On December 5, Harford Community College learned (pdf) that a flash drive containing personal information had been misplaced by an employee at its WAGE Connection office in Aberdeen, Maryland. The personal information of 70 Department of Social Service clients participating in the WAGE Connection program was on the missing drive and included their name, social…
Author: Dissent
SEC Review of Apple May Pit Investors Against Privacy
Karen Gullo, Connie Guglielmo and David Scheer report: Apple Inc.’s shifting disclosures about Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs’s health are forcing regulators into new legal territory, balancing investors’ right to information against a last bastion of executive privacy. The Securities and Exchange Commission’s inquiry, reported by Bloomberg News last week, is likely to examine how…
Stimulus bill includes protection for digital health care records
Dan Kaplan reports: A portion of the $818 billion stimulus bill that was passed this week by the U.S. House calls for computerizing all health records in five years, but the legislation also contains stringent privacy and security controls to protect this online data. Experts said these measures would complement the Health Insurance Portability and…
Electronic Health Records: DOD's and VA's Sharing of Information Could Benefit from Improved Management
GAO-09-268 January 28, 2009 Summary Under the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008, the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) are required to accelerate the exchange of health information between the departments and to develop systems or capabilities that allow for interoperability (generally, the ability of systems…
Guilty Plea: Blind Hacker Admits Harassment, Eavesdropping, Fraud
Kevin Poulsen reports on 18 year-old Matthew Weigman, a blind telephone hacker: […] In his plea deal with prosecutors, Weigman, who was born blind, admitted to a long criminal resume (.pdf). Among other things, he confessed to conspiring with other telephone hooligans who made hundreds of false calls to police that sent armed SWAT teams…
OR: State loses 45 Social Security numbers in scam
Alexander Rich reports: An online scammer made off with 45 Social Security numbers after sending a virus to a computer at the Department of Human Services office in Coos Bay last week. The virus arrived in the form of a bogus e-mail with a link on it Jan. 23. When an employee clicked on the…