Kashmir Hill writes: Hacker conference Defcon has a long tradition of playing “spot the fed,” a game that involves outing government types who attend under the radar to learn about the latest hacking tricks and those who are expert at developing them. There was little challenge in the game this August when it came to…
Category: Federal
Senators Hatch and Wyden Introduce Bill to Prevent Tax Refund Theft
Michael Cohn reports: Leaders of the Senate Finance Committee have introduced bipartisan legislation to improve protection for taxpayers against fraudulent tax refund claims made with stolen identities. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, introduced the Tax Refund Theft Prevention Act…
House Oversight’s lopsided hearing on the FTC
The House Oversight Committee held a hearing this morning that was supposed to be about FTC authority under Section 5, but it wound up being more of Chairman Darrell Issa using his position as a bully pulpit to attack the FTC, Tiversa, and Democrats on the committee who would not give a potential whistleblower (a former employee…
Mark your calendars: House Oversight hearing on FTC Section 5 Authority
The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform will be holding a hearing next Thursday morning, July 24: The Federal Trade commission and Its Section 5 Authority: Prosecutor, Judge, and Jury No details are available yet as to who the witnesses will be, so check back next week. Those interested in the topic may wish…
NZ: Proposed data breach fines a ‘drop in the ocean’
Rob O’Neill reports: The New Zealand government is expected to introduce a rewrite of privacy laws into Parliament next year, but one security expert says the proposals are imprecise and don’t go far enough. Trend Micro’s senior security architect Peter Benson says data breach disclosure laws are long overdue and will bring New Zealand into…
AU: Govt refuses to support data breach notification bill
Allie Coyne reports: The Coalition Government has refused to back a reinvigorated bill that would force companies to notify customers of a data breach, saying while it agrees with the concept in principle, the proposed legislation needs more work. In March this year Labor Senator Lisa Singh re-introduced the lapsed Privacy Alerts Bill, which failed to…