Tuesday, September 4th, 2007 (
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First they
banned rfid tagging of school kids. Now they're fully banning
forced RFID implantation of workers.
Tackling a dilemma right out of a science fiction novel, the state Senate passed legislation Thursday that would bar employers from requiring workers to have identification devices implanted under their skin.
Well let's hear it for common sense. But of course, there's always this guy:
Nine senators opposed the measure, including Bob Margett (R-Arcadia), who said it is premature to legislate technology that has not yet proved to be a problem. "It sounded like it was a solution looking for a problem," Margett said. "It didn't seem like it was necessary."
Well, "Bob", maybe it's common practice for legislators to be behind the times and not have the foresight to solve a problem
before it comes, but it would be nice if that weren't the case. Most of security is in prevention.
(H/T to
slashdot for the link)
Tags:
Good Stuff,
RFID
Tuesday, July 31st, 2007 (
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I have long said that
data brokering is the second leading cause of identity theft problems. Most companies have no legitimate need to store your credit card numbers at all after the transaction is completed which may be why
Minnesota is now banning the practice of storing credit card information. The only problem here is that they put an arbitrary date on it instead of having it be "after the transaction is complete". This is a problem for some retailers that may not be able to process the transactions in 2 days or less, but it's still a pretty good start.
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Good Stuff
Friday, July 20th, 2007 (
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Wednesday, July 18th, 2007 (
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I think that many service contracts are bogus and designed to take unaware consumers to the cleaners. Fortunately,
clever people have found loopholes that actually work against the companies who are themselves so fond of using legalities to their advantage. Whether true or not, someone also suggests that you can cancel the contract while keeping the service (in the comments).
If you want out of your contract, check out the articles on
the Consumerist and see what you find.
Tags:
Good Stuff
Thursday, July 12th, 2007 (
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I feel pretty dumb for not noticing this new law, but now Maryland residents will get credit freeze protection! It doesn’t go into effect until Jan 1st, 2008, but as soon as it does, people in Maryland will no longer have to worry about most ID theft or data breaches.
Here’s a link to the PDF describing the process for implementing the freeze:
Consumer’s Union Writeup of Maryland Credit Freeze procedures.
Tags:
Good Stuff,
Identity Theft
Thursday, July 12th, 2007 (
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The Firefox team has decided to include a user-written plugin into the standard release of Firefox 3. This plugin highlights the domain name making it easier for normal users to see and understand what site they’re actually on versus what they
think they’re on.
For example, most people think that just because the url says
yourbank.com anywhere means that’s the site they’re on. The reality is that it must be in this format:
http://[anything at all]
.yourbank.com/[anything else]
to be valid. Any other arrangment is a phishing attack:
http://yourbank.loans.com
http://12.293.28.18/yourbank.com
etc.
This plugin will make it easier to spot by highlighting the valid part of the URL which is the domain (which is easily confused by less techie users who don’t understand that the domain section of the URL is backwards).
Tags:
Good Stuff,
Identity Theft
Thursday, July 12th, 2007 (
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Public Citizen with it’s ever-watchful eye on congress, brings us news of a
bill to try and kill mandatory arbitration in clauses in employment, consumer, franchise, and civil disputes. Mandatory arbitration is used to preemptively prevent you from ever suing the company by forcing you to agree to let a “nuetral” third party decide and and all disputes between you and them.
Being that it completely prevents you from utilizing the court system for redress of wrongs, I’d say that this bill is a pretty good thing.
Tags:
Congress,
Good Stuff
Friday, July 6th, 2007 (
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The agreement is intended to encourage the sharing of confidential scientific and other information between EFSA and the FDA, such as methodologies to ensure that food is safe.
This is good news considering the
massive amounts of food safety problems recently reported concerning China (where it seems like everything but Americans are made). But the Chinese people are no happier about it than the rest of us apparently:
"There's a great deal of concern, a great deal of anger as well at the government for what appears to them to be a lack of concern about food and health safety standards -- basic things that for a while, Chinese people took for granted."
Doesn't sound that different from us. The FDA is a failure as a regulatory body
often favoring businesses over people.
It's too bad that the Chinese system of
punishing corrupt agency directors can't be used here 🙂
Tags:
Good Stuff
Thursday, July 5th, 2007 (
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One of the biggest problems with the iPhone is that they're exclusive to AT&T's service (
a company that is at the very bottom of cell providers due to privacy problems). Fortuneately, it was only a matter of time before the good hackers of the world broke that link and they're
making some progress already.
JTAG ERROR: No slashdot_ht index defined
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Good Stuff
Wednesday, June 27th, 2007 (
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Microsoft wasn't thrilled by the idea that their source code might end up being available to the New York State Board of Elections if they determined that looking at e-voting code was necessary. They attempted to change a NY law that requires code escrow (meaning they have to give the code to a third party that will provide the code to the election board under certain circumstances), but fortunately, they failed.
The e-voting company in question (Sequoia Voting Systems), isn't too happy either:
A spokeswoman for Sequoia Voting Systems, which uses some of Microsoft's development technology in its devices, defended her company's lobbying. "We also vigorously protect our intellectual property and trade secrets as well as the overall security of our voting system," she said. Sequoia currently complies with all current state and federal review and escrow laws, she noted.
Over the past year, she said Sequoia has worked with the Elections Board to satisfy its requirements without disclosing any third-party proprietary source code such as Microsoft's. After the legislature's session closed, she expressed frustration, claiming the issue remains unresolved. "We would ideally like to work with the board to reach a solution that works for all parties involved," she said Friday.
How about an e-voting system that works? That would be nice for a change.
Tags:
Good Stuff
