DPD or Driving, Politics and Disclosure of Personal Information in Latvia

Latvia is a relatively small but diverse country. According to the CIA’s World Factbook the 2,231,503 population is 57.7% Latvian, 29.6% Russian, 4.1% Belorussian, 2.7% Ukrainian, 2.5% Polish, 1.4% Lithuanian, and 2% other.
In spite of economic difficulties people are still driving cars in Latvia, and just like in many countries drivers often express themselves by decorating their vehicles (think  Obama and Palin bumper stickers in the U.S.). I personally think there are better ways to show ones affinity or dislike towards something, but my personal views are besides the point here.
In early February, latvietislatvija.com, a web site hosted in the U.S.  published the personal identity codes, license plate numbers, addresses and names of “disloyal” Latvians, i.e.,  drivers who affix Russian symbols to their cars. An ongoing investigation should soon reveal how the drivers’ identities were compromised.
More at Delfi in Latvian and Russian.

ISPs not to be held responsible… so rules Australian court

In the first case of its kind, an Australian court has ruled that an internet service provider cannot be responsible for illegal downloading. The decision had the potential to impact internet users and the internet industry profoundly as it sets a legal precedent surrounding how much ISPs are required to do to prevent customers from downloading movies and other content illegally in Australia.

    “iiNet is not responsible if an iiNet user uses that system to bring about copyright infringement … the law recognises no positive obligation on any person to protect the copyright of another,” Justice Cowdroy said.

Read more at theage.com.au.

Facebook ID theft

People are now hacking into the social networking site, posing as friends in need and requesting money. There is a big article in the Swedish newspaper on this, whereby a facebook user’s friends have been conned for significant amounts of money. Due to the public nature of these profiles, hackers are able to not only identify the location of the person they are pretending to be, but they can also identify and in turn adopt writing styles in their email plead for ‘help’ – making it that much more difficult to spot a fake. What makes this different from ID theft is that it is not the person who’s id that is stolen that is the victim, although clearly it can be very embarrassing for them to subsequently explain their actions, it is that their Facebook identity is stolen and their friends who are the victims.

Tips on how to counteract this type of fraud, apart from not using social networking sites, are provided at ninemsn Today.

EU Data Retention Directive still not implemented in Sweden

In 2006 there was a directive approved in Brussels on the retention of telecommunications data, i.e. telecom operators’ customers phone and email information. This I understand to be, not contents, but of activity. This directive was born in the wake of Madrid and London terrorists’ activities. Sweden has been slow in implementing this, in fact they’ve done nothing. To understand why read more at The Local Sweden News in English.

As a side-note: The fact that telecom operators have the ability to do this type of logging activity built into their systems is no coincidence. Many of the international laws on wiretapping date back to a series of seminars hosted by the FBI in the United States
in 1993 at its research facility in Quantico, Virginia, called the International Law Enforcement Telecommunications Seminar (ILETS) together with representatives from Canada, Hong Kong, Australia and the EU. The product of these meetings was the adoption of an international standard called the International Requirements for Interception. In 1995 the Council of the European Union approved a secret resolution adopting the ILETS. Following its adoption and without revealing the role of the FBI in developing the standard, countries have adopted laws to this effect. Following adoption of the standard the European Union and the United States offered a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for other countries to sign to commit to the standards. All participating countries were encouraged to adopt the standards so it was natural that international standards organisations, such as the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and the European Telecommunication Standardization Institute (ETSI), would adopt the standards. Read more in Virtual Shadows.

U.S. House overwhelmingly passes cybersecurity research bill

The Cyber Security Research and Development Act of 2009, which passed by a vote of 422 to 5, authorizes the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to develop a cybersecurity education program that can help consumers, businesses, and government workers keep their computers secure.

“This bill will help improve the security of cyberspace by ensuring federal investments in cybersecurity are better focused, more effective, and that research into innovative, transformative security technologies is fully supported,” said Symantec CTO Mark Bregman. “HR 4061 represents a major step forward towards defining a clear research agenda that is necessary to stimulate investment in both the private and academic worlds, resulting in the creation of jobs in a badly understaffed industry.”

Article here

Harnessing your social capital!

Interesting report on the potential use/implementation of social media in organisations today, along with some studies. It is not really positive about the success that organisations are having, although it is clear that this is the only way forward. This follows on nicely to a couple of reports I published in 2009 on harnessing the social capital of an organisation.

Talk Differently
Get to know your plumbing

Stolen account information as a commodity

This came on the news this weekend:
Stolen account data from a bank in Switzerland are for sale for 2.5 million euros. German state says that it is considering a purchase, when calculating the opportunity to access 100 million in tax liabilities. Germany has previously made a similar deal with good profit back in 2008.

It all feels a little sad when it leads to the legitimizing this type of trade in personal data. Data that has been aquired through breaking the law (hacking).

Read all about it here

Anti-grooming law in Sweden

Seems that I was sleeping July 2009 when this law was passed here in Sweden. I have been watching it’s progress with interest since 2006. Now it is big news on the Swedish radio. It has taken a long time since inception for it to become a law. This type of law is already found in the UK, in the U.S., and in Australia. There could be other countries where such a law exists too of which I am not aware of.

For example in the UK proving that a child is being ‘groomed’ online and thus at risk in a court of law was impossible before 2003 in the UK unless some physical action was taken by the paedophile to meet the child and that the abuser was carrying sufficient evidence implying that sexual abuse would occur, e.g. condoms. In the UK the Amendments to the Sexual Offences Act 2003 (s.15) often referred to as the ‘antigrooming bill’ corrected this discrepancy. This act makes new provisions about sexual offences, their prevention and the protection of children from harm, sexual acts and connected purposes.

So back to Sweden. It has become big news because of the criticism that is being thrown at this new law. The law is ineffective. The maximum penalty for an offender is either a fine or a maximum of one year in prison which means that prosecutors and police are not allowed to request critical information from telecoms. The crime is not considered as serious.