The statistics for ID theft are already registering signficant numbers for a year that is still in its first quarter. According to this press release from the University of Texas at Austin, the university’s computer system was hacked, exposing some 55,200 records that included names and social security numbers of current and past students, faculty, staff and job applicants, in the largest known attack of its kind to date. For further information, see this press release from United States Attorney Johnny Sutton and a university sponsored website on Identity Protection Resources.
See also this article, UT redoubles vigilance after network intrusion, March 8, 2003 (now archived and requires a fee to access via the Austin American Statesman).
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Daily Archives: March 7, 2003
Court of Appeals Deals Another Blow to COPA
The Child Online Protection Act (COPA) was ruled unconstitutional for a second time by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, in a decision ACLU v. John Ashcroft, no. 19-1324, filed March 6. The court stated that “…provisions of COPA are not narrowly tailored to achieve the Government’s compelling interest in protecting minors from harmful material… Continue Reading
GAO Report on Cyber Threats
New GAO Report: Critical Infrastructure Protection: Efforts of the Financial Services Sector to Address Cyber Threats. GAO-03-173, January 30. Highlights. Continue Reading
Boston's Big Dig Chucks E-Mail
Discovery is hampered in an investigation into cost over-runs and project mismanagement on Boston’s Big Dig project, “the largest, most complex and technologically challenging highway project in Amerian history.” Apparently project managers instituted a policy of deleting all project related e-mail messages after thirty days, as reported during a Massachusetts State House Hearing. Continue Reading
LexisNexis and KM
LexisNexis Among Top 100 Companies Recognized for its Knowledge Management Innovations for a Second Year in a Row. Continue Reading
Washington State E-Gov Business Initiative
BEGINWA.org is a portal, still under development, that promises to provide comprehensive access to local government information (cities and counties) and e-services to assist businesses operating in the state. In future, the site will also provide online forms for payment transactions and permitting. Continue Reading
News Aggregators
Hot Off Your News Clicking Service reviews the subscription news reader NewzCrawler, and highlights the attributes of news aggregators in general. There are other reliable news aggregator applications, including free and fee-based alternatives such as the following: AmphetaDesk – http://www.disobey.com/amphetadesk/ Newsbooster – http://www.newsbooster.com/ RadioUserLand – http://radio.userland.com/newsaggregator Syndirella – http://www.yole.ru/projects/syndirella/ Continue Reading
Review of Reference Tool GuruNet
Walt Mossberg, the author of the Wall Street Journal Personal Technology column (no fee req’d), gives a positive review to a nifty fee-based utility, GuruNet, in GuruNet as a Reference Tool Goes Beyond Search Engines. The program costs $35 and is marketed as “the ultimate reference program: encyclopedias, dictionary, thesaurus, companies, celebrities, stock prices, and… Continue Reading
Creative Commons Launches Int'l Project
Creative Commons, the unique copyright licensing project that facilitates the sharing of creative works, announced the launch of their new international program “dedicated to the drafting and eventual adoption of country-specific licenses.” Link submitted by Donna Cavallini. Continue Reading
SEC and Website Disclosure Rules
According to this law.com article, “in the wake of the adoption of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and last year’s corporate scandals (such as Enron), more real- and quasi-real-time information about public companies will be available at the SEC’s Web site or directly through the Web sites of companies themselves than could have been imagined last spring.” Continue Reading
Congress Loves Canadian Made Blackberry
From the New York Times, another article on the continuing saga of Congress and their fixation with the BlackBerry wireless handhelds. As noted in my previous posting, loyalty to this Canadian device is under significant challenge from a patent infringement dispute with NTP Inc. Time will tell whether Congress will establish a new allegiance with… Continue Reading
