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• News Archive: May 2009

News Archive: May 2009

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 May 27, 2009

• Congress and Credit Cards Mean the Death of Privacy
  Time - May 20, 2009
  "The most recent innovation to make the details of everyone's life available to everyone else is a GPS tracking phone. Someone late for a meeting can no longer say he is stuck in traffic. His phone shows he is in the coffee shop just around the corner."

• Congress moves to withhold detainee abuse photos
  ABC News - May 26, 2009
  "The Lieberman-Graham provision would allow the defense secretary to certify to the president that release of photos or video taken between Sept. 11, 2001, and Jan. 22, 2009, of people captured by U.S. forces outside the United States would endanger lives. In such cases, the release could be prohibited for at least three years."

• Data.gov Launched by Federal Government
  Government Technology - May 21, 2009
  "Federal CIO Vivek Kundra made good Thursday on his promise to launch Data.gov, which will make data generated by the federal government publicly available."

• IRS lax in destroying sensitive tax papers - report
  Reuters - May 21, 2009
  "Sensitive documents about U.S. taxpayers were found in trash outside all Internal Revenue Service sites visited in a[n] investigation, putting the people at risk of identity theft, an inspector's report says."

• Is your Employer Snooping in your Personal E-Mail Account?
  Internet Business Law Services - May 25, 2009
  "It is clear that employees do not have any expectation of privacy in the e-mail account provided by their employers; but what about personal e-mail accounts accessed through the employer's computers at the place of employment?"

• Making a Case for Disaster Recovery
  LAW.COM - May 22, 2009
  "True disaster recovery means that data must be accessible at the same speed and with the same integrity as it was before a disaster or event (e.g., natural or man-made disasters, viruses, power disruptions). Some companies have the potential of going out of business within one year of sustaining a multi-day outage..."

• NARA's preservation practices for e-records called 'fatally flawed'
  NextGov - May 21, 2009
  "The government's practices in preserving electronic records is "fatally flawed," and the National Archives and Records Administration must enforce stricter policies to store agenc[y] records, especially e-mail messages, a panel of records management professionals told a House hearing on Thursday."

• White House Strives To Reduce Noise In Social Media Initiatives
  InformationWeek - May 20, 2009
  "It's crucial...for agencies to design interactive Web sites that ask the right questions, target the right audiences and tie citizen feedback into policymaking processes."

• Witnesses Call for Better Information Security from Federal Government
  Security Management - May 20, 2009
  "Government officials and information security experts discussed the federal government's ability to protect its sensitive information from data breaches and cyberattacks at a congressional hearing yesterday."

THE SCOOP for May 20, 2009

• Consumers Left in the Dark on Net Privacy
  InternetNews - May 15, 2009
  "Experts may debate whether there's more than meets the eye in online data collection, but they agree that Internet users need education."

• Court rules White House can keep e-mails secret
  USA Today - May 19, 2009
  "A 1980 Supreme Court decision found that the FOIA law does not extend "to the President's immediate personal staff or units in the Executive Office [of the President] whose sole function is to advise and assist the President," The Washington Post points out."

• House Internet privacy, data breach bills could merge
  NextGov - May 6, 2009
  "Consumer privacy bills championed by two House Energy and Commerce subcommittee chairmen that are now progressing on parallel tracks could merge to become a sweeping measure with implications for information brokers, broadband service providers, Internet companies and other technology stakeholders."

• How to devise a disaster recovery plan
  Search Storage - May 18, 2009
  "While there's no one-size-fits-all solution, a data asset inventory that includes conducting a data classification project and assessing the potential risk for disaster from within your company will help you protect all of your data resources."

• Momentum growing to strengthen information security requirements
  NextGov - May 19, 2009
  "Agency and White House officials told a House panel on Tuesday that because information security laws have failed to keep government networks safe from cyberattacks, the Obama administration plans to draw up new performance metrics to continually identify security risks."

• Senators call on regulatory nominee to focus on privacy issues
  FederalTimes - May 13, 2009
  "Sunstein should work closely with Vivek Kundra, the federal chief information officer and head of OMB's e-government office, to clarify responsibilities for ensuring personal data privacy, Lieberman said."

• Sensitive Clinton administration data missing from National Archives
  ABC News - May 19, 2009
  "Congressional officials say the information includes Social Security numbers, addresses and Secret Service and White House operating procedures."

• Survey Finds Email Management a Major Legal Discovery Risk
  CMS Wire - May 18, 2009
  "We all know that whether we really like it or not, email is one of our primary communication tools and often our primary collaboration tool. Now that may be changing with the social computing solutions that are coming into the enterprise, but it's not going to change over night. And it's certainly not going to change completely."

• Why IT should start throwing data away
  ComputerWorld - May 6, 2009
  "[W]ith the storage requirements of average enterprises rapidly growing, keeping it all forever can create long-term management challenges and lead to headaches when something needs to be found. Analysts, attorneys, and vendors say enterprises are better off getting rid of some data -- but doing it judiciously."

THE SCOOP for May 13, 2009

• Copiers Put Consumers At Risk Of Identity Theft
  KMGH Denver News - May 4, 2009
  "Copies made at work or at a business like a mortgage company or accountant's office, are in many cases being saved onto the machine's hard drive. Wherever those machines go next, they could be taking your personal information along for the ride."

• Cyber-Criminal Demands $10 Million Ransom After Breaching Virginia Medical Records
  Government Technology - May 7, 2009
  "The FBI and the Virginia State Police are on the hunt for a malicious hacker who breached millions of medical records last week and is now threatening to sell them unless someone forks over $10 million."

• DHS plans electronic records management system
  FederalComputerWeek - May 12, 2009
  "The Homeland Security Department plans to deploy a new departmentwide enterprise records management system to improve its ability to store, retrieve and archive electronic documents, DHS' top management official said today."

• E-Prescription Adoption Picking Up
  InformationWeek - April 22, 2009
  "More doctors have traded in their paper prescription pads for e-prescribing over the last two years. However, the bulk of e-prescriptions are being generated by doctors using standalone e-prescribing software, not more comprehensive, integrated e-medical record systems, says a new study."

• Emails are major legal discovery risk
  Wisconsin Technology Network - May 12, 2009
  "The electronic content management association and researcher AIIM has released a report that found that a third of organizations have no policy to deal with legal discovery and 40% might need to search back-up tapes to find emails that could be relevant to litigation."

• Expanded DNA Databases: Violation of Privacy or Crime Solving Tool?
  Forensic Magazine - May 7, 2009
  "It has become common practice to collect DNA samples from convicted violent crime offenders, but recently states and even the FBI have been expanding their databases by collecting DNA from suspects who have been arrested but not convicted."

• Senators Urge Obama to Block Release of New Detainee Abuse Photos
  The Public Record - May 10, 2009
  "Civil libertarians are condemning a call by two influential U.S. senators for the White House to block the impending release of photographs showing detainees being abused by U.S. military personnel at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and at other American detention facilities in the Middle East and elsewhere."

• U.S. Can Conceal Records on Violence in Guatemala
  Courthouse News Service - May 12, 2009
  "The U.S. government has no duty to release records on the violence that a group of individuals or their loved ones suffered in Guatemala in the 1970s and 1980s, the D.C. Circuit ruled."

• An Unsecured Internet is Worse Than None At All
  Government Technology - May 12, 2009
  "Schematics for the president's helicopter end up in Iran, a hacker holds thousands of medical records ransom for $10 million, a computer with U.S. missile defense data is sold on eBay, the Chinese government is accused of hacking into national networks -- these are just a few of the most recent technology-related issues to show up in the news."

• Vatican Reveals Letter That Split England From Roman Church
  New York Times - May 12, 2009
  "Dated July 13, 1530 and addressed to Pope Clement VII, the letter asks for the annulment of Henry's marriage to Catherine of Aragon and includes the seals of dozens of peers of England who concurred with the request."

• While Your Workers Twitter, Does Your Legal Stance Fritter?
  InformationWeek - May 7, 2009
  "'Twitter posts are like any other electronically stored information,' explained Douglas E. Winter, a partner at Bryan Cave in Washington, D.C., and head of the firm's Electronic Discovery unit. 'They are discoverable and should therefore be approached with all appropriate caution.'"

THE SCOOP for May 6, 2009

• Agencies still fail to take steps to secure information systems
  NextGov - May 5, 2009
  "Computer systems and networks at nearly all major federal agencies are vulnerable to cyberattacks, a panel of government oversight officials and industry security professionals told a House subcommittee on Tuesday."

• Court Orders Review of FBI Records on California Muslim Organizations
  OMB Watch - April 30, 2009
  "Responding to claims that Muslim organizations have been illegally spied upon in southern California, a federal judge said on April 20, 2009 he will conduct a review of the FBI records."

• The end of privacy
  Emporia (KS) Gazette - May 4, 2009
  "The trend of electronic communication, from Facebook to texting to sexting to Twitter, is more than a record of the advance of technology and ingenuity. It forms the basis of a massive, voluntary flight from the very concept of individual privacy."

• Few hospitals go paperless using free VA software
  Boston Globe - May 4, 2009
  "The VA software, known as VistA, is open-source software - its code is freely available to the public and is constantly being improved by users - and it includes important features, such as a bar-coding system to track drug dispensations, to help improve patient safety. But very few US hospitals have taken advantage of it."

• A heretical view of knowledge management
  Government Computer News - April 29, 2009
  "[I]t's best to think of raw content as content that can potentially link to knowledge but only after you understand and define the knowledge you want such instances to match. A good example is the distinction between an unmoderated discussion forum and a list of answers to frequently asked questions."

• Infomania
  NextGov - May 4, 2009
  "As participatory government brings an onslaught of public comments online, agencies will need the right tools to make sense of it all."

• Massive FBI Data-mining Project Needs Congressional Oversight
  Kansas City infoZine - May 3, 2009
  "The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) called on Congress recently to examine the Investigative Data Warehouse (IDW) -- a massive FBI data-mining project that includes a billion records, many of which contain personal information on American citizens."

• Obsolete Regulations Block Government Adoption Of Social Media
  InformationWeek - May 1, 2009
  "Laws that predate the Internet block use of existing tools. For example, agencies looking to do a survey need to put a notice in the Federal Register 'seeking comments on whether the public should be asked for comments.'"

• Oriental Institute takes Persian Empire into digital age
  University of Chicago Chronicle - April 30, 2009
  "The Oriental Institute is using modern technology to digitally record thousands of tablets that, when pieced together, will tell an unusually detailed story of the Persian Empire."

• Senators want congressional research available to the public
  NextGov - May 1, 2009
  "Senate Resolution 118, introduced by Sens. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., and John McCain, R-Ariz., would require the creation of a database where the public could search for Congressional Research Service reports."

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