SAIC spokespeople said that several employees were placed on leave after the incident was disclosed, and that it contracted data security company Kroll Inc. to provide free identity theft protection for all affected individuals for one year.

It has long been suspected that there is a silent policy that makes Hotmail automatically delete the majority of attachments to save on bandwidth and internal disk space. Therefore it really doesn't matter if every client has access to 2GB of storage since they don't deliver the attachments to fill that space up anyway. If that truly is the case, then Microsoft may be liable for several hundred million cases of conspiracy and mail fraud

But they will only be able to use the data for national security purposes and not to fight ordinary crime, the Home Office stressed.

...if the Bureau could get the CIPAV installed on the user's machine, it would be able to collect the machine's IP address, MAC address, list of running programs, operating system, Internet browser used, language used, the registered computer name, the currently logged-in username, and more. All of this information would be relayed over the Internet back to an FBI computer in Virginia.

Carmona, whose four-year term as surgeon general expired in 2006, told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform last week that he was constantly at odds with Bush administration political minders. They told him not to speak out on stem cell research, emergency contraception or sex education. They delayed release of a report on the dangers of secondhand smoke. They admonished him to mention the president frequently and favorably in public and not to address a group associated with the Special Olympics - a cause championed by the Kennedy family ... That's no way to treat a professional whose main job is to help the president, the Congress and the American people make intelligent health decisions. But it's not surprising that in a nation polarized on so many fronts, a president is going to expect any appointee to sing from the administration-approved hymnal.