Wednesday, November 15, 2006

CRM News: Customer Service: Cell Phone Traffic-Tracking Raises Customer Privacy Concerns "This is your personal information. Shouldn't you have the right to control whether people know where you are?" asked Melissa Ngo of the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center. "When I signed up for a cell phone, I did not sign up to be tracked." 1:38:12 AM  PermaLink   / trackback []

O'Reilly Has Details of Kansas Abortions An abortion doctor plans to ask for an investigation of the state attorney general and Bill O'Reilly over comments by the Fox television host that he got information from Kansas abortion records, the doctor's attorneys said Saturday. Dr. George Tiller said he will ask the Kansas Supreme Court on Monday to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate and take possession of the records of 90 patients from two clinics. Attorney General Phill Kline obtained the records recently after a two-year battle that prompted privacy concerns. He has said he sought the records to review them for evidence of possible crimes including rape and illegal abortions. During a Friday night broadcast of 'The O'Reilly Factor,' the conservative host said a 'source inside' told the show that Tiller performs late-term abortions when a patient is depressed, which O'Reilly deemed 'executing babies.' O'Reilly also said his show has evidence that Tiller's clinic and another unnamed clinic have broken Kansas law by failing to report potential rapes with victims ages 10 to 15. A spokeswoman for Kline, who received redacted copies of the records Oct. 24, said Saturday he doesn't know how O'Reilly obtained the information. 'We don't know anything about Mr. O'Reilly's inside source,' spokeswoman Sherriene Jones said. 'I assumed he was talking about somebody on the inside of the abortion clinics.' 1:36:51 AM  PermaLink   / trackback []

The Boarding Pass Brouhaha. The Boarding Pass Brouhaha. A researcher lands in hot water for creating a website that allowed visitors to create fake boarding passes capable of fooling airport screeners. Why isn't the TSA in trouble for staging such easily circumvented security theater in the first place? Commentary by Bruce Schneier. [Wired News: Security Blanket] 1:32:28 AM  PermaLink   / trackback []

Attack of the Perv Trackers. Attack of the Perv Trackers. Thanks to the passage of a California proposition, satellites will monitor tens of thousands of sex offenders strapped with GPS devices. Unless they take them off. By Randy Dotinga. [Wired News: Security Blanket] 1:30:44 AM  PermaLink   / trackback []

Many U.S. Adults Claim to Have Been Notified that Personal Information Has Been Improperly Disclosed. Many U.S. Adults Claim to Have Been Notified that Personal Information Has Been Improperly Disclosed. "Many of these harms are caused by actions of friends and family of the victims, stolen wallets or purses, pilfering identifying information from mailboxes or trash containers, and from insider theft of personal data by employees of organizations" [GT: Security and Privacy] 1:28:59 AM  PermaLink   / trackback []

E-Commerce News: RFID: IBM Trims Privacy Concerns With 'Clipped Tag' RFID A year after IBM scientist Paul Moskowitz distributed handmade prototypes of his invention at an industry event, IBM has announced it will license his Clipped Tag technology -- which features an RFID tag small and flexible enough to allow consumers to tear off most of its antenna -- to Marnlen RFiD. The firm said it will begin production of Clipped Tag products immediately. 1:27:14 AM  PermaLink   / trackback []

globeandmail.com: Big Brother's watching Canadians ... and they don't like it Almost half of Canadians find anti-terrorism laws in the post-9/11 world intrusive, according to a new international Queen's University survey. Americans were even more concerned than Canadians about these new national security laws, with 57 per cent saying they were invading their privacy. The Queen's survey, published Monday, is believed to be the largest of its kind. It explores the attitudes of 9,000 people from eight different countries on topics ranging from consumer surveillance, racial profiling at airports, workplace privacy, to trust in government. It found a wide-range of cultural commonalities and differences between the countries chosen - Canada, the U.S., China, France, Spain, Hungary, Mexico and Brazil. In general, those living in the U.S. and Canada tend to be more protective of their personal information than citizens of other countries. 1:25:53 AM  PermaLink   / trackback []

Is the boss reading your e-mail? Each day, it becomes more apparent that e-mail and instant messages are not private. Employers are worried about liability and lawsuits, so they're monitoring employee e-mail. Their fears are not unfounded. The "2006 Workplace E-mail, Instant Messaging & Blog Survey" by the American Management Association and the ePolicy Institute found that 24% of responding organizations have had employee e-mail subpoenaed, and 15% have gone to court to battle lawsuits triggered by employee e-mail. On the other side, 26% of employers have terminated employees for e-mail misuse, and 2% have let employees go for misuse of IM. Even blogs are a cause of dismissal -- 2% of respondents reported firing workers for offensive content -- even if the blogs are not corporate-based. With employees encouraged to work longer and less-defined hours on company equipment, the lines between professional and personal use are becoming increasingly blurred. While organizations have gotten increasingly better about developing and communicating e-mail acceptable use policies, they are still lacking in addressing policies for IM and blogging. The AMA found that 76% of the companies surveyed do have e-mail usage and content policies in place. That number drops significantly lower -- to 31% -- of employers that have IM policies in place. And only 9% have policies that address the use of blogs. This lack of communications between employers and employees about expectations has set employees up for serious repercussions. I recently discussed this changing landscape with Jeremy Gruber, legal director at the National Workrights Institute in Princeton, N.J. 1:23:33 AM  PermaLink   / trackback []

Breach Security Releases First Appliance With ModSecurity v2.0 Open Source Web Application Firewall Breach Security, Inc. the leader in web application security, today announced the release of the ModSecurity version 2.0 open source web application firewall on an appliance delivering the lowest cost commercial web application firewall available. The ModSecurity Pro(TM) M1000 appliance is easy to deploy and manage with rules sets for compliance with Payment Card Initiative v1.1, as well as protection for Microsoft(TM) Outlook Web Access (OWA). "We have listened to the community and taken the ModSecurity open source project to an entirely new level -- with an appliance that delivers web application security immediately. It is ideal for small-to-medium businesses or large organizations needing just-in-time virtual patching," said Ivan Ristic, chief evangelist, Breach Security. "The M1000 is easy to install and provides an affordable, essential layer of proven security, along with the PCI rule set that addresses important security vulnerabilities." 1:19:57 AM  PermaLink   / trackback []

Mobile phones that track your buddies | Tech News on ZDNet Boost Mobile, a so-called mobile virtual-network operator owned by Sprint Nextel, will offer a two-hour demonstration of buddy-tracking technology created by a start-up called Loopt. The start-up, founded by two Stanford University graduates while they were still students, is the latest to offer a mobile-tracking system that enables people to do things like get a bead on friends' whereabouts. It certainly won't be the last. For nearly a decade, technology visionaries have talked of a day when people would be able to use their cell phones to get directions, track their friends, keep tabs on their kids or simply find the nearest coffee shop. Now those services are finally starting to take trickle into the marketplace. 1:18:01 AM  PermaLink   / trackback []

UK Chief Answers ID Card Questions. UK Chief Answers ID Card Questions. Citizens question privacy, security of information and biometrics in live chat [GT: Security and Privacy] 1:15:49 AM  PermaLink   / trackback []

Employees Do Not Understand Perils of Computer Use at Work. Employees Do Not Understand Perils of Computer Use at Work. More than half of all workers did not know that personal e-mail, IMs and unsent files created on work computers may become business records [GT: Security and Privacy] 1:14:19 AM  PermaLink   / trackback []

E-voting 2006: A touch screen, a missing vote, a mystery in Arkansas. E-voting 2006: A touch screen, a missing vote, a mystery in Arkansas. A mayoral candidate in Waldenburg, Ark., is trying to figure out why the vote he cast for himself on Election Day wasn't counted. In fact, when all the votes were in, he didn't have any votes at all. [Computerworld Privacy News] 1:12:32 AM  PermaLink   / trackback []

'Extreme Big Brother fears to become a reality' - Public Sector - Breaking Business and Technology News at silicon.com UK citizens will be tracked by RFID tags embedded in their clothes and have their movements monitored by unmanned "flying eyes in the sky" using facial recognition systems within 10 years, the nation's data protection watchdog has claimed. In a new report entitled A Surveillance Society, information commissioner Richard Thomas predicts a world in 2016 where technology is extensively and routinely used to track and record people's activities and movements. He said in the report: "Two years ago I warned that we were in danger of sleepwalking into a surveillance society. Today I fear that we are in fact waking up to a surveillance society that is already all around us." 1:07:35 AM  PermaLink   / trackback []

Marks & Spencer extends RFID tagging nationwide - Retail & Leisure - Breaking Business and Technology News at silicon.com Marks & Spencer (M&S) is to extend the item-level radio frequency ID (RFID) tagging of clothing items following successful trials in 42 stores. M&S has been one of the early UK pioneers in using RFID tags in the retail sector and first trialled the tracking technology on a selection of men's clothing in its High Wycombe store in 2003. The RFID tags are contained in throwaway paper labels attached to, but not embedded in, a variety of men's and women's clothing items in stores. M&S uses mobile scanners to scan garment tags on the shop floor, and portals at distribution centres and the loading bays of stores allow rails of hanging garments to be pushed through and read at speed. A spokeswoman for M&S told silicon.com that item-level RFID tagging of certain ranges of clothing will now be rolled out to a further 80 stores in the spring of 2007. "We are tagging a variety of complex sizing items such as men's suits and women's trousers and skirts. Anything where you can have a wide variety of clothing sizes," she said. M&S is also looking at extending RFID tagging to other clothing departments from the autumn of next year, she added. 1:05:40 AM  PermaLink   / trackback []

RFID Tech Infiltrating a British Institution. RFID Tech Infiltrating a British Institution. An anonymous reader writes,  "According to silicon.com, Marks & Spencer -- a department store as quintessentially British as tea & cake -- is so pleased with its trial of RFID clothes-tagging that it's planning to roll it out nationwide. Considering that the UK's Information Commissioner recently made a lot of noise around the RFID track and trace tech, warning that Britain is 'sleepwalking into a surveillance society', Marks & Sparks seems to be setting itself up as a tweed-clad Public Enemy Number One."  [Slashdot: Your Rights Online] 1:02:12 AM  PermaLink   / trackback []