Shostack + Friends Blog Archive

 

Zabbo Blogs (again!)

I’m very excited to discover that my friend Zach Brown is blogging again. Zach was one of a group of friends who introduced me to blogs in, maybe late ’99? Early 2000? He’d been on haitus, and I’m glad he’s back. But I realized that my excitement felt a little odd, and so I’ve been […]

 

Small Bits of Chaos all Starting with Names

Mike Solomon, of PithHelmet fame, comments on RSS spam, and promises to do something about it. (Incidentally, I’ve been wondering about NetNewswire’s cookie behavior when you load pages, but some rummaging in it’s files didn’t seem to turn up cookies, and I needed to go blog earn money.) Alan Chapell (whose blog is looking much […]

 

Portland Withdraws Support from Terror Task Force

Mayor Potter, a former Portland police chief, earlier this year requested that the federal government grant him, the police chief and the city attorney top-secret security clearance — the same as task force officers — so that city leaders could have access to case files and more frequent updates. Potter said he wanted the ability […]

 

Drivers License Fraud

As the trust and reliance people place in drivers licenses, the greater the incentive to get fraudulently issued ones. FoxNews reports on “Workers Charged With Taking Payoffs for IDs ” (via JihadWatch.) “With a valid driver’s license, you establish an identity,” said Michael Garcia, assistant secretary of the Homeland Security Department. … The three Florida […]

 

Way To Debate!

Since Choicepoint demonstrated that screening is hard, they’ve been repeating the phrase “We look forward to a national debate.” But at yesterday’s annual meeting, they once again failed to engage in that debate. The LA Times has an AP story “No Answers for ChoicePoint Shareholders” (Bugmenot, because no other paper has picked up the story, […]

 

Choicepoint Annual Meeting

But today, the chairman and chief executive of Alpharetta-based ChoicePoint is likely to get a feel for his standing on a smaller stage: whether he is held in esteem by ChoicePoint shareholders. … Lauren Waits, who oversaw ChoicePoint’s charitable giving program before leaving earlier this year, describes her former boss as a visionary who also […]

 

National Legislative Roundup

In “Proposed Legislation Limiting PI Access to Data“, Private Investigator News and Information provides the National Council of Investigation and Security Services’s roundup of legislation that would affect the private investigator business. Naturally, the private investigators are up in arms; their job is about to be made a lot harder over something that wasn’t their […]

 

Hofmeyr on Legislation

1386 provides a huge incentive for companies to secure their systems, without restricting or constraining the way in which they should do so, leaving companies to choose the most effective way. This encourages innovation in defense, because should new, more effective defense strategies become available, companies are more likely to adopt them, whereas if they […]

 

Blockbuster, 65, Employee Miles N. Holloman

A former employee of a Blockbuster video store in Washington, D.C., has been indicted on charges of stealing customers’ identities, then using them to buy more than $117,000 in trips, electronics and other goods. Miles N. Holloman is charged with stealing credit card numbers, Social Security numbers and other private financial information from the application […]

 

Victory Against RFID Passports is Near

“The State Department seems to be putting down the purple Kool-Aid and looking at the serious problem this technology presents,” said Mr. Scannell, who runs an Internet site called RFIDKills.com; the first part of the name stands for radio frequency identification chips. “But no matter how much stuff you layer on the technology, it is […]

 

Small Bits: Labelling Software, People, Aaron Weisburd's Foreign Policy

Gunnar Peterson offers up a label for software that he stole from Jeff Williams. I had a good, if short, back and forth with Geoff, of Screen Discussion, in his comments, on using photographs to enhance criminal background checks, by including photos with the records of criminals, so the viewer of a report can compare. […]

 

Banks as Big Brother

“AML software will change international banking forever,” said Suheim Sheikh of SDG Software, an Indian software firm hoping to tap into the big new market. “Governments across the world will have their eyes on bank customers,” he added. “Since the software can monitor so many accounts, so many transactions, all kinds of people will be […]

 

Usability as a Security Concern

Building new technologies involves making tradeoffs. A programmer can only develop so many features in a day. These tradeoffs are particularly hard in building privacy enhancing technologies. As we work to make them more secure, we often want to show the user more information to help them make better decisions. This impacts usability. The security […]

 

What Are You Hiding, Democrat?

Time Magazine reports: The State Department has traditionally put together a list of industry representatives for these [Inter-American Telecommunication Commission] meetings, and anyone in the U.S. telecom industry who had the requisite expertise and wanted to go was generally given a slot, say past participants. Only after the start of Bush’s second term did a […]

 

Choicepoint: April 24

The Privacy Law Site posted on the Schumer-Nelson Comprehensive Privacy bill on April 13, but I just found it. The author summarizes the bill. Richard Clarke has a column in the New York Times, “You’ve Been Sold,” in which he outlines some reasonable parts of a new law. [Added shortly after first posting.] The Seattle […]

 

PithHelmet

After a recent hard drive failure on my Mac, I realized just how much I hate the web. No, that’s not really true. I don’t hate the web. I think the web is great. Advertising on the web, that drives me to distraction. And so I realized how much I appreciate Mike Solomon’s PithHelmet plug-in […]

 

Cool Music

While denying being a member of the ruling class, Asteroid points to some pretty cool music, including DJ Earworm, which helped me track down another site Asteroid mentioned: DJ Cal, at Robootlegs.com, whose “Hendrix vs Jackson – Foxy Jean Haze” is a masterpiece.

 

OSVDB Blog

Speaking of distributed innovation, the Open Source Vulnerability Database is a great project, dedicated to accumulating deep technical knowledge about computer security vulnerabilities, and making it freely available. And now it turns out, they have a blog! Mark Ward has an interesting article, “Predicting Vulnerabilities, Quotes and more.” When the patch comes out, many people […]

 

MBP On Impatience

Martin Pool, whose blog lacks a comment facility, quotes a history of Windows NT: The first two weeks of development were fairly uneventful, with the NT team using Microsoft Word to create the original design documentation… Finally, it was time to start writing some code. (I wish I’d seen this line a couple of days […]

 

Distributed Innovation

In the New York Times, Virginia Postrel writes about the work of Eric von Hippel, head of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Group at the Sloan School of Management at MIT, who has a new (academic) book, “Democratizing Innovation.” But a lot of significant innovations do not come from people trying to figure out what customers […]

 

"£155,000 per instance of fraud"

Bruce Schneier writes: The UK government tried, and failed, to get a national ID. Now they’re adding biometrics to their passports. Financing for the Passport Office is planned to rise from £182 million a year to £415 million a year by 2008 to cope with the introduction of biometric information such as fingerprints. A Home […]

 

Small Bits: Airport Security, Tax Web Bugs

Stupid Security covers an AP story: Security at U.S. airports is no better under federal control than it was before the Sept. 11 attacks, a key House member says two government reports will conclude. None of us here [at Stupidsecurity] are surprised. The real fun begins with the second paragraph: “A lot of people will […]

 

Small Bits: Ameritrade, Tax & web privacy, revolution, medicine

It turned out someone I had dinner with last night had gotten an Ameritrade letter. According to her, Amertrade is not offering credit monitoring service.* “Lotus, Surviving A Dark Time,” has some good analysis: Well, duh with a PR stamp. How could they have heard of any such “misuse?” If customers had any bad experiences, […]

 

CMU, 5,000+, Hacker

A hacker who tapped into business school computers at Carnegie Mellon University may have compromised sensitive personal data belonging to 5,000 to 6,000 graduate students, staff, alumni and others, officials said yesterday. … There is no evidence that any data, including Social Security and credit card numbers, have been misused, officials said. But they have […]

 

Choicepoint Earnings

ChoicePoint Inc. (NYSE: CPS), today reported first quarter total revenue growth of 19 percent compared to 2004. First quarter total revenue for 2005 was $259.3 million. … These expenses included approximately $2.0 million for communications to, and credit reports and credit monitoring services for, individuals receiving notice of the fraudulent data access and approximately $3.4 […]

 

Small Bits of Security Chaos: Airports (2), Bastille Linux adds metrics

The Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General has written a report on TSA security: Improvements are still needed in the screening process to ensure that dangerous prohibited items are not being carried into the sterile areas of airports, or do not enter the checked baggage system. In our report on the results of […]

 

Choicepoint, April 20

Presto Vivace reports that: During the April NCC AIIM meeting, a member of the audience asked how the IRS’ Free-File could avoid becoming another ChoicePoint, clearly a reference to recent security breaches. Everyone in the room immediately understood the reference; no explanation was needed. CBS Marketwatch reports “For now, little way to halt firms’ leaks […]

 

Trackbacks vs. Technorati?

Kip Esquire points to WILLisms, who wants to “Save the trackback.” I think I’m running about 10-to-1 spam trackbacks to real ones. It’s clearly because I talk about nothing but poker and viagra. I have to say, I love getting real trackbacks. I like it when people take what I’ve said and expand on it. […]

 

Ameritrade, 200,000 SSNs, Backup Tape

Some days I feel like I’m playing Clue…It was Mr. Mustard, in the study with the lead pipe. Ameritrade Inc. has advised 200,000 current and former customers that a computer backup tape containing their personal information has been lost, MSNBC.com has learned. The tape contained information spanning the years 2000-2003, and included both current and […]

 

Removing Excel Macros?

I have a document where I started to create a macro, then realized that some clever search and replace would work. So I stopped creating the macro. But now, the document (which I share with others) has a macro in it. Sure, its possible to open with macros disabled, but I’d like to remove the […]

 

Hasbrouck on RFID Passports

In his closing CFP keynote, Bill Scannell of RFIDKills.com asked for voice votes by the audience on whether a series of government measures including the use of secretly and remotely-readable RFID chips in passports were stupid or evil. “Both” seemed to be the predominant response. I and some others (including Ryan Singel of Wired News […]

 

DSW, IRS Security Failures

What is it with order of magnitude errors in victim counts? DSW Shoe reports 1.4 million credit cards exposed. In other news, the General Accounting Office reports [The IRS] has corrected or mitigated 32 of the 53 weaknesses that GAO reported as unresolved at the time of our prior review in 2002. However, in addition […]

 

Lebanese Democracy

The fine folks at Spirit of America are blogging their time in Lebanon. Yesterday, they point to Pulse of Freedom, where folks working towards real democracy in Lebanon are blogging. Very cool.

 

What Do You Need To Do To Get Fined?

As I covered in “Canadian Privacy Law and CIBC,” CIBC spent years faxing information to, amongst others, a West Virginia scrap yard. Today, the Privacy Commissioner released her report, and asks that they please, pretty please do better next time. See the press release, if you really want to. Via Dave Akin.

 

Housing Bubble?

Tyler Cowen asks, does DC have a housing bubble, and asks how can we justify the price rise: Housing can be lived in, most buyers have only one home, transaction costs are relatively high, and rarely are homes sold and resold in a matter of days. All those features militate against a housing bubble. Yet […]

 

Relentless Navel Gazing, in the blogger syle

I’ve made a couple of CSS changes. (CSS is the Content Style Sheet which controls how this page looks in your browser.) Mostly making the CSS fully valid, and adding some padding around list items so they don’t scrunch together quite as much. Aren’t you thrilled? Do let me know if it looks messed up, […]

 

Sophocles

Speaker B: And the helmets are shaking their purple-dyed crests, and for the wearers of breast-plates the weavers are striking up the wise shuttle’s songs, that wakes up those who are asleep. is a pretty unexceptional line of a play, unless you happen to be a classicist, familiar enough with the works of Sophocles to […]

 

Apple Security Update 10.3.9, Analyzed

I have a confession to make. I’ve spent way too much time thinking about patching, and secure programming technique. This week’s Apple security update is interesting to me for a few reasons. Two side comments before I delve into the nitty-gritty. What’s with releasing this at 5.30PM on a Friday? If Microsoft had done that, […]

 

Polo Ralph Lauren Breach: The Rules Have Changed.

The security failure at Polo Ralph Lauren is going to be a big story. Not Choicepoint big, but big. According to ComputerWorld, in “Scope of credit card security breach expands: [An emailed] statement also noted that Polo Ralph Lauren has been working with law enforcement officials and credit card companies since fall 2004 to determine […]

 

Small Bits: Turing Test, Keynote HTML!, individual i, zipcar,

Students need volunteers: Back in the 1930s, Alan Turing proposed a “Gender Guessing Game” in which a judge, connected to two people in closed rooms with a teletype each, would attempt to guess which was a man and which was a woman. Turing then proposed extending the game into his infamous “Turing Test” where a […]

 

DNA Dragnets Not Needed

In January, I blogged about the city of Truro, Mass, trying to get DNA samples from all 790 residents. (“DNA Dragnets” and “DNA Dragnets and Criminal Signaling.”) The New York Times reports that they’ve arrested someone: Mr. McCowen was first considered a possible suspect in April 2002, three months after the murder, Mr. O’Keefe said, […]

 

Choicepoint, April 15

Inside Bay Area claims “Protecting consumers’ personal information may not be possible.” Former Congressman Bob Barr, writing for Findlaw, disagrees in an insightful article. Robert Gelman suggests that government only buy from vendors who voluntarily follow fair information practices in the second half of his DMNews editorial, “ . . And Into the Fire” Businessweek […]

 

Congratulations, Choicepoint!

You’ve won the Big Brother award for Lifetime achievement! It was a tough battle for top place this year, and while Choicepoint was the people’s fave, we all know that those privacy elitists don’t really care about the little people. Other winners included California’s Brittan Elementary. The Department of Education got worst government department, despite […]

 

Small Bits of Chaos: Video, Anonymous Blogs, Real ID Act dead

This New York Times article on Videos Challenge Accounts of Convention Unrest covers the fascinating conflict between the video and human memories of an event; the issues raised by transparent video editing, and other issues. Worth reading. During a recess, the defense had brought new information to the prosecutor. A videotape shot by a documentary […]

 

Choicepoint, April 14

Following yesterday’s Congressional testimony, there’s analysis by Thomas Greene in The Register, also in Internet News. The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports that Choicepoint VP Doug Curling, and LexisNexis President Kurt Stanford both seemed to come out as accepting of extending fair information practices to their businesses. The testimony prompted editorials in USA Today, and the […]

 

Dear Canon

Dear Canon, Why do you make it harder for me to download the software for my camera than to download a brochure? Is it because I’m stuck and have already bought your camera? Do you hope I’ll forget this experience? Because I can’t figure out how to make either of my web browsers suck enough […]

 

Ed Felten on Passports

Yesterday at CFP, I saw an interesting panel on the proposed radio-enabled passports. Frank Moss, a State Department employee and accomplished career diplomat, is the U.S. government’s point man on this issue … In the Q&A session, I asked Mr. Moss directly why the decision was made to use a remotely readable chip rather than […]

 

Breaches: Tufts, GM/HSBC/Ralph Lauren

Infoworld reports 106,000 Tufts Alumni getting letters, and Cnet reports that “A bank tells 180,000 people who used their GM MasterCards at Polo Ralph Lauren that their data may have been stolen.” (That sounds like a strange set of circumstances. Who sorts their data by credit card issuer?)

 

Orientation and Supreme Court Rulings

Over at Volokh, Orin Kerr has a beautiful analogy which illustrates orientation issues in reading Supreme Court cases. By orientation, I mean the sum of cultural, educational, and training experience that come together to influence the way people interpret the things they observe. (In other words, what Boyd meant.) Kerr writes (emphasis mine):  I think […]

 

Rational Response?

Sitting at a coffeeshop today, I listened to the fellow behind me try to get Dell and Equifax to agree to fix his credit. It seems that his father passed away recently, in debt to Dell over a computer. That debt is now on his credit report, despite his not being a co-signer for the […]

 

Small Bits: Iran annoyed, Academic Publishing, Immigration law, Iraqi Justice

Iran seems to be annoyed that Canada is engaged in a minimal attempt to find out who murdered Zahra Kazemi, and see that they’re brought to justice. It seems that more and more academics are getting the word: Access to your research is good. I wonder when the computer scientists at IEEE and ACM will […]

 

Choicepoint Roundup, April 13

Internet News has one of many reports on the latest breaches, this one titled “Feinstein Tightens ID Theft Proposal” Bob Sullivan at MSNBC reports on background checks: But experts say the nationwide tallies are often full of holes, and contain as few as 70 percent of all felony conviction records, leading in turn to a […]

 

Choicepoint's "Privacy" Officer

Declan has some choice words about Choicepoint’s new Credentialling, Compliance and privacy officer, in “Sidelining Homeland Security’s privacy chief:” DiBattiste sounded like she was replying to a pesky reporter when she wrote back [To TSA Privacy Officer Nuala O’Conner Kelly]: “TSA Public Affairs has no information in response to your request.” How fitting, then, that […]

 

59 breaches at Lexis-Nexis

[T]he company said just 2% of those informed by the company in March of the security breach had accepted its offer of free credit monitoring and none had reported identity theft. All the others will also be offered the services it said. (From CNN, or see the statement here.) So, let’s review. A slew of […]

 

Choicepoint, April 9-12

The Daily Caveat tells us that “Choicepoint Changes Access to Personal Data, and Research News has more. No word on what level of audits Choicepoint will be doing. It sounds like there will be a pulldown menu or checkboxes for “allowable uses,” perhaps causing people to think for a bit, then get used to selecting […]

 

Happy Gagarin Day!

Forty-four years ago today, Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin became the first person to fly in space. There’s a fascinating anecdote from Doug Higley at the Encyclopedia of Astrobiology, Astronomy, and Spaceflight. Higley was with the US Army Security Agency unit tasked with monitoring Russian missiles on the day Gagarin flew. Or read up on the Yu. […]

 
 

Lexis Nexis, Tenfold

Lexis Nexis is saying that they understated the number of victims in last month’s incident. It is not 32,000, but 310,000. Kudos to them for stepping up and admitting to it. It’s the right thing both ethically and strategically. Reed spokesman Patrick Kerr said that the first batch of breaches was uncovered by Reed during […]

 

A Picture is Worth A Thousand Words

I’ve briefly mentioned the story of a fellow getting his finger hacked off so the thieves could make off with his S-Class Mercedes. But images are far more powerful than words. Google claims that the German reads “Forest worker…or S-Class owner?” I’d love it if someone could offer a translation of the German text in […]

 

AdScam in Canada

Apr. 10 – People who compare Adscam to Watergate are missing a vital difference. Whereas the Watergate hearings began with the use of private donations to President Nixon’s re-election campaign for illegal operations, Adscam is increasingly exposing the use of public, taxpayer money to fund the election campaigns of the Liberal Party. So says Being […]

 

Anti-Terror Funds Earning Interest

Over drinks, I like to enrage my computer security colleagues by suggesting that we’re spending too much on computer security. My evidence for this is that, despite all the attacks and break-ins and worms and what-have-you, no one’s going out of business. But the news in Saturday’s Washington Post, “Most Area Terrorism Funding Not Spent,” […]

 

Dear American Airlines

Over at Boing-Boing, Cory posts the latest in his saga of having American Airlines ask for a written list of his friends. As I thought about this story, I realized something very worrisome. I fly American! I also realized that I don’t know if I’ll have the right papers with me when I do. So […]

 

Small Bits: Digitizing Art, Making Sense, Wages of Sin, Pookmail

Capturing the Unicorn is an article at the New Yorker about the hubris of technologists trying to capture art. (The technologists win, but the archivist in me asks: CDs?) 13 things that do not make sense is a New Scientist article about, well, 13 things that don’t make sense. Some foolish people might look at […]

 

Workers Steal PINs, Cash

BANGALORE, India — Former employees of a call center in Pune, India, were arrested this week on charges of defrauding four Citibank account holders in New York, to the tune of $300,000, a police official said. The three former employees of Mphasis BPO, the business process outsourcing operation of Bangalore software and services company Mphasis […]

 

Choicepoint, April 8

Choicepoint has been nominated for a lifetime Big Brother award. Best of luck, folks! Prophet or Madman points to an article at Knowledge@Wharton about the issues raised by the case. Robert Gellman has a column in DMnews “Out of the Frying Pan.” Choicepoint has announced their earnings call and webcast, on April 21. (Is ‘before […]

 

Small Bits: Hezbollah, Blowhards, Shit & Cookie Monster

JihadWatch points to a Sunday Times article: PALESTINIAN fighters have revealed that Hezbollah, the militant Lebanese group backed by Iran, is offering to pay for attacks aimed at shattering the fragile truce with Israel. Maciej Ceglowski has some harsh words for Paul Graham’s essay “Hackers and Painters,” in an essay “Dabblers and Blowhards. However, he […]

 

Small Bits

Newsday reports on Orange County, Florida Sheriff Kevin Beary abusing law enforcement access to records. He sent a letter to Alice Gawronski’s home, objecting to her letter to a local neswpaper. He claims it was “legitimate use of public records.” Dan Farmer’s new company, Elemental Security, has launched. Speaking of launched, Steve Hofmeyer, of Sana […]

 

Interim Pope

Normally, I try to avoid comment on religious matters, but I think its important to be aware that Samablog has taken the first step to becoming an anti-Pope by declaring himself Interim Pope. The blogosphere shall elect the next pope! Or something. We bloggers didn’t cause the Thirty Years war.

 

Choicepoint, April 3-7

Diebold, Choicepoint Partner to Offer Innovative Voting Technology was an April Fools item I forgot to blog: Alpharetta, GA – Diebold Election Systems and Choicepoint, Inc., today announced a joint venture that could revolutionize the voting market. The concept is simple: combine Diebold’s demonstrated expertise in voting systems with Choicepoint’s superior data-mining techniques to produce […]

 

Anonymous Blogging Project

I’ve mentioned the Spirit of America anonymous blogging project before. To help move things forward, I’ve offered Jim Hake my assistance as a project coordinator. As Jim describes the project: The project is to review all available technologies and techniques and get the input of the best minds available to put together a plan for […]

 

More on AIM & Privacy

Recently, I griped about AOL’s privacy policy. Today, PGP Corp announced their second public beta of PGP 9, which includes support for encrypting AIM sessions. Its not clear if this will be in the personal edition. I sure hope so.

 

5th Privacy Enhancing Technologies Workshop

The program has been posted for The Fifth Privacy Enhancing Technologies Workshop, which will be held in Drubrovnic , Croatia, 30 May – 1 June. (Corrected spelling.) There’s an affiliated executive briefing, 2-3 June.

 

4th Workshop on the Economics of Information Security

The Fourth Workshop on the Economics of Information Security will be held in Boston, June 2-3. The schedule is now online. I’ll be presenting a short essay on “Avoiding Liability: An Alternative Route to More Secure Products” at the rump session. I’d love feedback. Ian Grigg has talked about alternate review systems.

 

Student Database

Both Blog*on*Nymity and Kip Esquire are covering a massive student database, that seems to be there to ensure that, well, you know, look! A terrorist! More compulsory privacy invasions for little apparent benefit to anyone, except the newly fully employed bureaucrats. And you thought Berkeley losing a laptop was bad?

 

Relentless Navel Gazing

I never really liked the bar down the side of my blockquotes, and have finally replaced them, with a style stolen from Simple Thoughts. They’re in 52pt Copperplate as transparent background gifs. Does anyone know how to add a second image, at bottom right? Putting background: url(http://www.emergentchaos.com/close-quote.png) no-repeat bottom right; url(http://www.emergentchaos.com/quote.png) no-repeat top left; into […]

 

Small Bits: Canada, DNA, Microsoft and Tea

While publicly recalling their Ambassador over the brutal murder of Zahra Kazemi, the Canadian government was playing host to Iranian officials, looking for security information, reports the CBC: In dozens of e-mails, there is no mention of Kazemi, and no one questions why Canada would help Iran, considered by some to be a brutal police […]

 

Making Steady Progress, Keep Paying Us

In this New York Times article on NASA’s “broken safety culture,” we find: In the months after the Columbia disaster in February 2003, the space agency started several initiatives to enhance safety, including the creation of an Engineering and Safety Center at its Langley Research Center in Virginia. It has worked with Behavioral Science Technology, […]

 

Clueless about ID Theft

I’m not sure if Jon Ostik’s column “Want to prevent ID theft? Get back to basics” is a brilliant April Fool’s Day joke, or, an example of, as the Identity Theft blog claims, “Many “security professionals” are clueless about identity theft.” Before anyone panics, the logical first step in any security process is an audit. […]

 

One Nice Thing About a Written Constitution

A legal principle which prevents people being tried for the same crime twice is being scrapped in England and Wales. The ban on “double jeopardy”, which has existed for around 800 years, will be consigned to history from Monday. The Court of Appeal can now quash an acquittal and order a retrial when “new and […]

 

Cool Tech Not at RSA

Quick! Someone get these folks a marketing department! Someone showed me a cool password storage token from Mandylion Labs. You can load passwords over a little electronic interface, and then keep long lists of superuser passwords in your pocket. I had to mail my buddy to get their name. It seems somewhat better than a […]

 

Stroopwafels!

My local supermarket has Stroopwafels! They’re cleverly hidden in the cookie section, which I carefully avoid (due to a lack of willpower). But next time someone gripes about global free trade, I have a miniature stroopwafel to throw at them. Yes, I got the mini ones. No, I’m neither illiterate, nor smoking anything. I got […]

 

BlogRoll

I’ve added Screendiscussion to the blogroll. I don’t always agree with Geoff, but he seems insightful, interesting, and genuinely willing to grapple with the questions that his profession raises. He also posts actual posts, rather than a clipblog. For example, this morning’s post is “Background Checks Must Be Relevant, and points out a case where […]

 

Choicepoint, April 2

The Atlanta Journal Constitution has an editorial “ChoicePoint’s offer not enough :” The better solution would be to prohibit companies such as ChoicePoint from warehousing personal information in the first place, since security has proved so problematic. Computerized collections of consumers’ Social Security numbers, credit information, driving histories, medical and court records may make commerce […]

 

Information Security Magazine on Choicepoint

Information Security Magazine has an interview with Choicepoint CISO Richard Baich. It’s behind a subscriber-wall, so I’m excerpting bits of it after the read more.. (Via Run-DMZ.)

 

Small Bits: Biometrics in Drivers Licenses, Cars, Privacy Art

Grits for Breakfast writes about his testimony before the Texas House in Biometrics debate hinged on ID theft: The committee also seemed surprised that DPS had included facial recognition technology in their drivers license re-engineering RFP, even though the Legislature did not approve it. My understanding is that the AAMVA (American Association of Motor Vehicle […]

 

Iranian Treatment of Journalists

Rape, Torture, and Lies An ongoing Canadian saga has a sad new twist today: photojournalist Ziba Zahra Kazemi was likely brutally tortured and raped before her death in Iran in 2003. Arrested after a demonstration, the official Iranian line has been that her death was an accident due to injuries from a fall. The ER […]

 

Choicepoint Acquires Emergent Chaos

Alpharetta, Georgia, April 1 /PRNewsWire/ Alpharetta-based information broker Choicepoint today announced its intent to acquire the blog “EmergentChaos,” citing market synergies, cost reductions, and new revenue opportunities. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Choicepoint CEO Derek Smith said “We knew just which buttons to push.” Emergent Chaos is a weblog, or “blog,” […]