Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Sun CSO: Endless Internet Growth Keeps Security on Back Burner. Sun CSO: Endless Internet Growth Keeps Security on Back Burner. Q&A: Whitfield Diffie, chief security officer at Sun and co-inventor of public-key cryptography, talks about the state of computer security and Microsoft[base ']s role in it. [Computerworld Privacy News] 4:07:25 PM

Medical data on Blue Cross members may be lost | CNET News.com WellPoint, one of the nation's largest health insurers, has begun notifying 75,000 members of its Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield unit in New York that a CD holding their vital medical and other personal information has disappeared. The information was on an unencrypted disc that a subcontractor recently sent to Magellan Behavioral Services, a company in Avon, Conn., that specializes in monitoring and coordinating mental health and substance abuse treatments for insurance companies. Empire began notifying the affected consumers by mail on Saturday that their records--including their names, Social Security numbers, health plan identification numbers and description of medical services back to 2003--had been lost. [...] Before shipping the information to Magellan, the coding and passwords that protect the privacy of the information was removed by a Magellan subcontractor, Lisa Ann Greiner, an Empire spokeswoman, said Tuesday. Janlori Goldman, the director of the Health Privacy Center, a nonprofit organization in Washington, said the error was an "egregious breach of privacy." She said that insurance companies were responsible under a federal privacy law for ensuring that their contractors use adequate security procedures. Greiner said that the subcontractor, Health Data Management Services, worked for Magellan, not Empire. "If any contract was breached, we are going to take direct action," she said. 3:45:41 PM

SignOnSanDiego.com > Technology -- Official: Yahoo didn't violate laws in case of jailed journalist HONG KONG - Investigators said Wednesday there was not enough evidence to show that Yahoo Inc.'s Hong Kong branch provided private information that helped convict a Chinese reporter accused of leaking state secrets. The case raised questions about whether Internet companies should cooperate with governments that deny freedom of speech and frequently crack down on journalists. Yahoo! Hong Kong Limited was accused of helping Chinese authorities by Hong Kong lawmaker Albert Ho, who filed a complaint last year with the city's privacy commissioner. Ho alleged the Internet company provided information that helped convict journalist Shi Tao, sentenced to 10 years in jail in 2005 on mainland China. 3:43:01 PM

Google Cooperating with Mumbai & Brazilian Police. Google Cooperating with Mumbai & Brazilian Police. Boing Boing has two good posts detailing how Google has been cooperating with Mumbai and Brazilian authorities to help censor content and track down offenders on their Orkut social networking service. In the Mumbai case: The Indian Express and other regional media are reporting that Google[base ']s social networking service Orkut will cooperate with the Mumbai Police to share IP addresses of users who post [base ']Äúobjectionable content[base ']Äù on Orkut. If reports are to be believed, the police need only email a complaint to Orkut, and Orkut will send back the personally identifying data, no questions asked. The police are said to be targeting a number of [base "]problematic[per thou] Orkut posts, including items that criticize various public figures in India, others that glorify Indian mobsters, and [base "]anti-Indian words.[per thou] The latter probably has to do with a group on Orkut called [base "]I Hate India,[per thou] which pissed off Indian officials so much, they decided to sue Google over it last October. And the Brazilian matter: Google has designed a special Orkut admin tool for deleting or blocking illegal content, and given Brazilian police access to this tool. This means that if you[base ']re on Orkut and you say something that in Brazil could be considered illegal (such as celebrity gossip, Consumerist-style corporate bashing, mistreating animals), the Brazilian police can censor the community where this [base "]illegal[per thou] speech is seen. Much more if you follow the links. [michaelzimmer.org] 11:39:49 AM

Viacom, YouTube, and Privacy. Viacom, YouTube, and Privacy. Yesterday[base ']s top tech policy story was the copyright lawsuits filed by Viacom, the parent company of Comedy Central, MTV, and Paramount Pictures, against YouTube and its owner Google. Viacom[base ']s complaint accuses YouTube of direct, contributory, and vicarious copyright infringement, and inducing infringement. The complaint tries to paint YouTube as a descendant of Napster and Grokster. Viacom argues generally that YouTube should have done more to help it detect and stop infringement. Interestingly, Viacom points to the privacy features of YouTube as part of the problem, in paragraph 43 of the complaint: In addition, YouTube is deliberately interfering with copyright owners[base '] ability to find infringing videos even after they are added to YouTube[base ']s library. YouTube offers a feature that allows users to designate [base "]friends[per thou] who are the only persons allowed to see videos they upload, preventing copyright owners from finding infringing videos with this limitation[sigma]. Thus, Plaintiffs cannot necessarily find all infringing videos to protect their rights through searching, even though that is the only avenue YouTube makes available to copyright owners. Moreover, YouTube still makes the hidden infringing videos available for viewing through YouTube features like the embed, share, and friends functions. For example, many users are sharing full-length copies of copyrighted works and stating plainly in the description [base "]Add me as a friend to watch.[per thou] Users have many good reasons to want to limit access to noninfringing uploaded videos, for example to make home movies available to family members but not to the general public. It would be a shame, and YouTube would be much less useful, if there were no way to limit access. Equivalently, if any copyright owner could override the limits, there would be no privacy anymore [~] remember that we[base ']re all copyright owners. Is Viacom really arguing that YouTube shouldn[base ']t let people limit access to uploaded material? Viacom doesn[base ']t say this directly, though it is one plausible reading of their argument. Another reading is that they think YouTube should have an extra obligation to police and/or filter material that isn[base ']t viewable by the public. Either way, it[base ']s troubling to see YouTube[base ']s privacy features used to attack the site[base ']s legality, when we know those features have plenty of uses other than hiding infringement. Will future entrepreneurs shy away from providing private communication, out of fear that it will be used to brand them as infringers? If the courts aren[base ']t careful, that will be one effect of Viacom[base ']s suit. Share This [Freedom to Tinker] 11:36:38 AM

© Copyright 2007 Paul Hardwick. Last update: 3/18/07; 5:03:34 PM.