Kingston did not violate provincial privacy law when it released publicly the names of city business owners who had not paid their business occupancy taxes for five years or more, the province's privacy watchdog has ruled.

Ontario Information and Privacy Commission mediator Mona Wong ruled that the city didn't break the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act when it included the names of business owners in publicly available council documents.

"I have concluded that the information contained in the business occupancy tax arrears list is not about any individual in a personal capacity, and therefore does not qualify as 'personal information' as defined in section 2 (1) of the act," Wong wrote in her decision.

The NUJ has expressed "deep concern" about the publication of private BBC emails on the Hutton inquiry website after a newspaper claimed to have discovered the identity of a source.

The BBC's decision to release dozens of internal emails to Lord Hutton, some of them concerning highly confidential dealings with external sources, has already caused controversy only a week into the inquiry.

Just a day after the publication of one email, detailing a conversation between BBC World presenter Nik Gowing and an unnamed intelligence official, the Financial Times claimed the official was John Scarlett, the head of the joint intelligence committee.

Gowing did not know his email, which was clearly extremely sensitive, was going to be made public until it appeared on the website. The response from the BBC to the email, if any, was not made public.

Although the email to the corporation's head of news, Richard Sambrook, was heavily censored before it appeared on the inquiry website to remove any mention of the official's name, the Financial Times seemed to be able to deduce his identity through other details in the note.

"It is hugely damaging for the BBC to be releasing the kind of information that could lead to a source being identified," said Paul McLaughlin, national broadcasting coordinator for the NUJ.

"We would expect the BBC to be cooperating with the inquiry, but in terms of releasing material they've got to be very careful to ensure that protection of sources is maintained.

"It appears that in this case the intention was to protect the source, but the email has still been published in such a way that allows the source to be identified."

Gowing was clearly nervous about details of the meeting leaking out. In the email he explained to Sambrook how he "hesitated" sending it until he had returned to the UK from abroad and was able to use what he described as the BBC's "secure internal email system".

With Social Security numbers so commonly used on insurance and health-care cards, a stolen wallet can easily lead to a much bigger headache

[ ... ]

These days, Social Security numbers are gold mines for thieves, since the numbers are widely used as ID and passwords by banks, brokers, even the IRS. My sister immediately put a fraud alert on her account with the credit bureaus to prevent anyone from opening new lines of credit. But experts say she'll still have to check her accounts monthly for the next several years. And many credit companies don't always perform every check before issuing new cards. Despite the alert, if criminals do obtain a new line of credit, the onus is on her to prove it was identity theft.

LAZY AND DANGEROUS.  All this hassle, fear, and financial loss because my sister was carrying her health-insurance card -- as she's required to do. The incident prompted me, as well as my friends and colleagues, to open our wallets. Each of us found at least one piece of ID, and sometimes as many as three, with our Social Security numbers printed in plain sight. Health-insurance and prescription-drug cards were the worst offenders. Mandates that we carry these cards are the equivalent of forcing us to walk around with thousands of dollars in cash and jewelry.

No wonder ID theft is climbing to dizzying heights. According to a July 30 survey conducted by nonprofit Privacy & American Business, 13 million Americans have fallen victim to identity theft since January, 2001. Total out-of-pocket expenses came to $1.5 billion, or $740 per person. Of those surveyed, 16% said the cause was a lost or stolen wallet. That means if Social Security numbers weren't printed on wallet cards, at least 2.1 million Americans might have been saved the anxiety and aggravation of ID theft.

So why do health plans, among others, continue to put people at risk? "It's a lazy way for companies to assign customer ID numbers because the Social Security number is easy for people to remember," says Beth Givens, executive director of the San Diego-based Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. "But by doing so, they are shamelessly putting people at risk."

[ ... ]

Luckily, change is afoot. In California, a law goes into effect on Jan. 1 that requires all corporations to remove Social Security numbers from ID cards. It also mandates that they be removed from correspondence and forbids companies requiring people to transmit a Social Security number over the Internet unless the connection is secure or the number is encrypted. In an effort to comply with the California law, some companies are overhauling their systems for members in all 50 states. Yet, more often than not, says Harriet Pearson, IBM's (IBM ) chief privacy officer, health insurers aren't making changes other than those that are specifically required.

BIG BLUE'S ULTIMATUM.  That's why Pearson took action to protect IBM's more than 100,000 U.S. employees from ID theft. Late last year, she sent a letter to the 100-plus health plans that IBM does business with, asking them to stop using the Social Security number visibly on member cards or in correspondence. Many agreed but a few large plans declined.

So, on Jan. 21, she sent another letter to 16 health plans, warning them that if they didn't comply by January 1, 2004, IBM would no longer do business with them. "We share the concern of our employees and health-plan beneficiaries regarding the potential for identity theft resulting from the display of Social Security numbers on administrative documents such as identification cards and health care-related forms," the letter said. "We believe that, eventually, it will become an expected practice throughout the industry to guard against inappropriate display of Social Security numbers...so it makes sense for us to move forward now."

But to hear some tell it, the casinos' latest offensive may be its strongest yet against McGarvey and his peers. That's because of a new optical pattern recognition technology called MindPlay MP21, which is designed to automatically track and analyze the play and betting patterns of every gambler at a blackjack table in real time.

[ ... ]

MindPlay works by placing a set of 14 digital cameras around a specially built blackjack table tray. The optical equipment registers every card in play by reading special invisible ink printed on them.

But that isn't the only trick up MindPlay's sleeve. It can recognize the differences between a player's drink, a napkin, an ashtray, a stack of chips being held by a player and a pile of chips in play, Soltys said. And it tracks the location and value of chips by comparing 3-D models of them in a database to all objects on the table.

[ ... ]

"The entire game of blackjack has a house edge of around half a percent," says McGarvey, the counter. "At times the house has a bigger edge, but at other times the players have the edge. If you kick anybody off the table when the odds favor the player, you will affect the game edge. It is that simple, and they know this. They are simply playing coy."

But the casinos insist they're not using MindPlay unethically at all

At the moment the page comes up with a 404 error (Page missing) but it is on the primary index page for CNET so hopefully it will show up in a while.

Data management software company Informatica on Monday will release a product designed to simplify the process of tracking corporate information for regulatory compliance and accounting audits.

The software, called SuperGlue, helps businesses track the origin of data in business applications. For example, a company could use the application to find how a number on a spreadsheet was derived or to view the documentation used in a drug discovery process.

Redwood City, Calif.-based Informatica is aiming the product at companies that need to adhere to a new wave of regulations, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which sprang up in the wake of accounting scandals at Enron and WorldCom.