inflation and the like — or arcana like how many women are breast-feeding their children in rural Peru. It is a trove unlike anything else in the world, and, it turns out, highly valuable. For whatever its accuracy or biases, this data essentially defines the economic reality of billions of people and is used in making policies and decisions that have an enormous impact on their lives."