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• News Archive: November 2008

News Archive: November 2008

The views represented in these articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editor, the Privacy Act Program, or the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

THE SCOOP for November 26, 2008

• Banking's Data Security Crisis
  Forbes - November 21, 2008
  "Countrywide Financial may have become a poster child for U.S. financial institutions ruined by poisonous subprime loans--but junk assets, it turns out, weren't the only element of Countrywide's inner workings that were rotten."

• Bush's exit to put new e-records system to the test
  ComputerWorld - November 21, 2008
  "For members of the Bush administration, Jan. 20, 2009, marks the end of a job. However, for the staff of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), it's just the beginning of a project unprecedented in size and scope[.]"

• Coalition urges better laws for e-mail and cell phone privacy
  BetaNews - November 21, 2008
  "Information stored on remote computers should be given the same legal protections as data stored on a user's desktop PC, according to report produced by more than 20 activist and human rights groups."

• DOD, Veterans Affairs will use SOA to increase EHR interoperability
  Government Health IT - November 24, 2008
  "The Defense and Veterans Affairs departments will migrate their respective electronic health record systems to a service-oriented architecture to enhance the interoperability of outpatient clinical data."

• E-Discovery: Preservation Means Knowing When to Hold 'Em
  Byte and Switch - November 24, 2008
  "There is a distinction between application- and system-specific litigation tools and newer e-discovery litigation-hold software."

• E-Discovery Requests Loom Large for Financial Services Firms
  Wall Street & Technology - November 18, 2008
  "As regulators delve into firms' archives to try to pin down responsibility for the current financial meltdown, experts anticipate that litigation will rise sharply."

• Federal Register Announces Launch of New Electronic Public Inspection Desk
  News Blaze - November 19, 2008
  "The Office of the Federal Register has created an Electronic Public Inspection Desk to provide free worldwide electronic access to public documents."

• How to Permanently Delete Data from Your Hard Drive
  Read Write Web - November 16, 2008
  "According to the New York Times, a basic privacy measure that is often overlooked is the proper destruction of data on hard drives. An ongoing study by British Telecom says that most people don't realize that deleting a file doesn't actually remove the data from a computer."

• Psystar case reveals Apple's questionable policy on email retention
  Industry Standard - November 19, 2008
  "According to a recent legal filing in the Psystar vs Apple antitrust case, Apple employees are responsible for maintaining their own documents such as emails, memos, and voicemails. In other words, there is no company-wide policy for archiving, saving, or deleting these documents."

• Six steps towards primary storage optimisation
  SearchStorage - November 24, 2008
  "There is no shortage of new technologies to make the storage of data more efficient, but the vast majority of these storage advances have focused on backup and archive, not primary storage. However, with companies starting to perform data reduction on primary storage, it's important for them to understand the requirements that primary storage optimization demands."

• Woolly Mammoth Genome Sequenced
  InformationWeek - November 19, 2008
  "Just in time for global warming, scientists have sequenced the genome of the extinct woolly mammoth, last seen roaming the Earth about 10,000 years ago."

THE SCOOP for November 20, 2008

• Data pain: University of Florida warns 333,000 dental school patients of breach
  ComputerWorld - November 13, 2008
  "The compromised data included the names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, and addresses of current and former College of Dentistry patients dating back to 1990, as well as information about dental procedures in some cases[.]"

• Democrats to White House: Preserve your records
  NY Daily News - November 13, 2008
  "Democrats on the Intelligence and Judiciary Committees last week told the White House to preserve all records produced by the Bush administration and expressed "particular concerns" whether Vice President Dick Cheney's office will comply with the law."

• Evolving devices could cause 'digital dark age'
  Pennsylvania State University Daily Collegian - November 12, 2008
  "According to a University of Illinois professor, Jerome P. McDonough, a "digital dark age" could have a significant effect on the ability of people and institutions to access data stored on older digital storage devices."

• Group seeks records on missing White House e-mails
  usatoday.com - November 14, 2008
  "How did White House e-mails go missing? A federal appeals court is cool to the idea of forcing the Bush administration to reveal records that might explain what happened."

• Keeping the Promise of Web 2.0
  Federal News Network - November 17, 2008
  "As someone who lives daily with hearing loss, Amanda Sweden, the Section 508 coordinator for the Environmental Protection Agency, knows how important it is for an agency's internet based resources to be accessible by those with a disability."

• Obama's bold vision for e-gov
  Federal Times - November 18, 2008
  "President-elect Barack Obama has offered up a compelling vision for how he'd like information technology to transform government. Citizens would be able to view agency policy and regulatory meetings via Webcast. They could chime in...about a pending bill...[or] see online which companies have active lobbying efforts..."

• Privacy groups target Google Flu Trends
  CNET News - November 14, 2008
  "Google's recent announcement that it may have found a way to predict U.S. flu trends has led to the inevitable expressions of concern from some privacy groups."

• Records Management - You Can Fight City Hall
  TakingAIIM - November 12, 2008
  "Despite years of legal precedent and expert testimony, many businesses continue to flounder on the issue of e-mail management."

• Should You Switch to Electronic Records Management?
  NewsFactor - November 14, 2008
  "In selecting software or equipment, key factors to consider include the experience and reputation of the vendor, the level of security offered, and the overall functionality of the system."

• Storage, security raises issues for telepresence
  ComputerWorld - November 13, 2008
  "Telepresence, the high-end form of videoconferencing now coming from several vendors, is the first technology that might let enterprises easily record high-quality versions of all their meetings, essentially with the press of a button."

• Team Obama applicants face Web checks of Facebook pages, blog posts
  ComputerWorld - November 14, 2008
  "Applicants for jobs in the Obama administration are being asked to provide copies of e-mail and text messages, as well as links to blog posts and to Facebook and other social networking profile pages that could embarrass Obama, according to an article in yesterday's New York Times."

• The trouble with retention
  InfoWorld - November 7, 2008
  "Data retention is an area that many administrators try to avoid thinking about because it is so problematic. This is partly because requirements for data retention are being set by lawyers and politicians, who may not understand the implications of the regulations and policies they blithely set in place."

THE SCOOP for November 13, 2008

• Back Up on Backup Tapes
  AIIM - November 7, 2008
  "Backup tapes are essential for companies to be protected in the unlikely event of a disaster, but may be the worst possible medium for long-term information archiving or retention, because that's not what they were designed to do."

• Bush E-Mail Records Could Be Lost To History
  National Journal - November 7, 2008
  "Since the presidential transition from Ronald Reagan to George H.W. Bush, George Washington University's National Security Archive has been a watchdog of federal e-mail preservation policies."

  More coverage:
  White House suffers loss in e-mail case
  msnbc.msn.com - November 10, 2008
  "With two and half months remaining before the Bush administration leaves office, U.S. District Judge Henry Kennedy ruled that two private groups may pursue their case as they press the government to recover millions of possibly missing electronic messages."

• Bush Spy Revelations Anticipated When Obama Is Sworn In
  Wired - November 10, 2008
  "When Barack Obama takes the oath of office on January 20, Americans won't just get a new president; they might finally learn the full extent of George W. Bush's warrantless domestic wiretapping."

• Business Continuity Best Practices
  eWeek - November 7, 2008
  "Enterprise IT managers need to look beyond the technical side of things, mapping out the core elements of the business to help plan for the unfathomable. At the same time, they need to take advantage of newly burgeoning standardization and certification of business continuity practices."

• Data privacy, security laws have far-reaching impact
  NetworkWorld - November 7, 2008
  "Massachusetts has enacted data privacy and data security regulations that will make it eke out California for the most wide ranging state privacy and security laws--laws that are likely to impact the policies, practices, procedures, contracts and training used by companies nationwide."

• E-Discovery – Proper Preparation Requires Data Retention Policies
  Byte and Switch - November 10, 2008
  "Storage managers need to create a well organized data infrastructure, not only for e-discovery but also for resource management, budgetary reasons, and compliance."

• Fast and Easy Data Recovery with Universal Imaging
  NewsFactor - November 6, 2008
  "The greatest benefit of universal imaging is it allows staff to simplify rollouts, migrations and deployments, as well as being a valuable disaster-recovery tool. Specifically, it lets staff reduce the time and effort spent on creating and maintaining multiple hard disk drive images for a wide variety of desktop and notebook configurations."

• FBI Investigates Data Theft Blackmail Scheme
  PCWorld - November 7, 2008
  "Data thieves are threatening to release millions of patient records held by a U.S. prescription drug management company unless the company pays up."

• Group Seeks Web-Savvy, More Open Government
  Washington Post - November 12, 2008
  "The incoming Obama administration needs to use the Internet to publish reams of new information about federal spending, policies and performance as well as other records that have been increasingly shrouded from public view, a coalition of conservative, libertarian and progressive groups is recommending today."

• Immigration applications going electronic
  Federal News Radio - November 11, 2008
  "The agency's current system is paper based that has led to a huge backlog over the last decade. CIS reduced the backlog from almost 4 million to just over 1 million in 2007, according to CIS's Ombudsman report to Congress."

THE SCOOP for November 6, 2008

• Court to review legal docs on NSA wiretapping in secret
  Ars Technica - November 2, 2008
  "A federal district court ordered the Justice Department to turn over 10 documents from the Office of Legal Counsel for in camera review to determine whether they must be released under the Freedom of Information Act."

• CRS warns against destruction of Web pages, records
  Federal Computer Week - November 3, 2008
  "The flurry of activity that tends to accompany presidential transitions could include the possible loss of electronic government records, such as Web pages, e-mail messages and other documents created on government computers, the report states."

• Government 2.0: The Presidential Transition
  Mashable - November 3, 2008
  "The day after the presidential election, when everyone else is celebrating or mourning, a transition team will be working to prepare for the day the new president will take office. The process itself is extremely complex and will happen during a short, three-month period."

• Hackers and Spending Sprees
  Newsweek - November 5, 2008
  "The computer systems of both the Obama and McCain campaigns were victims of a sophisticated cyberattack by an unknown "foreign entity," prompting a federal investigation, NEWSWEEK reports today."

• ICE record systems get Privacy Act exemptions
  Federal Computer Week - October 29, 2008
  "The Homeland Security Department is exempting two systems that hold immigration-related records from portions of the Privacy Act, thus restricting individuals' access to their records."

• New York Times teams with ProPublica for online document archive
  Editors Weblog - November 3, 2008
  "The New York Times and ProPublica, an investigative-reporting non-profit organization, have applied to the Knight News Challenge in the hope of getting $1 million from the Foundation to launch an online archive of primary-source documents. The project entitled, DocumentCloud, would give newspapers and journalists access to large amounts of well organized first hand sources."

• Quantum memory
  Government Computer News - October 30, 2008
  "An international team of scientists—including researchers from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory—has succeeded in storing quantum data in an atomic nucleus for nearly two seconds, then retrieving it for processing."

• A Records Manager's 2.0 Manifesto
  Records Management Futurewatch - October 24, 2008
  "The aim of this manifesto is to encourage records professionals to positively embrace the opportunities and challenges presented by the increasing use of online technologies (variously referred to as Web2.0, Office2.0 social software, cloud computing and Software as a Service)...and to actively consider their implications for records management theory and practice."

• Senate campaigns stick with paper in Election '08
  Politico - October 31, 2008
  "The presidential campaigns, the national political parties and the House all file their legally required financial reports by computer, making it easier for the government to oversee and the public to scrutinize. But for unexplained reasons, the Senate's records follow a tortured path from the 21st century to the 20th, and back to the 21st."

• Text Messaging, IMs a Ticking Time Bomb
  eWeek - October 24, 2008
  "New rules require enterprises to save and archive text and instant messages, joining longstanding regulations requiring e-mail archiving. As a recent congressional hearing on the Wall Street meltdown shows, the results can be embarrassing, but Onset Technology says it doesn't have to be so."

• To Save or Not to Save: E-mail Storage
  Inc.Technology - November 1, 2008
  "Deciding which e-mail messages are business records and need to be saved is more complicated than it seems."

• When the Police Go Through Your Email: Quirk of Search Law Sets Off Alarm Bells
  Wall Street Journal - October 30, 2008
  "This spring, the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in California ruled that "reasonable suspicion is not needed for customs officials to search a laptop or other personal electronic storage devices at the border," including international airports."

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