Privacy Digest

Gay students claim principal outed them - Via UPI on DailyIndia.com :

MEMPHIS, May 2 (UPI) -- Students at a Memphis high school said their principal outed several gay students when she compiled a list of couples at the school and posted it publicly.

The students claim Principal Daphne Beasley of Hollis F. Price Middle College High School compiled a list of all couples at the school, homosexual and heterosexual alike, after receiving complaints about public displays of affection in school hallways, ABC News reported Friday.

"I really feel that my personal privacy was invaded,"  read more »

Universities Baffled By Massive Surge In RIAA Copyright Notices - Via Threat Level:

In the last 10 days, universities around the country have seen more than a 20-fold increase in the number of filesharing takedown notices from the recording industry, in an unexplained spike that seems focused on colleges in the Midwest.

The spike is not matched by an increase in actual file sharing.

"Universities are getting as many notices from the RIAA in one day as what they would typically get from all content owners in a month," says Mark Luker, a vice president of higher education technology advocate Educause.

Indiana University says that starting on April 21, the Recording Industry Association of America began sending 80 legal notices a day to the university, under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Typically, the university handles less than 100 such notices a month from the RIAA, the Motion Picture Association of America and HBO combined.  read more »

Thieves pilfer backup tape holding 2M medical records - Via Computerworld :

University of Miami officials last week acknowledged that six backup tapes from its medical school that contained more than 2 million medical records was stolen in March from a van that was transporting the data to an off-site facility.

Jacqueline Menendez, vice president of communications at the university, said a vehicle used by Archive America Ltd. to transport the patient data was broken into in downtown Coral Gables, Fla., on March 17. Thieves removed a transport case carrying the school's computer backup tapes, she said.

For reasons Menendez could not explain, Archive America waited 48 hours before finally notifying the university on Mar. 19 about the break-in and theft. Officials from the transport firm couldn't be reached.  read more »

Backup Tapes With 2 Million Medical Records Stolen - Via Slashdot:

Lucas123 writes "A vehicle used by an off-site archive company to transport patient data was broken into on March 17. The University of Miami just made the theft public last week, saying the thieves removed a transport case carrying the school's six computer backup tapes. On those tapes were more than 2 million medical records. In fact, the archive company waited 48 hours before notifying the university itself. A University spokeswoman said the school has stopped shipping backup tapes off-site for now."

(Read Original Article - Via Slashdot.)

Four Things You Should Know about Student Rights and Day of Silence - Via ACLU Blog:

Here at the ACLU Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Project, we get calls and emails from students all over the country who have questions about things that have happened to them at school. Two things we’ve learned over the years are that many school administrators and teachers don’t have the slightest clue about students’ legal rights, and that some do know what students’ rights are but violate them anyway because they think they can get away with it.

Students and parents, you simply can’t be sure that your school will respect and uphold your legal rights. It’s up to YOU to educate yourself about what your rights are and hold your school to its responsibility to protect and enforce them.  read more »

Lawmakers Proposing Millions for Elementary School Surveillance Cams - UPDATE - Via Threat Level:

Call it the No Child Left Unsurveilled Act.

On Thursday, federal lawmakers will hold a hearing on a proposal to let public schools use millions in federal grants to blanket the halls of learning with surveillance cameras.

Those grants have typically been used to install metal detectors, lights and locks, as well as paying for security training for students and employees.

The bill adds closed circuit surveillance cameras to the list of items eligible for Justice Department Safe School grants, ups the funding to from $30 million annually to $50 million and increases the feds share of any outlays to 80%, up from the current 50-50 split.  read more »

Lawmakers Proposing Millions for Elementary School Surveillance Cams - Via Threat Level:

Call it the No Child Left Unsurveilled Act.

On Thursday, federal lawmakers will hold a hearing on a proposal to let public schools use millions in federal grants to blanket the halls of learning with surveillance cameras.

Those grants have typically been used to install metal detectors, lights and locks, as well as paying for security training for students and employees.

The bill adds closed circuit surveillance cameras to the list of items eligible for Justice Department Safe School grants, ups the funding to from $30 million annually to $50 million and increases the feds share of any outlays to 80%, up from the current 50-50 split.

In what seems a plain attempt to arise the ire of Bruce Schneier, the bill would bar schools from using the money for actually assessing what the threats and weaknesses to the school are.  read more »

Virginia 1st state to require Internet safety lessons - Via WDBJ7 Roanoke:

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) -- Virginia is the first state to mandate that public schools offer Internet safety classes for all grade levels -- and it's one of many measures being taken nationally to protect young Web users.

Virginia's requirement initially stemmed from concerns about sex offenders preying on children online and a general increase in Internet-based crime. It took effect this school year.  read more »

University of Washington Tracking the Edge of Privacy - Via Slashdot: Your Rights Online:

Roland Piquepaille writes "We've been told for several years that RFID tags would eventually be everywhere. This isn't the case yet, but researchers at the University of Washington would like to know if the future of social networking could be affected by these tags and check the balance between privacy and utility. They've deployed 200 antennas in one UW building and a dozen researchers are carrying RFID tags on them. According to the Seattle Times, all their moves are tracked every second in the building. Of course, it can be practical to know if a colleague is available for a cup of coffee but this kind of system (if in widespread use) has some serious implications. As the lead researcher said, 'what we want to understand is what makes it useful, what makes it threatening and how to balance the two.'"

(Read Original Article - Via Slashdot: Your Rights Online.)

Overreaction to Bush Administration Complaint Prompted Block on 'Abortion' Searches - Via Threat Level:

University administrators of the world's largest scientific database on reproductive health blocked the word "abortion" as a search term after receiving a complaint from the Bush administration over two abortion-related articles listed in the database.

"The items in question had to do with abortion advocacy -- the two items dealing with abortion were removed following this inquiry, and the administrators made a decision to restrict abortion as a search term," said Tim Parsons, a spokesman for the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Maryland.

The blocking of the keyword "is a decision that the dean does not support in any way," he added, and the administrators are unblocking the search for the term right now.  read more »

Researchers Expose New Credit Card Fraud Risk - Via Slashdot:

An anonymous reader writes "Researchers from the University of Cambridge have discovered flaws in the card payment systems used by millions of customers worldwide. Ross Anderson, Saar Drimer, and Steven Murdoch demonstrated how a simple paper clip can be used to capture account numbers and PINs from so-called 'tamper-proof' equipment. In their paper (PDF), they warn how with a little technical skill and off-the-shelf electronics, fraudsters could empty customers' accounts. British television featured a demonstration of the attack on BBC Newsnight."

(Read Original Article - Via Slashdot.)

University of San Francisco Law Clinic Joins Fight Against RIAA - Via Slashdot: Your Rights Online:

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA's litigation campaign has met resistance from the academic community before, but now it's been taken to a whole new level: the defense of RIAA victims who are not part of the college community. First the University of Oregon lashed out on behalf of its students, then it was the University of Maine's Cumberland Legal Aid Clinic on behalf of its undergrads. Now, the University of San Francisco School of Law has taken the fight a giant step further. Its Intellectual Property Law Clinic's attorneys-in-training, working under the supervision of law professors, are going to bat against the RIAA by helping outside lawyers to defend their clients, pro bono.  read more »

Middle School Kids Threatened with Terrorist Watch List - Via Threat Level:

Editor: Interesting graphic removed. Go to original site for that [...]A sherriff's deputy in Georgia warned middle school kids last week that they could end up on the government's terrorist watch list for life if they were caught making bomb threats against their school.

The deputy in Oglethorpe County was speaking to an assembly of 10- to 15-year-olds after eight of their fellow students were charged with making terrorist threats for leaving threatening notes in their school hallways.

An FBI spokesman took issue with the local official's warning saying that it was unlikely that a young kid would be branded for life for such a prank.  read more »

Patriot Act haunts Google service - Via globeandmail.com:

Google Inc. is a year into its ground-shifting strategy to change the way people communicate and work.

But the initiative to reinvent the way that people use software is running headlong into another new phenomenon of the information technology age: the unprecedented powers of security officials in the United States to conduct surveillance on communications.

Eighteen months ago, Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ont., had an outdated computer system that was crashing daily and in desperate need of an overhaul. A new installation would have cost more than $1-million and taken months to implement. Google's service, however, took just 30 days to set up, didn't cost the university a penny and gave nearly 8,000 students and faculty leading-edge software, said Michael Pawlowski, Lakehead's vice-president of administration and finance.

U.S.-based Google spotlighted the university as one of the first to adopt its software model of the future, and today Mr. Pawlowski boasts the move was the right thing for Lakehead, saving it hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual operating costs. But he notes one trade-off: The faculty was told not to transmit any private data over the system, including student marks.  read more »

Commentary: Inside the Twisted Mind of the Security Professional - Via Wired News: Security Blanket:

It takes a certain kind of brain to see security flaws in everyday consumer conveniences and corporate shortcuts. Now a University of Washington professor is trying to teach that kind of thinking to his students.

[...]

Good engineering involves thinking about how things can be made to work; the security mindset involves thinking about how things can be made to fail. It involves thinking like an attacker, an adversary or a criminal. You don't have to exploit the vulnerabilities you find, but if you don't see the world that way, you'll never notice most security problems.  read more »

Scotland Yard Investigator Wants to Collect DNA from School Children - Via Threat Level:

The director of Scotland Yard's forensics division says that Britain should be collecting DNA samples from any primary school children who show signs of behavior that exhibit a propensity for later crimes, according to an article in the Observer.

The Yard's Gary Pugh says the idea that trivial offenses committed early in life can forecast more serious crimes later in life is supported by studies, and that identifying these individuals when they're children would not only aid crime-solving later, but possibly deter some of these suspects from committing crimes when they're adults.  read more »