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1)
H&R Block blunder exposed SSNs
Date: January 5, 2006 3:08:01 PM EST
Happy New Year, 234-56-7890! Trust us and our software to protect
your confidential tax information!
<http://netscape.com.com/H38R+Block+blunder+exposes+consumer+data/2100
-1029_3-6016720.html>
Some consumers may be dismayed to find their Social Security
numbers printed on unsolicited packages from H&R Block, the result
of a recent labeling blunder at the company.
The packages, which H&R Block mailed in December, contained free
copies of the company's tax preparation software, TaxCut. By
mistake, some of the packages also displayed recipients' Social
Security numbers, which were embedded in 47-digit tracking codes
above mailing labels.

2)
The connection between NSA wiretapping and telephone
industry concentration by Andy Oram Jan. 05, 2006 06:20 AM
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/8924
I have reported in detail, in a companion blog, about an [95] historic
public forum on NSA wiretapping. Here I'll report on one
technology-related aspect of particular interest to me: the
collusionof the telephone companies, which has not been played up in the
press.
All the warrantless wiretapping we've recently heard about required
help from the telephone companies and Internet service providers.
These companies knew they were not only aiding the government in
breaking the law, but were themselves violating terms of service for
their customers--and in the case of telephone companies, also
breaking the law. One law mentioned at the public form (and submitted
years ago by the forum's moderator, Congressman Ed Markey) forbids cell phone
companies from revealing the location of cell phone users--except
with a court warrant.

3)
Your phone records are for sale
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-privacy05.html
January 5, 2006 BY FRANK MAIN Crime Reporter
The Chicago Police Department is warning officers their cell phone
records are available to anyone -- for a price. Dozens of online
services are selling lists of cell phone calls, raising security
concerns among law enforcement and privacy experts.
Criminals can use such records to expose a government informant who
regularly calls a law enforcement official.
Suspicious spouses can see if their husband or wife is calling a
certain someone a bit too often.
And employers can check whether a worker is regularly calling a
psychologist -- or a competing company.
Some online services might be skirting the law to obtain these
phone lists, according to Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who has
called for legislation to criminalize phone record theft and use.


5)
Report Calls 1898 N.C. Riot an Insurrection
http://news.findlaw.com/ap/o/632/12-19-2005/2344001976516f95.html
(AP) - WILMINGTON, N.C.-Violence in 1898 that resulted in the only
known forceful overthrow of a city government in U.S. history has
historically been called a race riot but actually was an insurrection
that white supremacists had planned for months, a state commission concludes.
The violence in Wilmington, which resulted in the deaths of an unknown
number of black people, "was part of a statewide effort to put white
supremacist Democrats in office and stem the political advances of
black citizens," the 1898 Wilmington Riot Commission concludes in a
draft report.
Afterward, white supremacists in state office passed laws that
disfranchised blacks until the civil rights movement and Voting Rights
Act of the 1960s.

6)
An NSA Whistleblower Speaks Out (worth reading)
http://www.alternet.org/rights/30387/
"Amy Goodman: Two weeks ago, a former N.S.A. intelligence officer
publicly announced he wants to testify before Congress. His name is
Russell Tice. For the past two decades he has worked in the
intelligence field, both inside and outside of government, most
recently with the National Security Agency and the Defense
Intelligence Agency. He was fired in May 2005, after he spoke out as
a whistleblower."........
"Russell Tice: Data mining is a means by which you -- you have
information, and you go searching for all associated elements of that
information in whatever sort of data banks or databases that you put
together with information. So if you have a phone number and you want
to associate it with, say, a terrorist or something, and you want to
associate it with, you know, 'Who is this terrorist talking to?' you
start doing data on what sort of information or what sort of numbers
does that person call or the frequency of time, that sort of thing.
And you start basically putting together a bubble chart of, you know,
where everybody is.
Lord help you if you've got a wrong phone call from one of these
guys, a terrorist overseas or something, and you're American. You're
liable to have the F.B.I. camping out your doorstep, apparently, from
everything that's going on. But it's basically a way of searching all
of the data that exists, and that's things like credit card records
and driver's license, anything that you can get your hands on and try
to associate it with some activity. I think if we were doing that
overseas with known information, it would be a good thing if we're
pinning them down. But ultimately, when we're using that on -- if
we're using that with U.S. databases, then ultimately, once again,
the American people are -- their civil rights are being violated.".....
"Russell Tice: Well, anytime where you have a situation where U.S.
citizens are being arrested and thrown in jail with the key being
thrown away, you know, potentially being sent overseas to be
tortured, U.S. citizens being spied on, you know, and it doesn't even
go to the court that deals with these secret things, you know, I
mean, think about it, you could have potentially somebody getting the
wrong phone call from a terrorist and having him spirited away to
some back-alley country to get the rubber hose treatment and who
knows what else. I think that would kind of qualify as a police
state, in my judgment."

7)
Microsoft blocking MP3s on Verizon Wireless phones?
Posted Jan 7th 2006 11:27AM by Barb Dybwad
Filed under: Cellphones, Portable Audio
So there seems to be some fallout from Verizon's music download
service -- users who choose to "upgrade" their handsets to support
the Verizon Wireless music store are doing so at a tradeoff: you'll
no longer be able to play MP3s on your phone. The new phone software
prevents you from playing MP3s on the phone as a result of an
agreement Verizon Wireless made with Microsoft, the latter of whom
stipulated that if the Verizon Wireless music store was gonna fly at
all, MS wanted to make sure that phones using it could only play back
Microsoft's audio format. Supposedly there is an internal memo
floating around at VZW Wireless saying that if anyone complains about
the new "featureset," they'll be given a refurbished phone with older
firmware to "correct" the "problem" -- but that users aren't being
warned ahead of time that they'll lose MP3 playing functionality by
upgrading their phones. Very tricksy, guys, very tricksy! You know,
if the customer didn't always come first with these big corps we'd
really be in trouble, folks.
>http://engadget.com/2006/01/07/microsoft-blocking-mp3s-on-verizon-wir
eless-phones/>

8)

Children Learn by Monkey See, Monkey Do. Chimps Don't.
http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Technology/HowToIntegrateTech.html
Essay By CARL ZIMMER
 Mr. Lyons sees his results as evidence that humans are hard-wired
   to learn by imitation, even when that is clearly not the best way
   to learn. If he is right, this represents a big evolutionary change
   from our ape ancestors. Other primates are bad at imitation. When
   they watch another primate doing something, they seem to focus on
   what its goals are and ignore its actions.

9)
Internet companies, regulation, respecting free expression
http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=16110
Do Internet companies need to be regulated to ensure they respect
free expression ?
Reporters Without Borders' proposals
The recent case of Microsoft closing down a journalist's blog under
pressure from the Chinese authorities once again shows that some
Internet sector companies do not respect freedom of expression when
operating in repressive countries. Reporters Without Borders
proposes six concrete ways to make these companies behave
ethically. These recommendations are addressed to the US government
and US legislators because all the companies named in this document
are based in the United States. Nonetheless, they concern all
democratic countries and have therefore been sent to European Union
officials and to the Secretary General of the OECD as well.

10)
States Intervene After Drug Plan Hits Snags
By ROBERT PEAR
<http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/08/national/08medicare.html?pagewanted=print>
WASHINGTON, Jan. 7 - Low-income Medicare beneficiaries around the
country were often overcharged, and some were turned away from
pharmacies without getting their medications, in the first week of
Medicare's new drug benefit. The problems have prompted emergency
action by some states to protect their citizens.
Although there are no hard numbers, concerns expressed by state
officials and complaints from pharmacists suggest a widespread pattern
of problems.
At least four states - Maine, New Hampshire, North Dakota and Vermont
- acted this week to make sure poor people received the drugs they
were promised but could not obtain through the federal Medicare program.
Gov. Jim Douglas of Vermont, a Republican, said the state would pay
drug claims for low-income people until the federal government fixed
problems in the new program, known as Part D of Medicare. Michael K.
Smith, the state's secretary of human services, said, "The federal
system simply is not working."
-- [[ Apparently computers and/or databases that need to talk to each other
are not doing so...and it appears that data that was to have been
made available by Medicare either was not available or not accessible.]] --

11)

"Create an e-annoyance, go to jail
 Published: January 9, 2006,
http://tinyurl.com/9ljnb
Annoying someone via the Internet is now a federal crime.
It's no joke. Last Thursday, President Bush signed into law a
prohibition on posting annoying Web messages or sending annoying e-mail
messages without disclosing your true identity.
In other words, it's OK to flame someone on a mailing list or in a blog
as long as you do it under your real name. Thank Congress for small
favors, I guess.
This ridiculous prohibition, which would likely imperil much of Usenet,
is buried in the so-called Violence Against Women and Department of
Justice Reauthorization Act. Criminal penalties include stiff fines and
two years in prison.

12)

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, January 9, 2006:
Search Engines as Leeches on the Web
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/search_engines.html
Summary: Search engines extract too much of the Web's value, leaving too
little for the websites that actually create the content. Liberation
from search dependency is a strategic imperative for both websites
and software vendors.

13)
Douglas H. Bigelow, 49; Chief of Web Security at AOL
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/04/AR2006
010402061.html
By Patricia Sullivan Washington Post Staff Writer January 5, 2006
Douglas H. Bigelow, 49, who for the past decade fought e-mail spam,
computer viruses, identity theft and online pornography as the leader
of security for the world's largest Internet service provider, died of
pancreatic cancer Dec. 24 at his home in Vienna.
Mr. Bigelow, America Online's vice president of operations security,
was hired in 1995 as the company's first employee responsible for
protecting both customer and corporate data. Ten years later, he
managed a department of more than 100 people who defended the network
and its customers against cyber attacks and assisted police and
federal criminal investigations.
"He led the investigation of literally thousands of security issues
every year," said Matt Korn, AOL's executive vice president for
network and data security center operations, who hired Mr. Bigelow.
"Doug would have overseen the security surrounding things like AOL
member databases and password databases. He was a strong force behind
everything from member privacy policies to anti-virus and anti-spyware
protection in our products."

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