CIPP Information Privacy & Security News

Further proof that LA has it head in the clouds - A plan to overhaul the city of Los Angeles' computer system is raising concerns about the security of confidential information. The nation's second-largest city is considering dumping its in-house computer network for Google Inc. e-mail and office programs that are accessed over the Internet. But the city police union says it doesn't have enough information to determine if sensitive witness and investigation files will be secure from hackers. Google spokeswoman Aviva Gilbert says security "is built into the DNA of our products."

A plan to overhaul the city of Los Angeles' computer system is raising concerns about the security of confidential information. The nation's second-largest city is considering dumping its in-house computer network for Google Inc. e-mail and office programs that are accessed over the Internet. But the city police union says it doesn't have enough information to determine if sensitive witness and investigation files will be secure from hackers. Google spokeswoman Aviva Gilbert says security "is built into the DNA of our products."

The Kaiser Permanente hospital in Bellflower has been hit with a $187,500 fine for failing for a second time to prevent unauthorized access to confidential patient information, state pubic health officials said today. [Updated at 3 p.m.: A spokesman for the hospital said the fine was part of the ongoing investigation into employees improperly accessing the medical records of Nadya Suleman and her children. Disciplinary action has been taken against the employees, said Jim Anderson, a hospital spokesman. All the incidents occurred in January; a previous post said they had occurred in April and May.] State officials said Kaiser Permanente Bellflower Medical Center compromised the privacy of four patients when eight employees improperly accessed records. This is the second penalty against the hospital, officials said. The hospital was fined $250,000 in May for failing to keep employees from snooping in the medical records of Nadya Suleman, the woman who set off a media frenzy after giving birth to octuplets in January. The fine was the first penalty imposed and largest allowed under a new state law enacted last year after the widely publicized violations of privacy at UCLA Medical Center involving Farrah Fawcett, Britney Spears, California First Lady Maria Shriver and other celebrities. "We are very concerned with violations of patient confidentiality and their potential harm to the residents of California," said Dr. Mark Horton, director of the California Department of Public Health. "Medical privacy is a fundamental right and a critical component of quality medical care in California."

Buying and renting tools used by cybercriminals to conduct attacks and steal credentials is becoming much easier for the average person. "For Rent" signs hang on botnets, automated hacking toolkits are sold at bargain prices, and the data reaped by the criminal activity is sold and traded in online forums on a daily basis. Researchers at networking giant Cisco Systems Inc. are warning of the increasingly sophisticated cybercriminal underground economy and how it could be attractive to those having trouble finding work or facing layoffs in a troubled global economy. Meanwhile, cybercriminals are borrowing some of the best strategies from legitimate companies and forming partnerships with one another to help make their illegal activities more lucrative, according to Cisco.

A law designed to keep college students' grades private often is used for a much different purpose -- to shield universities from potentially embarrassing situations. Some critics say a number of schools are deliberately misreading the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act in order to keep scandals and other unflattering news from hitting the media. "Some schools have good-faith misunderstandings of the law, but there are others that simply see this as a handy excuse to hide behind," says Frank LoMonte, executive director of the Student Press Law Center, which provides student journalists with legal help. Legal experts say part of the problem is that the law is loosely defined. In addition, the potential consequences of violating the law -- namely, that schools would lose their federal funding -- prompt university officials to be conservative in their decisions about releasing information. Those complaints rankle advocates of student privacy, who say that, if anything, the three-decade-old law should be expanded. "Most of these kids are adults, and they should be able to make their own decisions," says Daren Bakst, president of the Council on Law in Higher Education. Congress already reworked the law to clarify when universities can disclose student information, especially involving health and safety matters. Those changes, adopted in January, followed the 2007 shooting rampage at Virginia Tech by a mentally troubled student.

Yahoo Tuesday announced that has developed a feature that will allow users to opt out of behavioral targeting on mobile devices. "We believe the mobile experience should offer the same privacy protections consumers expect to find on the PC," Yahoo said in a blog post announcing the feature. "Furthermore, management of privacy protections should be available via any mobile device, whether that's an iPhone or a Blackberry." Many companies that track people's Web activity on PCs and send them ads notify users about the practice and allow them to opt out. But it's still unusual for behavioral targeting companies in the mobile space to let people opt out. At least a dozen companies say they offer some form of mobile behavioral targeting. But only two appear to allow users to opt out, according to Jules Polonetsky, co-chair and director of the think tank Future of Privacy Forum.

In order to comply with Canadian privacy law, Facebook must take greater responsibility for the personal information in its care, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada said today in announcing the results of an investigation into the popular social networking site's privacy policies and practices. "It's clear that privacy issues are top of mind for Facebook, and yet we found serious privacy gaps in the way the site operates," says Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart. The investigation, prompted by a complaint from the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic, identified several areas where Facebook needs to better address privacy issues and bring its practices in line with Canadian privacy law. An overarching concern was that, although Facebook provides information about its privacy practices, it is often confusing or incomplete. For example, the "account settings" page describes how to deactivate accounts, but not how to delete them, which actually removes personal data from Facebook's servers. The Privacy Commissioner's report recommends more transparency, to ensure that the social networking site's nearly 12 million Canadian users have the information they need to make meaningful decisions about how widely they share personal information.

The White House has erased all mention of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board from its Web site. The removal, which was done wth no public notice, has underlined questions about the Obama administration's commitment to the board, which was created on the recommendation of the 9/11 Commission to oversee the federal government's actions on civil liberties and privacy.

Climbing into his Volvo, outfitted with a Matrics antenna and a Motorola reader he'd bought on eBay for $190, Chris Paget cruised the streets of San Francisco with this objective: To read the identity cards of strangers, wirelessly, without ever leaving his car. It took him 20 minutes to strike hacker's gold. Zipping past Fisherman's Wharf, his scanner detected, then downloaded to his laptop, the unique serial numbers of two pedestrians' electronic U.S. passport cards embedded with radio frequency identification, or RFID, tags. Within an hour, he'd "skimmed" the identifiers of four more of the new, microchipped PASS cards from a distance of 20 feet. Embedding identity documents - passports, drivers licenses, and the like - with RFID chips is a no-brainer to government officials. Increasingly, they are promoting it as a 21st century application of technology that will help speed border crossings, safeguard credentials against counterfeiters, and keep terrorists from sneaking into the country. But Paget's February experiment demonstrated something privacy advocates had feared for years: That RFID, coupled with other technologies, could make people trackable without their knowledge or consent. He filmed his drive-by heist, and soon his video went viral on the Web, intensifying a debate over a push by government, federal and state, to put tracking technologies in identity documents and over their potential to erode privacy. Putting a traceable RFID in every pocket has the potential to make everybody a blip on someone's radar screen, critics say, and to redefine Orwellian government snooping for the digital age. "Little Brother," some are already calling it - even though elements of the global surveillance web they warn against exist only on drawing boards, neither available nor approved for use.

In the 2002 film Minority Report, video billboards scanned the irises of passing consumers and advertised to them by name. That was science fiction back then, but today's marketers are creating digital signs that can display targeted ads based on information they extract from examining the contours of individual human faces. These smart signs are proliferating in commercial establishments and public places from New York's Times Square to St. Louis area shopping malls. They are a powerful innovation in advertising, but one that raises compelling privacy issues - issues that should be addressed now, before digital signs that monitor our behavior become the new normal. The most common name for this medium is digital signage. Most digital signs are flat-screen TVs that run commercials on a continuous loop in airports, gas stations, and anywhere else marketers think they can get your attention. However, marketers have had difficulty determining exactly who sees the display units, which makes it harder to measure viewership and target ads at specific audiences. The industry's solution? Hidden facial recognition cameras. The tiny cameras can estimate the age, ethnicity and gender of people passing by and can track how long a given person watches the display. The digital sign can then play an advertisement specifically targeted to whomever happens to be watching. Tens of millions of people have already been picked up by digital signage cameras. While camera-driven systems are the most common, the industry is also utilizing mobile phones and radio frequency identification (RFID) for similar purposes. Some companies, for example, embed RFID chips in shopper loyalty cards. Digital kiosks located in stores can read the information on the cards at a distance and then display ads or print coupons based on cardholders' shopping histories. Facial recognition, RFID and mobile phone tracking are powerful tools that should be matched by business practices that protect consu

In the 2002 film Minority Report, video billboards scanned the irises of passing consumers and advertised to them by name. That was science fiction back then, but today's marketers are creating digital signs that can display targeted ads based on information they extract from examining the contours of individual human faces. These smart signs are proliferating in commercial establishments and public places from New York's Times Square to St. Louis area shopping malls. They are a powerful innovation in advertising, but one that raises compelling privacy issues - issues that should be addressed now, before digital signs that monitor our behavior become the new normal. The most common name for this medium is digital signage. Most digital signs are flat-screen TVs that run commercials on a continuous loop in airports, gas stations, and anywhere else marketers think they can get your attention. However, marketers have had difficulty determining exactly who sees the display units, which makes it harder to measure viewership and target ads at specific audiences. The industry's solution? Hidden facial recognition cameras. The tiny cameras can estimate the age, ethnicity and gender of people passing by and can track how long a given person watches the display. The digital sign can then play an advertisement specifically targeted to whomever happens to be watching. Tens of millions of people have already been picked up by digital signage cameras. While camera-driven systems are the most common, the industry is also utilizing mobile phones and radio frequency identification (RFID) for similar purposes. Some companies, for example, embed RFID chips in shopper loyalty cards. Digital kiosks located in stores can read the information on the cards at a distance and then display ads or print coupons based on cardholders' shopping histories. Facial recognition, RFID and mobile phone tracking are powerful tools that should be matched by business practices that protect consu

Names, credit card numbers, Social Security numbers: information Daron Breinholt did not go looking for, but found Thursday morning. He took out the trash from the shoe distribution center, where he works, in the warehouse section on Salt Lake's west side. "I was just throwing away some stuff (in a dumpster) , and it was chock full of medical records," said Breinholt. "There's everything in there from canceled checks to routing numbers. They could steal a lot identities. A lot of identities were in there." At least some of the records appeared to come from Mountain Medical Center, a chiropractic office that had been in the Murray area until some months ago. Dr. Randall Malin said through his lawyer that he did not throw away records. "It's news to him," said Attorney Robert Harrison. Salt Lake Police packed away perhaps twenty boxes of papers, and said they would protect the documents, as they dug into the matter. Surveillance video, which 2News has not been able to see, reportedly showed two people who drove up in a red pickup truck Wednesday afternoon, and unloaded the materials from a trailer.

Maintaining privacy is on many people's minds these days, but sometimes that's the last thing they do. Allegations last week that two British tabloids, The Sun and The News of the World, had employed high-technology snoops to listen in on the mobile phone messages of public figures highlighted fears of what can happen when digital data fall into dubious hands. The reports came only days after another privacy debacle, this one self-inflicted. Photos and family information about Sir John Sawers, soon to be Britain's chief spy, appeared in another newspaper, The Mail on Sunday, after his wife posted them on Facebook. While attitudes toward privacy can appear paradoxical, the seeming contradiction is really about something else: control. When people bare their bodies on Facebook or their souls in the digital confessional of Google's search engine, they feel as if they are in charge. Not so, when the private embarrassments come to light unexpectedly.

The owner of a website onto which a purportedly stolen Goldman Sachs Group Inc computer code was downloaded has declined to say whether or not other people accessed the code while it was on the site. Roopinder Singh, who runs file storage website xp-dev.com, told Reuters in London on Friday that computer files show whether or not the valuable code -- which U.S. prosecutors have charged former Goldman employee Sergey Aleynikov with stealing -- was viewed by others, but he declined to say what they show due to the scale of the case. According to Singh, accounts at xp-dev.com initially have a privacy setting that only lets the user see them. However, users can change that setting to allow other people to view files. "Private is the default," he said. "You then have the option ... You can explicitly either share it (or keep it private)." He declined to say what the settings on Aleynikov's account were.

Never mind landing the job. Now people on the lookout for employment have another cause for worry: identity theft. As the joblessness rate soars, scammers are ginning up fake Web sites or posing as recruiters to trick job seekers into giving up sensitive personal information. Corneilus Allison became a potential target after he applied for a position at Aetna (AET) in January, court documents show. In hopes of securing a position at the insurer, he entered required personal information into Aetna's job Web site. In May he received a response-but it wasn't an offer of employment. Aetna instead told him that his personal information, including his Social Security number, might have been compromised. Hackers had found their way into Aetna's job application site, managed by an outside vendor, nabbed e-mail addresses of job seekers, and sent correspondence as if from Aetna asking for additional personal information.

Since Obama's landmark speech on cybersecurity in May, his administration hasn't revealed much about its long-percolating plans to shore up the government's defenses against hackers and cyberspies. But privacy advocates monitoring the initiative are already raising concerns about what they know and what they don't: the details that have trickled out--including the involvement of the National Security Agency--and the veil of classified information that still covers much of the multibillion-dollar project. "It feels like the Bush administration all over again," says Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum. "Not enough people know the details about these programs to have a good public discussion. We all want good security of government systems, but you have to balance the cloak and dagger elements with civil liberties."

The nation's Social Security numbering system has left millions of citizens vulnerable to privacy breaches, according to researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, who for the first time have used statistical techniques to predict Social Security numbers solely from an individual's date and location of birth.

Should individual states mandate that businesses comply with the Payment Card Industry's Data Security Standard (PCI DSS)? The answer is "yes," according to Nevada, which has passed a new law that, as of next year, requires businesses to comply with PCI when collecting or transmitting payment card information. Nevada is the first state to mandate full PCI compliance for businesses. Minnesota in 2007 incorporated only a portion of PCI in its Plastic Card Security Law. According to Nevada's new law, if a data collector doing business in that state accepts a payment card in connection with a sale of goods or services, the data collector shall comply with the current version of PCI DSS, as adopted by the PCI Security Standards Council or its successor organization, with respect to those transactions, not later than the date for compliance set forth in the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard or by the PCI Security Standards Council or its successor organization. Is it a Game-Changer? As states rush to adopt or strengthen privacy legislation, Nevada's move is seen by some observers as a potential "game-changer." But they question whether states should be in the business of mandating compliance with an industry standard.

A former Goldman Sachs computer programer accused of stealing secret trading codes from the investment bank was being held in federal custody on Monday, pending the posting of $750,000 bail. Sergey Aleynikov, 39, was ordered by U.S. Magistrate Kevin Nathaniel Fox in Manhattan on Saturday to post a $750,000 personal recognizance bond to be secured by three financially responsible people, according to court documents. The bond also was to include $75,000 in cash, and Aleynikov was ordered to surrender his passport and not to access the computer data at issue in the case. A preliminary hearing in his case was scheduled for August 3. Aleynikov, a Russian immigrant living in New Jersey, was arrested on Friday night by FBI agents as he got off a flight at Newark Liberty International Airport, according to court documents. He is accused of "theft of trade secrets" related to computer codes used for sophisticated automated stock and commodities trading at an unspecified, New York-based financial institution, according to the court affidavit filed by FBI special agent Michael McSwain. Sources familiar with the situation have told Reuters columnist Matthew Goldstein that the financial institution is Goldman Sachs. A Goldman representative declined to comment on Monday. A lawyer for Aleynikov, Sabrina Shroff, also declined to comment.

Diplomats and civil servants are to be warned about the danger of putting details of their family and career on social networking websites. The advice comes after the wife of Sir John Sawers, the next head of MI6, put family details on Facebook - which is accessible to millions of internet users. Lady Sawers disclosed details such as the location of the London flat used by the couple and the whereabouts of their three children and of Sir John's parents. She put no privacy protection on her account, allowing any of Facebook's 200 million users in the open-access London network to see the entries. Lady Sawers' half-brother, Hugo Haig-Thomas, a former diplomat, was among those featured in family photographs on Facebook. Mr HaigThomas was an associate and researcher for David Irving, the controversial historian who was jailed in Austria in 2006 after pleading guilty to Holocaust denial. Patrick Mercer, the Conservative chairman of the Commons counter-terrorism sub-committee, said that the entries were a serious error and potentially damaging.

They may be after the phone, but what about the data? How much of your life is on your mobile device? Some misguided companies let employees use personal devices for work. I wonder what an auditor would say about due diligence and due care when data is leaked through such ignorance. Think, before you set a lax password, or none at all. Karl Thieves are increasingly going after iPhones and other smartphones but victims now can fight back with technology. One device allows a user to remotely activate a loud siren designed to rattle the thief. Another application, designed for iPhones, can reveal the phone's location. Police statistics show petty crime is down in New York but anecdotal evidence and recent headlines about street muggings targeting costly and coveted devices like Apple's iPhone and T-Mobile's Sidekick have disturbed smartphone users concerned about protecting access to e-mail, passwords and other data.

Thieves are increasingly going after iPhones and other smartphones but victims now can fight back with technology. One device allows a user to remotely activate a loud siren designed to rattle the thief. Another application, designed for iPhones, can reveal the phone's location. Police statistics show petty crime is down in New York but anecdotal evidence and recent headlines about street muggings targeting costly and coveted devices like Apple's iPhone and T-Mobile's Sidekick have disturbed smartphone users concerned about protecting access to e-mail, passwords and other data.

Frontline video on eWaste, Computer Security On the outskirts of Ghana's biggest city sits a smoldering wasteland, a slum carved into the banks of the Korle Lagoon, one of the most polluted bodies of water on earth. The locals call it Sodom and Gomorrah. Correspondent Peter Klein and a group of graduate journalism students from the University of British Columbia have come here as part of a global investigation -- to track a shadowy industry that's causing big problems here and around the world. Their guide is a 13-year-old boy named Alex. He shows them his home, a small room in a mass of shanty dwellings, and offers to take them across a dead river to a notorious area called Agbogbloshie.