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We all like to think our privacy is absolute. But if your job involves working across borders, you'll want to talk about privacy as a matter of degree rather than as an uncompromising right. Why? Not only do you want to be seen as someone who can get things done globally, but you also may personally want to be part of advancing social objectives that are arguably as important as privacy. Have you ever had to re-architect your global rollout of PeopleSoft or Lawson because of European Union privacy concerns? Or adjust how your company offers technical support to medical products sold in Europe? Have you ever been part of acquiring a failing European company where the privacy of employee data was a final sticking point? If you've seen projects with obvious social benefit get held up by seemingly minor data-related questions, then you might have been running up against this notion of "nothing trumps privacy." It's a popular idea. The half-billion people of Europe do view privacy as a human right. And they're not the only ones. As one of the first acts of the UN, Eleanor Roosevelt and the U.S. delegation in 1948 lobbied for the global adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights(UNDHR), whose Article 12 states, "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation." With Europe and the UN using absolute-sounding language to describe a right to privacy, it's no wonder we have all of these delayed and downsized corporate projects. People are legitimately concerned about our sometimes reckless march into the Information Age, and they want to put some brakes on it. But does privacy trump all foes? I can think of at least six other equally important social objectives that regularly put limits on privacy: 1. Personal health. We all want to stay healthy - even when we lose the ability to communicate and give consent. Emergency-room personnel need access t

The Data Protection Directive is old-fashioned and out of date, a report published by the UK's privacy regulator the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has said. Commissioner Richard Thomas said that the European Union must change its legislation. The ICO commissioned RAND Europe to investigate whether or not 1995's EU Data Protection Directive was a good basis for Europe-wide data protection law. The research concluded that the law was flawed and needed to be updated. It found that the law must be clearer about what it seeks to achieve, that it should be better at forcing organisations to protect personal data in their charge, that it should encourage a more strategic approach to enforcement and that it does not deal well enough with the export of personal data outside the EU. Thomas said that the Directive, on which the UK's Data Protection Act is based, is outmoded. "The Directive is showing its age. Modern approaches to regulation mean that laws must concentrate on the real risks that people face in the modern world, must avoid unnecessary burdens, and must work well in practice," he said. "Organisations must embed privacy by design and data protection must become a top level corporate governance issue." RAND said that the Directive would be improved by its fundamental approach to ensuring data privacy being changed. It said that the law should focus on the protection of individuals and the security of their data, and not on the processes that lead to that. "The stronger, results oriented approach described in this report aims to protect data subjects against personal harm resulting from the unlawful processing of any data, rather than making personal data the building block of data protection regulations," said the report. "It would move away from a regulatory framework that measures the adequacy of data processing by measuring compliance with certain formalities, towards a framework that instead requires certain fundamental principles to be respected

"It's one of the newest and most popular stops on the Washington, D.C. tour, and its artifacts of history leave clues for how information security professionals should approach their future. The International Spy Museum has just celebrated its 7th year and its 5 millionth visitor, says Executive Director Peter Earnest, a former CIA officer who's run the museum since its inception. In an exclusive interview, Earnest discusses: the museum's goals and growth plans; who visits the museum and what they get from the experience; lessons to be learned by today's information security professionals. Earnest is a 35-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He served 25 years as a case officer in its Clandestine Service, primarily in Europe and the Middle East. He ran intelligence collection and covert action operations against a range of targets including Soviet Bloc representatives and Communist front organizations. As Museum director, he has played a leading role in its extraordinary success as a Washington attraction. He edits the Museum's book ventures and has frequently been interviewed by the major media in radio, TV, and the press on current intelligence issues."

Protecting National Security and Privacy: Approaches of New Administrations in the U.S. and Europe. In celebration of Data Privacy Day 2009, The Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security, along with Intel Corporation, hosted a Panel Discussion on The Future of Privacy and National Security. Participants included leading experts from the United States Departments of Homeland Security, Justice and State, the European Commission, the Council of European Union, and privacy experts from the private sector and academia. A PODCAST of this event is now available on iTunes U.

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In the paradises of broadband - Japan, South Korea and Sweden - nearly everyone can surf far faster and far cheaper than anyone in the United States. What is their secret sauce and how can we get some? The short answer is that broadband deployment in those countries was spurred by a combination of heavy government involvement, subsidies and lower corporate profits that may be tough for the economic and political system in the United States to accept. Those countries have also tried to encourage demand for broadband by paying schools, hospitals and other institutions to use high-speed Internet services. Sweden has built one of the fastest and most widely deployed broadband networks in Europe because its government granted tax breaks for infrastructure investments, directly subsidized rural deployment, and, perhaps most significantly, required state-owned municipal utilities to create local backbone networks, reducing the cost for the local telephone company to provide service. Japan let telecommunications companies write down about one-third of their investment in broadband the first year, rather than the usual policy, which requires them to spread the deductions over 22 years. The Japanese government also subsidized low-cost loans for broadband construction and paid for part of the wiring of rural areas.

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is ineffective and major payment processing infrastructure improvements are needed to secure credit and debit card transactions, lawmakers said Tuesday. The House Subcommittee on Emerging Threats, Cybersecurity, Science, and Technology, part of the House Committee on Homeland Security, held a hearing in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday to examine the effectiveness of PCI DSS. "The bottom line is that if we care about keeping money out of the hands of terrorists and organized criminals, we have to do more, and we have to do it now," said U.S. Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.), who chairs the subcommittee. "The payment card industry and issuing banks need to commit to investing in infrastructure upgrades here in the United States." Clarke called on the industry to implement encryption on its credit and debit card processing networks and said the deployment of chip and PIN technology could significantly reduce the amount of stolen payment data. Chip and PIN technology is used in Asia and Europe. The technology replaces the magnetic strip on the back of a card and adds a four-digit personal identification number (PIN) to confirm a payment.

Privacy rights are accepted and, generally, honored in Europe. The wealth - literally and figuratively - of personal information made available through the internet staggers the imagination. Staggering, too, is the prospect of privacy rights being trampled. EC Consumer Protection Commissioner Meglena Kuneva has a bone to pick with internet snooping. And she's launching an investigation into deep data mining. In an official statement (to be released March 31) she will outline concerns of vague and misleading 'term of use' for access to Web sites that can breach EC privacy rules. Commissioner Kuneva was born and raised in Bulgaria during a time when snooping on people was common, legal and nasty. The European Parliament (EuroParl) voted (March 27) overwhelmingly for recommendations in a report linking data surveillance, advertising and cybercrime. The report recommends safeguards for the privacy rights of internet users. The EuroParl called for "making use of existing national, regional, and international law." The MEPs raised the "imbalance of negotiating power between (internet) users and institutions." Internet users, said the MEPs, have the right to "permanently delete" personal details. Facebook's recent change in 'terms of use' allowing it to retain personal information brought a firestorm of criticism and the social networking portal backtracked. And the EC was watching. "It wasn't regulators who spotted the proposed change of terms at Facebook, it was one of the 175 million users," said Commissioner Kuneva's spokesperson Helen Kearns. Collecting and analyzing profile data is big business. It is "the new petroleum of the Internet world," said Ms Kearns, quoted in PC World (March 30). "If you are happy trading your data that's fine, but you should at least know how valuable it is." As Google and Microsoft have learned European Commission rules, unlike American rules, tend to set a low bar for compliance. The former pr

Too many companies leave themselves vulnerable to employees' ignorance or purposeful flouting of the rules when it comes to information security, suggests a survey conducted by (ISC)2. Focused on the 'basics' of policy management, the survey revealed that organisations are becoming confident in their ability to comply with the policies and procedures set out to secure their organisations. Analysis of the results, however, reveal education efforts to be immature, with most concerns relating to accountability and company-wide understanding of what is required. The survey questioned 737 information security professionals last month about their organisation's efforts in policy and awareness management. A great majority, 80 percent, said their company's ability to comply with security policy was satisfactory, good or very good, leaving only 20 percent saying they were dissatisfied. However, this confident stance was tempered by concerns from nearly half of the respondents over a lack of training (48 percent) and poor employee understanding of policy (46 percent); a lack of defined accountability (42 percent); and an unsupportive company culture (48 percent). These obstacles to compliance with policy were cited by significantly more respondents than other issues of traditional concern, including a lack of budget, which only 22 percent were concerned about, and the ability to procure the latest technology, which concerned only 19 percent of respondents. "The challenges are shifting from the systems to the people," says John Colley, CISSP, managing director for EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) for (ISC)2. "The relatively little concern expressed over budgets suggests security continues to be viewed as a business imperative, even in the current economic climate. Unfortunately, security requirements are not yet well understood, or worse flouted, often with management support, in order to get a job done. There is a colossal task ahead to ensure all emplo

Ignorant People are a big security risk.

The European Commission on Tuesday set a code of conduct for companies using RFID (radio frequency identification) tags that it hopes will safeguard citizens' privacy and allow the quick rollout of the new technology. Around 2.2 billion RFID tags were sold worldwide last year, a third of them in Europe, and were installed in a wide range of products including shipping containers and smart cards used in highway toll booths. The Commission expects the use of RFID tags to grow to five times the current level over the next decade, as tags are added to common consumer items such as bus passes, refrigerators and even clothes. There is "clear economic potential" in using RFID chips to allow communication between objects, said information society commissioner Viviane Reding in a statement. But she added that European citizens "must never be taken unawares by the new technology."

A TV investigation has revealed that secondhand BlackBerries on Nigerian markets are priced according to the data held on them, not the age or the model of a phone. Jon Godfrey, director of Sims LifeCycle Services, who is advising on a TV investigation into the trade due to screen later this year, said that BlackBerries sell for between $25 to $65 on Lagos markets. Details of the trade come from an agent in Nigeria unaffiliated to Sims' technology recycling business. Godfrey explained that the smart phones offered for sale come from the US, continental Europe and the UK. "It's unclear as yet whether the phones are either sold, thrown away, lost or stolen," Godfrey explained. Other type of smartphone are also of potential interest to data thieves, but it is the trade in BlackBerries that seems to be the most active. Data retrieved from smartphones is itraded by crooks in Nigeria. BlackBerries include technology to remotely wipe devices and come with built-in encryption. But this encryption is often left switched off because it is considered an inconvenience.

On Friday, Brunswick, Maine-based heating and hardware firm Downeast Energy & Building Supply sent a letter notifying at least 850 customers that the company had suffered a data breach. Downeast sent the notice after discovering that hackers had broken in and stolen more than $200,000 from the company's online bank account. The attack on Downeast Energy bears all the hallmarks of online thieves who have stolen millions from dozens of other businesses, schools and counties over the past several months. In every case, the thieves appeared more interested in quick cash than in pilfering their victims' customer databases. Nevertheless, the intrusions highlight an additional cost for victims of this type of crime: complying with state data breach notification laws. "This is something new to us, fortunately, but we have responsibilities under Maine statute to report these things to our customers and employees," said the company's president, John Peters, in an interview with Security Fix. At least 44 other states and the District of Columbia have similar data breach notification laws. Sometime prior to September, attackers planted keystroke logging malware on Downeast's computer systems, and stole the credentials the company uses to manage its bank accounts online. Then, on or around Sept. 2, the hackers used that access to initiate a series of sub-$10,000 money transfers out of the company's account to at least 20 individuals around the United States who had no prior business with Downeast Energy. This type of crime is impossible without the cooperation of so-called "money mules," willing or unwitting individuals typically hired via Internet job search Web sites to act as "local agents" or "financial agents" responsible for moving money on behalf of a generic-sounding international corporation, legal experts say.The mules are then instructed to withdraw the cash and wire it via Western Union or Moneygram to fraud gangs overseas, typically in Eastern Europe.

New rules will protect consumers, harmonize regulation, and enshrine net neutrality. But a late amendment left the legislation in limbo The European Parliament has voted through a massive tranche of reforms for the European telecommunications sector, including a significant net-neutrality amendment. The 'Telecoms Package' of laws was voted into force on Wednesday with a large majority, and must now be ratified by the Council of Telecoms Ministers. The vote marks the first time that internet access has been recognised in European law as a fundamental right on a par with freedom of expression. The legislation also compels European telecoms and internet service providers (ISPs) to notify their customers of any personal data breaches, the first time they have been required to do so.