Polly Rippon reports: A conman from Sheffield who masterminded conspiracies to defraud high street bank customers out of hundreds of thousands of pounds has been ordered to pay back nearly £30,000 to the authorities. Lawrence Siaw, aged 36, recruited bank workers to steal customers’ account details, then used them to plunder huge sums from their…
Author: Dissent
CA: Corona-Norco school district confronts security breach
Dayna Straehley reports: The Corona-Norco school district inadvertently published the Social Security numbers of more than 80 teachers and administrators on the Internet, a security breach discovered by an information privacy watchdog. Aaron Titus, information privacy director for the Liberty Coalition in Washington, D.C., said he found the list using a Google search as part…
Colorado gets first victims advocate for ID theft cases
David Migoya reports on how Colorado received a grant to have an ID theft victims’ advocate within law enforcement itself so that people can be referred to someone who can assist them. Read more about it The Denver Post
House bill asks states to link drug databases
Kathryn Foxhall reports: Legislation now before the House would renew federal grant funding for state prescription drug monitoring networks, but would demand more interoperability among the systems. Thirty-three states have Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMPs), which are statewide databases for tracking records of dispensed controlled substances. Another 10 have provisions authorizing such systems. Read more…
Mayo Clinic worker fired for snooping on patient records
Jeff Hansel reports that the Mayo Clinic has fired an employee for snooping into medical and financial records over a period of four years: The employee worked in the Mayo financial business unit in Arizona and once worked in Rochester. An estimated 1,700 patient records were accessed, said Mayo spokesman Chris Gade, noting the employee…
Do Egyptian mummies have a right to privacy?
Okay, I’ve occasionally blogged about the right to privacy for the deceased, so this article by Jo Marchant in New Scientist really caught my eye. Here’s how it begins: Should we consider the privacy or reputation of the individual when analysing an Egyptian mummy? The assumption that ancient corpses are fair game for science is…