The Inquirer

Goverment department exposes pensioners' data to one another

INQUIRER Newsdesk — Mon, 12 May 2008 12:43:16 GMT

INQUIRER Newsdesk the Inquirer, Monday 12 May 2008. 12:58:00

Snailmail still capable of going Pete Tong

THE DEPARTMENT of Work and Pensions (DWP) apologised to thousands of pensioners after sending their bank details to the wrong addresses. A spokesDivot blamed an "administrative error" for putting the wrong addresses on letters containing confidential information of the pension payments of up to 26,000 customers. The error came to light last week when miffed pensioners began sending back the wrongly-addressed missoves. Some customers, "received letters intended for someone else. As soon as we found out we acted immediately and launched an investigation," a spokeswoman confessed. The department apologised to affected customers. The DWP "takes issues of customer security very seriously," she insisted....

Hacker exposes six million people's data to make a point

Sylvie Barak — Mon, 12 May 2008 12:43:16 GMT

Sylvie Barak the Inquirer, Monday 12 May 2008. 13:23:00

Chile in hot water

A CHILEAN HACKER posted sensitive information about six million of his compatriots on the Internet, apparently in an act of protest against the government's lax data security. According to Chilean newspaper El Mercurio, details including people's address', phone numbers, ID numbers, email addresses and even academic records were all laid bare for the world to see on a popular technology blog called FayerWayer. Links to additional information was also posted on a website called "ElAntro". The information was mined from various different Chilean government and military sites, including the Ministry of Education, state telephone firms and the Electoral Service website....

'Back to My Mac' snaps a thief

Egan Orion — Mon, 12 May 2008 11:06:25 GMT

Egan Orion the Inquirer, Monday 12 May 2008. 11:54:00

Alert owner gets lucky

TWO ALLEGED BURGLARS got nabbed in a New York City suburb last week after a laptop owner used Apple's "Back to My Mac" feature to snap a photo of one of them online. Two weeks ago, thieves hit an apartment in White Plains, New York and made off with flat-screen TVs, Ipods, DVDs, computer games, a box of liquor, a set of car rims... and two laptops. Then one of the light-fingered geniuses made the mistake of getting online with Kait Duplaga's purloined Mac. A friend sent her a text message congratulating her on recovering her laptop. When she said, "I don't know what you're talking about," her friend replied, "Well, you popped up as being online." Ms....

Apple collars Iphone clone

Stewart Meagher — Mon, 12 May 2008 09:09:19 GMT

Stewart Meagher the Inquirer, Monday 12 May 2008. 09:48:00

Cheapo Chinese knock-offs chased

APPLE HAS RELEASED the Dogs of Law on at least one trader flogging Iphone lookie-likies in Europe. According to Macnn, a cease and desist order has been placed on an undisclosed Ebay trader who has been selling the Chinese clone, named the Hiphone. The device bears a remarkable resemblance to Apple's massively popular handset, both in the physical tooling of the hardware, and the functionality of the software and interface. Apple's Euro men in grey suits, Bird and Bird, have told the trader to stop selling the devices, and destroy any remaining stock on pain of a €25,000 per-unit slap in the courts if it doesn't comply....

Blizzard abuses copyright law

Egan Orion — Fri, 09 May 2008 14:41:54 GMT

Egan Orion the Inquirer, Friday 9 May 2008. 15:09:00

We own your software, not you

WORLD OF WARCRAFT (WoW) proprietor Blizzard Entertainment is trying to wield copyright law like a club in its lawsuit against Michael Donnelly, the creator of the Glider robot "helper" program that plays WoW automagically for users. The World of Warcraft licence agreement explicitly forbids the use of programs like Glider. Blizzard claims that Donnelly's enabling users to breach its licence. However, Blizzard is also claiming that, because its licence prohibits the use of programs like Glider, Glider users are also committing copyright infringement every time they load their copy of the WoW client software into RAM to play it. If the court accepts Blizzard's position, Glider users could find themselves liable for statutory damages which might start at $750 for every time they use Glider....

Mafiaa demands $15 million from Pirate Bay

Egan Orion — Fri, 09 May 2008 11:21:31 GMT

Egan Orion the Inquirer, Friday 9 May 2008. 11:50:00

Pirate Bay principals scoff

THE MPAA says it will be demanding $15.4 million from Pirate Bay when its lawsuit goes to trial. The content mafiaa plans to claim damages for just four movies -- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Syriana, The Pink Panther and Walk the Line -- and 13 episodes of the recent TV series Prison Break. It's demanding between 222.50 and 261.50 kronor ($37 to $43) for each film download and 416 kronor ($68) for Prison Break's first season. According to the MPAA's law firm MAQS, Pirate Bay's users downloaded The Pink Panther 49,593 times and Syriana 3,679 times. MAQS calls the damage claim amounts "not unreasonable" of course....

Bank loses server stuffed with customer records

Mark Ballard — Thu, 08 May 2008 17:06:53 GMT

Mark Ballard the Inquirer, Thursday 8 May 2008. 17:56:00

Having a rummidge around the sofa

HSBC BANK HAS lost a server from a branch in Hong Kong that contained the records of 159,000 customers. It is almost exactly a month since the bank lost a computer disc with the details of 370,000 UK life assurance customers. The admitted today that it lost a server last month, said the the Chinese Xinhua news wire. The bank had tried to keep the news quiet, it said, but local news papers got wind of the loss. The server went missing during renovation work on a branch of the bank in Kwun Tong, Kowloon. Angry customers had been closing accounts, said the Finextra news service....

State Department says 400 stray laptops turned up

INQUIRER Newsdesk — Thu, 08 May 2008 14:41:37 GMT

INQUIRER Newsdesk the Inquirer, Thursday 8 May 2008. 15:16:00

Knew they were around here somewhere

THE US State Department seems to have found 400 laptops that it lost last week. The laptops were supposed to be shipped out to "friendly" foreign police forces by the Diplomatic Security service until someone lost track of them. The diplomats had a good rummage around a few days after the loss of the laptops was reported by www.cqpolitics.com. An official told the publication that the laptops had now turned up though couldn't say where they were exactly. A spokeswoman later sent CQ a prepared statement in which she said the laptops "have been accounted for and readied for shipment." She added: "We have not identified any missing laptops containing classified or personal, data." But according to a mole CQ seems to have at the State Department, it hasn't the foggiest idea where loads of its laptops are....

3G phone unlocking made easy

Tony Dennis — Thu, 08 May 2008 12:05:10 GMT

Tony Dennis the Inquirer, Thursday 8 May 2008. 12:46:00

Just drill a hole in your SIM card

UNLOCKING TECHNOLOGY developed for Iphone users has been applied to a wide range of 3G mobile phones by UK based 24/7 Mobile Solutions. In some cases you need to drill a hole in your existing GSM SIM card, though. Essentially, the product - Simable - puts a fake SIM under a subscribers existing SIM card to fool the handset into working with any network. So it effectively unlocks the phone. The device will be exceedingly attractive to many 3G handset owners because the likes of Nokia have made it very difficult to unlock such phones using software 'cracks' alone. Another advantage to this product is that it doesn't actually damage the handset itself....

TorrentSpy ordered to pay the MPAA $110 million

INQUIRER Newsdesk — Thu, 08 May 2008 09:25:49 GMT

INQUIRER Newsdesk the Inquirer, Thursday 8 May 2008. 10:10:00

Copyright, wrong

A JUDGE IN a Los Angeles Federal court has awarded the MPAA some $110 million in compensation from Torrentspy operator Valence Media. The MPAA has been pursuing Torrentspy for a couple of years and the site was closed in March after being hounded by the MPAA and running out of money Now the judge has ordered the outfit to pay compensation of $30,000 per copyright infringement and reckons the fee applies to some 3,699 films and TV shows. That comes to some $110,970,000. Torrentspy was also accused of hiding or deleting data that might have led the autrhorities to individual file-sharers, a charge the outfit denied. For Dan Glickman, Chairman and CEO of the MPAA, "The demise of Torrentspy is a clear victory for the studios and demonstrates that such pirate sites will not be allowed to continue to operate without facing relentless litigation by copyright holders." Torrentspy said it will appeal against the damages. µ A JUDGE IN a Los Angeles Federal court has awarded the MPAA some $110 million in compensation from Torrentspy operator Valence Media. The MPAA has been pursuing Torrentspy for a couple of years and the site was closed in March after being hounded by the MPAA and running out of money Now the judge has ordered the outfit to pay compensation of $30,000 per copyright infringement and reckons the fee applies to some 3,699 films and TV shows. That comes to some $110,970,000. Torrentspy was also accused of hiding or deleting data that might have led the autrhorities to individual file-sharers, a charge the outfit denied....

Not using Paypal is akin to buying heroin on the street

Sylvie Barak — Wed, 07 May 2008 17:35:57 GMT

Sylvie Barak the Inquirer, Wednesday 7 May 2008. 18:07:00

According to Ebay

EBAY AUSTRALIA HAS firmly lodged its foot in its mouth, by comparing sellers who don't use the Paypal option to heroin dealers. At a "town hall" style meeting to discuss the fact that Ebay Australia will be scrapping all payment methods apart from Paypal, events went from bad to worse, with Ebay's regional VP ending the evening with a comparison between people who didn't want to use PayPal and Junkies. In April Ebay Australia announced that as of June, buyers would only be able to buy goods via the online commerce website Paypal, which just so happens to be owned by the online auction company....

Lie detectors extend their reach to social security helplines

Mark Ballard — Wed, 07 May 2008 17:18:39 GMT

Mark Ballard the Inquirer, Wednesday 7 May 2008. 17:49:00

No they're not, yes they are, no they're not....

THE GOVERNMENT has put £1.5million up for another round of lie detector test pilots for social security helplines run by local authorities in the UK. But it has drawn criticism for failing to prove that the last batch of pilots were a success. This comes on top of the criticism for having stuck lie detector machines on its phone lines in the first place. The DWP said today in a statement that "initial results" from the seven pilots it has conducted across seven local authorities had been "successful". It provided no other details but said the results justified another round of pilot projects with another fifteen local authorities....

Government begins to ponder how to keep our ID data safe

Mark Ballard — Wed, 07 May 2008 16:43:16 GMT

Mark Ballard the Inquirer, Wednesday 7 May 2008. 16:59:00

Don't wait up

THE IDENTITY and Passport Service is still working out how it will avoid embarrassing and harmful losses of personal data from its Identity Cards Scheme even as it finalises tender negotiations with suppliers. The IPS had made inadequate provisions to mitigate the risks of data loss, it was told yesterday by the Independent Scheme Assurance Panel (ISAP). Having read the ISAP report before its publication, IPS chief executive James Hall had already written a response to its criticisms. He sent ISAP panel chairman Alan Hughes a letter this bank holiday Monday saying that the IPS had started trying to work out how he could prevent citizen's personal data being leaked from the ID Scheme....

Data fear haunts ID card scheme

Mark Ballard — Wed, 07 May 2008 10:47:14 GMT

Mark Ballard the Inquirer, Wednesday 7 May 2008. 11:34:00

Delays inevitable

THE UK government has been warned that it should deal with the risk of data loss from its Identity Card Scheme before it proceeds any further. The latest data warning follows repeated requests from the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK data guardian, that the Identity and Passport Service (IPS) conduct a proper assessment of the risks of data loss from the ID Scheme. That advice was ignored and now, in the wake of the HMRC data fiasco, the IPS has been told that it must improve its data standards across the whole of government to avoid data leaks from the ID scheme....

Apparatchiks seek to cut costs of UK ID scheme

Mark Ballard — Wed, 07 May 2008 09:10:07 GMT

Mark Ballard the Inquirer, Wednesday 7 May 2008. 09:30:00

Cheap at half the price

FOLLOWING years of criticism that the ID scheme will amount to nothing more than an expensive bodge, the Identity and Passport service said it has slashed ithe cost by nearly a £1 billion. But opponents say it has cut corners to cut costs and British citizen's will suffer the consequences, while the Home Office has had to create a rush job mini-ID scheme to meet its own 2009 deadline. The IPS said today that its cost estimate for giving ID cards to every UK national and running the system for 10 years had been cut from £5.43 million to £4.56 million....

US State Department loses a lot of laptops

Egan Orion — Tue, 06 May 2008 20:44:37 GMT

Egan Orion the Inquirer, Tuesday 6 May 2008. 21:10:00

Including 400 anti-terrorism kits

IT'S SURFACED that the US State Department can't account for up to about 1,000 laptops -- or maybe it's really 10,000 laptops -- perhaps as many as 400 of which belonged to the department's Anti-Terrorism Assistance Program. The State Department's Inspector General has been conducting an equipment audit for three months. Only the first stage, an inventory, has been completed. Internal auditors found that the department lost track of $30 million worth of computer equipment, "the vast majority of which... perhaps as much as 99 per cent," were laptops, according to one official. Another official calculated that the average State Department laptop costs $3,000 and figured that meant as many as 1,000 laptops might be astray....

Plod presses for CCTV 2.0

Mark Ballard — Tue, 06 May 2008 15:19:49 GMT

Mark Ballard the Inquirer, Tuesday 6 May 2008. 15:59:00

More cameras, more definition, more watching

POLICE HAVE revived calls for the UK's CCTV cameras to be turned into anetwork of robot deputy constables that would feed intelligence to a new breed of police station. But plans to monitor Britain's streets with the creme de la creme of surveillance technology have been shelved because the technology is too immature. They have instead opted to develop the ideal civil surveillance system in stages. Detective Chief Inspector Mick Neville, head of a state-of-the art CCTV processing unit at London's Metropolitan Police, complained that the most of the CCTV evidence available to police wasn't good enough. Reviving calls made last Autumn for the nation's CCTV network to be upgraded, he said the UK's CCTV network had been implemented without any thought for the standards required for police evidence....

NTT invents fairy security interface

Egan Orion — Tue, 06 May 2008 12:34:44 GMT

Egan Orion the Inquirer, Tuesday 6 May 2008. 13:12:00

Tinkerbell's aura

JAPAN'S NTT has announced the first Human Area Network application with its Redtaction security device that uses the human body surface for transport. The company calls its skin based networking interface "Firmo" meaning "fairy motion" and likens it to Tinkerbell's aura. It works by detecting changes in the weak electrodynamic fields surrounding the human body by measuring slight distortions in an electro-optic crystal with a laser beam. Redtaction works when any part of the human body comes in close proximity to its transceiver, using 10Mbps duplex communications. The technology works through clothing and is very safe because no electrical current enters the body....

US border police copy visitors' laptop data

Nick Farrell — Tue, 06 May 2008 08:33:27 GMT

Nick Farrell the Inquirer, Tuesday 6 May 2008. 08:49:00

File sharing

THE LAND of the Free has officially become crazier at its borders and is now demanding that punters allow data on their laptops and mobile phones to be copied by airport officials. New rules mean that visitors to the United States will face even longer queues as immigration officials download gigabytes of data from visitor's laptops for snooping later. Already visitors face long queues while armed officials take fingerprints and snaps of you as you enter the country now it looks like things are going to get much worse. Travel agents' group Abta told the Mirror that it is getting silly in the US saying the new laws were not a good thing for passengers and the country had become Big Brother....

DMCA complaint prompts Google to take down open source project

Sylvie Barak — Mon, 05 May 2008 17:11:00 GMT

Sylvie Barak the Inquirer, Monday 5 May 2008. 17:58:00

Yet again

GOOGLE HAS YET AGAIN succumbed to the malevolent will of the all-seeing, all powerful DMCA, and has taken down an open source project which allowed a high-definition video decoder called CoreAVC to run on Linux systems. In a very succinct statement, the search engine giant acknowledged the take-down, saying "In response to a complaint we received under the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed project 'coreavc-for-linux'". The Windows codec, CoreAVC, is a video decoder which was developed by a company called CoreCodec, especially for decoding the MPEG-4 AVC (or H.264) video format. It is thought to be amongst the fastest software decoders in existence, rivaling even hardware decoders....

US government increases wiretraps by 20 per cent

Sylvie Barak — Mon, 05 May 2008 15:36:28 GMT

Sylvie Barak the Inquirer, Monday 5 May 2008. 16:36:00

Big Brother listening in

A US court report on wiretapping shows that the phenomenon is up by 20 per cent on last year, reaching its highest ever level, with not even a single surveillance application turned down in the whole of 2007. The report notes that last year alone, 2,208 wiretaps were authorised by the courts, most having been requested by US state authorities, with only 457 being requested by Federal Agencies. This is significantly higher than the 1839 requested in 2006. According to the report, citizens shouldn't have to worry about big brother listening in on their phone calls unless they are involved in drug deals or, in very rare incidents, murders and assaults....

Malaysian coppers swoop on blogger

Nick Farrell — Mon, 05 May 2008 10:17:45 GMT

Nick Farrell the Inquirer, Monday 5 May 2008. 05:30:00

Blogger me sideways with a root vegetable

INSPECTOR Knacker of the Kuala Lumpur Yard seems to be a little too interested in protecting the reputation of politicians from Internet bloggers. The writer of a popular bog Malaysia Today found coppers barging into his house after he penned a rant about how the deputy premier and his wife were involved in the murder of a Mongolian model. Raja Petra Kamaruddin said coppers questioned him and walked off with his PC under their arms after he penned the rant entitled "Let's send the Altantuya murderers to hell." The rant was based on something that Kamaruddin read in his local rag about Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak and his wife being involved in the case....

Internet broken in Sydney

Nick Farrell — Mon, 05 May 2008 09:45:42 GMT

Nick Farrell the Inquirer, Monday 5 May 2008. 10:35:00

Basic hack

THOUSANDS of punters in Sydney lost their Internet, phones and cable telly after someone managed to carry out one of the most basic hacks in Christendom. According to Telstra, vandals cut two fibre optic cables at the crack of dawn on Saturday. Apparently a team of 30 dedicated techies worked through the night to fix some of the problems. Quite how many people can crowd around two broken cables before the law of diminishing returns applies was unclear. Telstra spokesman Warwick Ponder told the Sydney Morning Herald yesterday more than 5000 were still without service even though the team of 30 managed to splice together some of the optical fibres with sticky back plastic and PVA glue....

Red-faced judge coughs up and says sorry

Egan Orion — Fri, 02 May 2008 16:37:06 GMT

Egan Orion the Inquirer, Friday 2 May 2008. 17:09:00

Meritless allegations bite back

A CALIFORNIA judge has apologised and agreed to pay $100,000 to a Silicon Valley software entrepreneur for having pursued meritless claims against him in a lawsuit she filed in her private law practice 12 years ago. San Mateo Superior Court Judge Carol Mittlesteadt wrote an apology to Tom Seibel, the founder of Seibel Systems, over an employment lawsuit she'd filed on behalf of Debra Christoffers, who had been fired as the company's top sales representative, that had alleged wrongful termination and sexual harrassment. Mittlesteadt and her then law associate, E. Rick Buell II, filed the lawsuit while Seibel Systems was preparing its initial public stock offering, which meant the company had to disclose the potential legal liability to investors....

Civil servant gets through porn like lightning

INQUIRER Newsdesk — Fri, 02 May 2008 15:01:45 GMT

INQUIRER Newsdesk the Inquirer, Friday 2 May 2008. 15:49:00

Japanese bloke clocks up 10,000 pages per day

A JAPANESE civil servant was been fined and demoted after techies discovered he'd viewed an impressive 780,000 pornographic pages in just nine-months. The 57 year-old from Kinokawa in southern Japan, is reckoned to have been viewing 10,000 pages a day, or 20 every minute when his frenzied wibbling was at its most vigorous. Kinokawa official Tomiko Waki told journalists the porn king's surfing habits had gone unnoticed since the he was seated away from other staff who could not see what was on his screen. They put his strange noises down to personal peccadillos, it seems. The lightning surfer was found out after he picked up a computer virus and technical support examined his browser's history....