CNN has an article on their site: “Hacker attack at UCLA affects 800,000 people“

I’m not quite sure how they were able to tell, but UC officials indicate that “there was no evidence any data (has) been misused”. An interesting statement, and completely untrue, as improper access is clearly misuse of the data in itself.

I’m really starting to suspect that this data is going into a fraudsters’ data warehouse somewhere . . . someone is systematically acquiring this data for some purpose that is yet to be realized by those of us on the good side.

Maybe we should start putting up marginally defended data systems containing real looking, but false data in order to pollute the fraudsters customer data collection attempts.

data breach, online fraud, online security, privacy, identity theft

I’ve got to get out to Florida to see one of these in person before they stop flying them!

discovery, hdnet, nasa, space shuttle, sts-121

At lunch I saw a caravan of 4 small import cars blaring their horns and driving around downtown Oakland with American, Mexican and Nicaraguan flags flying . . . the unfortunate part was that the largest of the flags had been taped to the trunk and bumper of the cars. In case you didn’t know, this is a clearly disrespectful way to display the American flag. Rather than translating the National Anthem into spanish, maybe they should start with this website . . .

a day without an immigrant, american flag, politics

Maybe we should have a “day without a computer admin”; we could all shut down our networks and march in the streets to protest big brother’s attempt to put us Internet users down.

Just to drive the point home, the CNet Article point out:

Critics of DeGette’s proposal have said that, while the justification for Internet surveillance might be protecting children, the data would be accessible to any local or state law enforcement official investigating anything from drug possession to tax evasion. In addition, the one-year retention is a minimum; the FCC would receive the authority to require Internet companies to keep records “for not less than one year after a subscriber ceases to subscribe to such services.”

Scary, every site you visit would be logged and the data would be accessible to law enforcement at a moments notice. I guess the terrorist boogey man is played out . . . now they are playing the child porn card.

But seriously, ISPs don’t regularly log, let alone store the kind of data that these guys are trying to mandate . . . the volume of data is huge!

I’m turning off my logs right now in protest. Now were did I put that TOR install file . . .

freedom, politics, privacy, rant, george bush

The ruling did not address surfing porn at work . . .

The article is located over at MSNBC

new york, web surfing

As for timing, this may be a bad time for an acquisition as all US financials to comply with the FFIEC Multi-Factor authentication guidance by the end of the year. If RSA is unable to integrate quickly, there may be enough chaos to drive many of their potential customers into the arms of their competition.

This might be a good time to let both products carry forward without making any major changes . . . at least until the banks have chosen and deployed their solution of choice. Integration and deployment of a common platform could be presented as a version upgrade in the future.

Only time will tell.

ffiec, authentication, cyota, multi-factor, passmark security, rsa security

I just can’t put it better than Bruce Schneier did.

george bush, illegal wiretaps, nsa, wiretaps, bruce schneier

The last Howard Stern show to be broadcast over the public airwaves aired today. At last, I’ll be able to surf the radio dial in the morning and not be subject to his garbage. As a side benefit of being a loyal XM Radio subscriber (since its launch) . . . I won’t accidental stumble across his show in the future. Good luck, and good riddance!

Stern’s show is sure to be a huge win for Sirius, which has seen slower subscriber growth than it’s rival, XM. Good news for those of us that like to see some competition between the two satellite radio providers. In the past, such competition has brought thing like an increased variety of listening content and the elimination of commercials from music channels. I for one, am looking forward to receivers that are compatible between the to rivals . . . we can dream right?

broadcast radio, commercial radio, satellite radio, xm radio, howard stern

According to this Yahoo News Article, the Dutch are assembling a database to open “Electronic Files” on all citizens upon birth “as a tool to spot and protect the troubled kids of the future”.

From Yahoo News: “Beginning Jan. 1, 2007, all citizens will be tracked from cradle to grave in a single database — including health, education, family and police records”.

Scary! This is why YOU SHOULD CARE about government and corporate information sharing and your privacy. The technology is there to build just such a database in the US; common sense and privacy rights groups are the only things holding this back to date.

database, privacy, government

Why not give them a new deal to start over?

Inspired by the post depression era government work project of the same name, why not bring the jobs to the masses while bringing the masses to jobs?

Are there large scale projects that we could tackle as a nation, providing jobs, health care and hope to those left with nothing? This could even provide job skills to the under skilled and unskilled work force while helping those without to help themselves? Teach a man to fish indeed?

Any ideas? What projects would we tackle?

gulf coast, hurricane katrina, new orleans, new deal