Researchers at ThePrivacyPlace.Org are still conducting an online survey about individuals’ experience with and perceptions of authentication technologies. The survey was released last August and is supported by an NSF ITR grant (National Science Foundation Information Technology Research). Your participation will help us with our investigations regarding digital identities. It will take about 15 to 20 minutes to complete the survey.

As a way of saying thank you for taking the time to complete our survey, we are also offering the chance to enter a drawing for one of two $50 Amazon gift certificates.

The URL is: http://www.theprivacyplace.org/current-survey/

The results will be posted on ThePrivacyPlace.org later in 2008.

In 1996, Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida started using finger geometry scans to identify annual and season pass holders. Over the past six months, they have quietly extended this requirement to all ticket holders, meaning that anyone coming into the park must have their fingers scanned and verified. Disney officials say that records are not kept after the tickets expire, but it’s not clear if they are immediately purged from the system.

The scan does not make a record of a person’s fingerprints. Guests place their index and middle fingers on the scanner and the system recognizes certain characteristics such as finger thickness and length. A number is assigned based on these measurements, and this number is stored in the system for future comparisons. Injuries to the index and/or middle fingers can cause the system to falsely reject a guest’s profile, as can more mundane changes such as the presence of a ring that was not worn during the initial scan. AllEarsNet, an unofficial Walt Disney World guide, has an online FAQ about the scan. At present, the system is only being used in Walt Disney World, and not in Disneyland in California or any of Disney’s international theme parks. Universal Studios Orlando and SeaWorld are said to be planning to introduce similar verification systems in the future.

Larry Spalding of the American Civil Liberties Union was quoted as saying that while the Disney system, known as Ticket Tag, had been brought to the ACLU’s attention, no one had yet filed a complaint. Spalding expressed concern about the system, saying “Slowly but surely we’re just giving away our right of privacy, and the question is what are we getting in return?” Even if the records aren’t kept and can’t be matched to other biometric identifiers such as fingerprints, it still seems a bit disconcerting. As Civil Liberties Union spokesman George Crossley said, “I think it is a step toward collection of personal information on people regardless of what Disney says.”

Slashdot discussion here.

That was the headline for Linda Rosencrance’s article on Computerworld on March 16th. (See http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2005/0316kaiseperma.html?nl)

But did they really? When you dig several paragraphs deeper into the story the picture becomes much more ambiguous than the headline would lead you to believe.

A woman, known as “Elisa” and “Diva of the Disgruntled” on her weblog had been terminated from her job as a web coordinator at Kaiser. Some time later, she claimed that Kaiser had posted a series of system schematics for Electronic Medical Records (EMR) project on a publicly accessible web site as well as personal patient information for about 140 people. She filed a complaint with the Office Of Civil Rights on the grounds that it is a violation of HIPAA regulations. She apparently made no attempt to notify Kaiser directly. A Kaiser spokesman said that the company learned of the incident when the Office of Civil Rights began an investigation.

The parts of the story regarding posting of the EMR project schematics doesn’t seem to be in dispute. Elisa found the web site URL with the schematics when she googled the name of her former manager. She made these URLs publc on her web log. A Kaiser spokesman admitted that the schematics had been put on the web site in order to share them with remote IT people. It’s unclear that the project schematics themselves were particularly sensistive, though they have since been put behind a password protected site.

Now, if that had been all there was to this story it wouldn’t have been such a big deal. But what about the patient data for those 140 individuals? Elisa didn’t provide a URL on the Kaiser site where that information had been posted. She only posted the URL to where the schematcs were located. So as far as can be determined by the information in the Computerworld article, Elisa doesn’t seem to have produced any forensic evidence that Kaiser accidently exposed the information on their public web site.

What is known to have happened is that Elisa posted the real patient information on her web log. So it’s clear that she had possession of the patient information, but it’s not at all clear that she obtained that information from the Kaiser public web site. Kaiser got the web log ISP to remove the information and had to do so at least twice because Elisa reposted the information. She claims that she had intended to remove the information once the Office of Civil Rights had investigated. Of course she could have supplied the information directly to the consumers and she could have refrained from posting patient medical ecords to her publc web log.

The Kaiser spokesman said that Kaiser has notified the affected patients and is continuing to investigate how Elisa came into possession of the data.

Now, read the headline again:
Kaiser Permanente patient data exposed online

Ask yourself, does this headline accurately reflect the story? I don’t think so. The only evidence of an exposure is for the IT system schematics and it’s not at all clear that these are particularly sensitive, especially from a HIPAA point of view. Perhaps a more accurate headline should have been:

Former Kaiser Employee Posts Kaiser Patient Data To Weblog

There is no dispute about the fact that Elisa did this. But there is no evidence (at least none mentioned in the article) that Elisa obtained this information through an accidental disclosure on the Kaiser web site.

My point is not to disparage Linda Rosencrance or ComputerWorld for a misleading headline. My point is that Elisa had access to patient data somehow. Maybe she got it from the Kaiser public website as she claims. Maybe she somehow got access to the data while she was still employeed. Maybe she received it from an insider who still works for Kaiser. The fact of the matter is that it doesn’t matter to Kaiser how Elisa obtained the patient data. It’s still a publicity nightmare.

The question is, how can this be prevented? This is the heart of good data stewardship and good data governance. As far as I can see, there’s no way to prevent this except to treat the operating environment of the business inside the firewall as an untrusted environment. Everytime sensitive information is seen by eyeballs, everytime it’s written to any media as clear text, there’s a potential for this kind of incident, which I expect is keeping a lot of CSO-types awake at night.

A judge in California ruled that the use of a keystroke logger, which is a device or program that records what you type on your keyboard, does not violate federal wiretap laws.

This case involved an employer installing a physical device between his secretary’s computer and keyboard that monitored and recorded what she typed.

Privacy advocates have argued that since keystroke logging facilitates covertly monitoring and recording information and conversations, cases should be prosecuted using the same laws that protect the public from telephone wiretaps. However, the wiretap laws offer very specific protection. In this case the best the prosecution could offer was that the computer being monitored was used to compose emails. Email can be protected under the wiretap laws but only as they travel over data networks. After they are stored, snooping is not protected under wiretap laws.

More information on this story can be found at SecurityFocus.com and more on keystroke loggers can be found at Wikipedia.org

During an election campaign most individuals when making contributions freely give out contact information that include name, address, e-mail address, phone, credit card information. How much are the privacy rights of contributors or supporters respected in the use of personal information obtained during elections?
Current Louisiana treasurer, John Kennedy

Phishing, according to webopedia.com is

Officials from six countries, including the U.S. Secret Service, worked together to arrest 28 suspects from an ID theft ring accused of stealing, among other things, more than 1.7 million credit card numbers. The thieves are noted to have gone after confidential information from both individuals and companies. This is third in a series of worldwide investigations resulting in multiple arrests for identity theft.

Enforcement measures like these are encouraging, and should help to deter identity theft, but the sheer magnitude of information thieves can steal emphasizes the need to keep a close watch on information you want to keep private.

Read more at C|Net.

Spyware, a common problem for computer users, refers to covertly installed applications that monitor and record your computer usage habits. Spyware is not only invasive, but it can slow your computer down and cause it to crash. Fortunately, new legislation has been passed that adds large fines to punishments companies convicted of installing spyware can receive. However, it is easy to question the effectiveness of stricter laws, as the companies responsible for spyware might simply relocate to avoid possible fines. Helping consumers avoid spyware may be a more effective strategy, and to that end computer-maker Dell has partnered with getnetwise.org, a non-profit group aimed at helping educate consumers and help them avoid spyware. Other getnetwise.org members include AOL and Microsoft. Read more at CNN and MSNBC.

Japan Today reports on the following case of RFID tags being used to track students in a Japanese primary school. School introduces security system to monitor students’ movements
From the article: “TOKYO Rikkyo Primary School on Monday introduced a new security system at its Tokyo campus that uses active RFID tags to accurately monitor the comings and goings of its students in real time.”

RFID stands for Radio Frequency Identification, and the technology is being deployed in small tags that can be attached to everything from articles of clothing to tires on your car. These tags can then be used to track movement, location, etc. of the items to which they are attached, which obviously raises many privacy issues to be considered as this technology gets deployed into widespread use.

Read the rest of this entry »

The problems with disclosing even small amounts of personal information are becoming more obvious. Electronic databases make the aggregation of small, otherwise innocuous pieces of personal information inevitable, and they can combine to form remarkably complete pictures of you that include your name, address and even detailed spending habits. Combine this with powerful search engines like Google and even your credit card number can quickly be looked-up, which is discomforting at the least.

More can be found here [Yahoo News]