Hacker Hackett sentenced to 10 years
Good article at SecurityWeek on the case of a professional identity thief sentenced to 10 years in prison: http://www.securityweek.com/hacker-caught-675k-stolen-credit-cards-gets-maximum-prison-sentence The best part is his name: Hackett. Phonetically, that would be pronounced “Hack – It”. 10 years and a $100,000 fine for having 675,000 stolen credit card numbers which investigators believe led to more than $36 […]
Barack Obama’s Audacity of Hack, Chapter One
In May, the White House released a comprehensive proposal for a number of CyberSecurity measures. Unlike most of the other legislation proposed that focuses on Data Breaches or Do-Not Track. The White House proposal has 6 different sections that include changes to Homeland Security CyberSecurity as well as coordination of CyberSecurity between agencies. Data Breach […]
HIPAA Hot Potato – Federal vs. State
In May, The Office of the Inspector General issued a report on the results of an audit conducted for the Office of Civil Rights on the effectiveness of HIPAA compliance. The report wasn’t so great. “Although OCR stated that it maintains a process for initiating covered entity compliance reviews in the absence of complaints, it […]
Discussion Draft of the SAFE Data Act introduced by Representative Mary Bono Mack (R-CA)
On June 13th, Congresswoman Mary Bono Mack released a discussion draft of what she calls the SAFE Data Act. Here’s the marketing release if you’d prefer to read the cliff notes. Since it’s a discussion draft, let’s discuss! Actually, I think this could be a good bill to eliminate a lot of the confusion about […]
What has Al Franken done for me lately, Part 2
Last week, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation held a hearing on Privacy and Information Security. Senator Rockefeller made a point of emphasizing his committee’s jurisdiction over privacy and data security issues. I think this statement alone shows a rift in the Senate’s perspective on Information Security in light of the newly formed […]
War Powers Resolution and Cyberwar
If you’ve been following the war in Libya and the Obama’s report to Congress in June, you’ll know that the administration is claiming that our military actions in Libya are not covered under the War Powers Resolution which would require them to be terminated after 60 days. To get around this window, there must be […]
What has Al Franken done for me lately, Part 1
In February of this year, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to form a new sub-committee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law. They chose my favorite Senator, Al Franken to chair the new group. After I heard about this new committee’s formation back in February (feb 14), they kinda went radio silent for a few months, […]