Amy Forliti of the Associated Press has an excellent report on a court ruling that has significant implications for medical privacy and decision-making. In this case, parents of a 13-year old boy diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma — and the boy himself — refused to complete a recommended course of chemotherapy, opting instead for natural healing…
Author: Dissent
Ie: 3,000 email accounts compromised by hackers
Conall O Fátharta of Irish Examiner reports: Up to 3,000 Irish people have had their email accounts compromised by international hackers, it has emerged. The hackers managed to access the private emails of thousands of individuals whose details were then put on an Arabic website. A number of Irish banking institutions, county councils, universities, the…
ID thief posing as Black & Decker sentenced to prison
Cal Fizer, a Detroit resident who used fake 1-800 numbers to steal hundreds of credit card numbers and other personal identity information, has been sentenced to 70 months’ imprisonment on the charges of credit card fraud, mail fraud, and aggravated identity theft. The sentencing was announced (pdf) by Terrence Berg, United States Attorney for the…
Prospects Gloomy for Texas Data Security Bill
Jim Rubenstein of Credit Union Times reports that it’s unlikely that the Texas legislature will pass an ambitious data security bill before the current legislative session ends on June 1. H.B. 345 and the companion S.B. 327 have support from the financial sector and the state’s Attorney General, but have been strongly opposed by retailers…
AU: Security breach over SA secret files
Hendrik Gout of The Independent Weekly reports: Secret police intelligence so sensitive that people named in the documents can’t even see it appears to have been released into the public domain, prompting calls for an Anti-Corruption Branch investigation. The top-secret files may contain unproven allegations and name people who have not necessarily been convicted of…
PA: Ex-employee of Colonial Penn charged in ID-theft scam
Michael Hinkelman of the Philadelphia Daily News reports that Lisa Bryant Nelson, a former Colonial Penn Life Insurance Co. employee, was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of using company computers to steal personal and bank-account information of customers who also had accounts with Citizens Bank, M&T Bank and Wachovia Bank. Over 120…