Laptops
get stolen every day and every day press releases try to make the
risk seem trivial. Here is how I (and perhaps my Computer Security
students) read between the lines.
From
the web site of Corvallis Clinic:
… The laptop was stolen from a Corvallis Clinic
employee’s locked car at a work-related conference in Portland in
mid-November.
This was a breach of Clinic policy in that patient health information
was reported to have been maintained on the employee’s personal
laptop that had not been evaluated or cleared for use by The Clinic’s
IT security officer. [The
Clinic had inadequate (or no) data controls in place Bob]
The laptop was protected by a highly secure alpha-numeric password;
[That provides no protection at all if the hard drive is pulled
and accessed as a 'plug in' drive on another system. Bob]
however, the data was not encrypted. Nevertheless, a breach of
patient health information is unlikely. [Assumes
the laptop was taken for the hardware not the data. Bob]
… The information stored was limited to spreadsheets, so any
patient health information that may be on the computer is limited in
data. The Clinic IT staff and third-party computer forensic experts
are in the process of fully investigating
what may have been stored on the laptop. [“We
have no clue what this employee copied from our files.” Bob]
… None of the information is known to include Social Security
numbers or financial credit information. Also, only patients seen
within the last two years are potentially on the spreadsheet. [May
include two years of data? Bob]
For
my Ethical Hackers. See why I always do my hacking using my lawyer's
credentials?
AFP
reports:
Iran’s telecommunications minister has said his technicians are
developing a system to identify any Internet user in the country at
the moment of log-on, the ISNA news agency reported Saturday.
“Because of our efforts, in future when people want to use the
Internet they will be identified, and there will be no web surfer
whose identity we do not know,” Mahmoud Vaezi said, without
elaborating on how this would technically be done.
Read
more on Yahoo!
News.
Kind
of the opposite of giving the police video cameras. If I obviously
have a camera, perhaps with blinking lights and a sign that reads,
“I'm recording this for my lawyer,” would anyone within range
have an expectation of privacy?
Jon
Street reports:
The Illinois House and Senate have overwhelmingly passed
an amendment that would make it unclear as to when it is legal to
record an encounter with a police officer and when it is illegal.
Earlier this year, the Illinois Supreme Court struck down a similar
law which made recording conversations with police or anyone else
without their permission illegal. The court ruled that the state
does not have the constitutional authority to criminalize recording
in situations where individuals have no reasonable expectation of
privacy.
Read
more on The
Blaze.
Spain,
The Forbidden Kingdom? Will our grandchildren wonder what happened
to Spain?
Spanish
news to vanish from Google News globally
Google’s
decision to close Google News in Spain because of a law requiring
aggregators to pay news publishers for linking content also means
that the publishers’ content will vanish around the world.
The
company said it will block reports from Spanish publishers from its
more than 70 Google News international editions in addition to the
Spain shutdown on Dec. 16 — two weeks before a new Spanish
intellectual property law takes effect.
Spain’s
AEDE association, which represents large news publishers, lobbied for
the law nicknamed the “Google Tax.”
The
association declined comment Thursday on Google Inc.’s decision.
Circling
the drain? Consider: The Soviet Union broke up because (at least in
part) they could not keep pace with Reagan's spending on Star Wars
tech. Now lower oil prices mean they have no money to spend on
anything.
Russia’s
Rate Increase Fails to Halt Ruble’s Slide to Record
Russia’s
fifth interest-rate increase this year failed to stem the ruble’s
worst rout in 16 years, risking further damage to an economy battered
by sanctions and oil prices near the lowest since 2009.
…
“This is a spineless decision,” Vadim Bit-Avragim, who helps
oversee about $4 billion at Kapital Asset Management LLC in Moscow,
said by phone. “If the central bank’s goal was to defend the
ruble, it would’ve raised rates by 2-3 percentage points.”
“Hey,
we're a monopoly. Take it or leave it.”
Comcast
Faces Lawsuit For Turning Customer Routers Into Free Public Wi-Fi
Last
year, Comcast announced that the company was deploying its Xfinity
Home Hotspot initiative that would turn a user’s home router into a
public hotspot. However, the initiative was met with criticism and a
pair of Comcast customers is suing the company claiming that the
imitative poses risks to subscribers and that Comcast’s actions
were carried out without their permission.
The
suit was filed in the US District Court in Northern California by
Plaintiff Toyer Grear and daughter Joycelyn Harris. They are seeking
to give their suit class action status for all Comcast customers
whose wireless routers double as Xfinity Wi-Fi hotspots. “Without
authorization to do so, Comcast users the wireless routers it
supplies to its customers to generate additional, public WiFi
networks for its own benefit,” the complaint states.
Perhaps
not revelatory, but still interesting.
Measuring
the Digital Economy – OECD
Directorate
for Science, Technology and Innovation: “The growing role of
the digital economy in daily life has heightened demand for new data
and measurement tools. Internationally comparable and timely
statistics combined with robust cross-country analyses are crucial to
strengthen the evidence base for digital economy policy making,
particularly in a context of rapid change. This
report presents indicators traditionally used to monitor the
information society and complements them with experimental indicators
that provide insight into areas of policy interest. The key
objectives of this publication are to highlight measurement gaps and
propose actions to advance the measurement agenda.”
For
my geeks. Grab the specs and build your own.
Google
Launches Cardboard App Collection
Google
is pushing its virtual reality headset Google Cardboard harder than
ever, with updates
for users, developers, and makers. When Google
unveiled Google Cardboard at Google I/O 2014 in June, most people
regarded it as a jokey take on the emerging
VR form factor. But it turns out Google was deadly serious.
To
demonstrate its commitment to Cardboard, Google has rolled some of
its
favorite Cardboard apps into a collection on Google Play.
Included are a live performance from Jack White, a tour of the Shire
from The Hobbit, and a 3D brick-breaking game. As well as Google’s
own dedicated Cardboard app.
In
order to help developers create the best Cardboard apps, Google has
also released software
development kits (SDKs) for Android and Unity. And for makers
there are new
building specs crafted with specific tools in mind. Finally, as
proof Google is serious about Cardboard, it’s hiring a handful of
people to work on creating virtual reality experiences.
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