LISNews: Librarian News

Anonymous Patron writes "Columbia Spectator: A harmless act of procrastination by a Queens College law student inadvertently uncovered what has become a massive headache for hundreds of City University of New York students, employees, and affiliates.
The university rushed to inform CUNY students last week that a security foul-up had compromised their confidential information."

Anonymous Patron writes "One From The San Fransisco Chronicle says that contrary to appearances, there has probably not been an increase in security breaches.

Instead, there has been more disclosure, precipitated by the same California law that forced ChoicePoint to come clean, they said.

"I think there have always been as many security breaches as we've seen in the last few months," said Beth Givens, founder and director of the nonprofit Privacy Rights Clearinghouse in San Deigo. "The California security- breach notice law has increased the visibility of those breaches.""

Pete writes "The Register, interesting as always, has this to say about databases and privacy, "Misuse of database information by insiders happens everyday, and there's little we can do about it.Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodies?What's bothering me now? It's the security and privacy stories that don't make major headlines, and recently I stumbled across two that stuck with me. The first only came my way when the Drudge Report picked it up. A woman in Florida wrote some rather unflattering remarks about a local sheriff in the newspaper. She was then caught off guard after receiving a letter at home from the sheriff himself, using her full name. Inquiries from reporters revealed the fact that the sheriff and his staff had used Florida's driving records system to access personal information about the lady after seeing the letter in the newspaper."To find out the other incident you'll have to read on..."

Anonymous Patron writes "The Register looks at the ChoicePoint & LexisNexis mess. Privacy invasion behemoths ChoicePoint and LexisNexis have lost control of sensitive data in the past, but deliberately covered it up because no law required them to come clean, executives from both outfits confessed Wednesday during Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on the recent epidemic of ID theft plaguing the USA.

informationweek.com has more, and if this kind of thing interests you, read Mitigating identity theft from CNET."