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Friday, 6.12.2024
Transforming Government since 2001

Datenschutz

  • USA weiten Netzmonitoring-Pläne aus

    Details zur "National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace" dargelegt | Ursprünglich eher Aufruf zur ISP-Selbstkontrolle | Nun will der Staat leiten | Ein Mega-Carnivore für ISPs | "Früherkennung von Viren und Vereitelung von Terroranschlägen"

  • USA: Agencies Fall Short on Protecting User Data

    Many government agencies have failed to meet the guidelines for protecting personal information that were established two years ago after the breach at the Department of Veterans Affairs.

    According to a report issued by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) today, a number of agencies fell short on recommendations for securing databases, remote access, and mobile devices. All of the agencies received a downgrade in their scores for e-government progress on the President's Management Agenda Scorecard

  • USA: Aufbau eines neuen weltweiten Internet-Überwachungssystems läuft an

    Die US-Militärs haben mit dem Aufbau eines neuen Systems für die weltweite Überwachung der Internetnutzer begonnen. Das so genannte "Information Awareness Office" (IAO) unter der Leitung des ehemaligen Sicherheitsberaters der US-Regierung Admiral John M. Poindexter hat erste Ausschreibungen für die Beschaffung von Technologie an die IT-Unternehmen verschickt, berichtet die US-Tageszeitung 'Washington Post' heute unter Berufung auf Mitteilungen aus der Behörde. Die Aufgabe der Abteilung liegt darin, Computersysteme für eine weltweite Rasterfahndungen zu installieren. Dabei wird ganz selbstverständlich auch die Auswertung von Daten geplant, die außerhalb des Hoheitsgebietes der USA gesammelt werden.

  • USA: Bush plant zentrale Überwachung

    Nach einem Bericht der New York Times will die Bush-Adminstration den Aufbau eines zentralen Überwachungssystems für das Internet vorschlagen. Die Internet Service Provider sollen dabei helfen.

  • USA: Citizens' privacy concerns over data mining weigh heavily on feds

    Advances in information technology make it easier than ever before for the federal government to obtain and process personal information about citizens and residents in many ways and for many purposes.

    To ensure that the privacy rights of individuals are respected, this information must be properly protected in accordance with current law, particularly the Privacy Act and the E-Government Act of 2002. These laws prescribe specific activities that agencies must perform to protect privacy, and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has developed guidance on how and in what circumstances agencies are to carry out these activities.

  • USA: DHS must assess privacy risk before using data mining tool, GAO says

    The tool would be used to cull data for the fight on terrorism

    A tool being developed by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to help it sift through large volumes of data in the search for terrorist threats poses several privacy concerns, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) warned in a report released yesterday. The agency also called on the DHS to conduct a privacy impact assessment of the tool immediately to help ameliorate those risks.

    The tool, called ADVISE, for Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight and Semantic Enhancement, is designed to cull very large databases and search for patterns, such as relationships between individuals and organizations, to ferret out suspicious people or activity. ADVISE is currently under development by the DHS.

  • USA: GAO official cites privacy risk in data-mining efforts

    Federal agencies are falling short in protecting privacy when performing data mining, according to congressional testimony from a senior Government Accountability Office official.

    Both data mining—in which large amounts of data from different sources are aggregated, searched and analyzed—and radio-frequency identification technologies are raising privacy concerns, Linda Koontz, director of information management issues for GAO, said in testimony before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law yesterday.

  • USA: Health Care Needs a DNS for Patients

    A patient with an allergy to aspirin has a heart attack while driving, loses consciousness and crashes into a telephone pole. In the emergency department, the first medication likely to be given to him is therapy for the heart attack -- aspirin. Adding an allergic reaction to the existing heart attack and trauma results in shock, and the patient dies.

    If there were a national health care information network, medical errors resulting from lack of data sharing would be drastically reduced. Unfortunately, there are many barriers to the secure exchange of electronic medical records, the most basic of which is the lack of a consistent way to identify each patient.

  • USA: Health Experts: E-health Records Privacy Rules Needed

    Patients currently don't have any way to keep their personal information from being shared with third parties.

    The U.S. needs new medical privacy rules as the country moves toward greater use of IT to store health records, a group of health-care experts said Wednesday.

    "Thousands" of databases that contain U.S. residents' health records exist, and patients don't have any way to keep their personal information from being shared with third parties, said Dr. Deborah Peel, a psychiatrist and founder of the Patient Privacy Rights Foundation. Private companies have been data-mining prescription records for years, she added.

  • USA: Identity Self-Defense: The Power of PIV

    Identity protection is one of the most pressing topics within our society. Over the course of the last few years, we have seen numerous stories reported where information systems have been compromised and data has been lost potentially compromising the identity of millions. While we could debate the level of security required to properly protect any information system, I believe there is a more fundamental approach to addressing this critical issue. Identity self-defense.

    In the months following the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington D.C., it was determined the issue of identity verification needed to be addressed. Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12 (HSPD12) established the requirement to verify the identity of all federal employees and issue them a secure identity credential. This has resulted in the issuance of millions of Personal Identity Verification (PIV) credentials.

  • USA: IG: IRS not doing enough to safeguard taxpayers' privacy

    The Internal Revenue Service has not done enough to protect the privacy of more than 130 million taxpayers, according to a Treasury Department Inspector General's report released Oct. 3.

    The agency has conducted privacy impact assessments (PIAs) on less than half of its computer system and does not adequately monitor its own application of privacy laws, according to the report from the Treasury IG For Tax Administration.

  • USA: Keeping data sources confidential

    OMB guide will help agencies that collect statistical information

    When it comes to statistical data, the Energy Department is between a rock and a hard place. On one hand, the department must offer definitive data on energy use trends nationwide. How much oil is being extracted? How much is in reserve? How much is being processed in refineries? What price is it being sold for?

  • USA: Sidebar: The Mosaic Effect

    Data elements that in isolation look relatively innocuous can amount to a privacy breach when combined, warns Elizabeth Gorgue, privacy officer at the e-Government Office at the County of Santa Clara, Calif.

    In the intelligence community, that's known as the "mosaic effect" -- when combinations of data tidbits produce a picture that wasn't apparent from the individual pieces.

  • USA: Spinne im Netz

    Was die Bush-Regierung in dieser Woche als Teil ihres Internet-Sicherheitskonzeptes vorlegte, klingt zunächst gut: Sie fordert die Schaffung eines "Monitoring-Centers", in dem die Daten aller Serviceprovider zusammenlaufen. Die aber befürchten Ungemach: Die Grenze zur totalen Überwachung scheint fließend.

  • USA: State bolsters passport security

    The State Department has declared that electronic passports will be safe from identity thieves.

    The department has decided to adopt metallic shields and is seriously considering “basic access control” as a further means of preventing the skimming of personal data stored on a passport’s chip.

    One form of basic access control under consideration is to imprint data on a passport’s machine-readable zone. The data would exchange an algorithm with a reader at the border station, which in turn would unlock the chip embedded in the passport.

  • USA: Twin win: Privacy and e-health

    The U.S. health care community is breaking new ground in e-health every day. Yet this transformative system will reach a critical mass of acceptance by health care consumers, providers and facility-operators only when the public feels assured that privacy is priority No. 1.

    The national Privacy Rule for health information is a sorry beast in many ways. Promises to patients are conveyed in complex notices, largely unintelligible even to designated privacy officers. The Health and Human Services Department’s reliance on voluntary compliance and its refusal to impose fines on violators leaves consumers in the dark and believing the rules are not enforced at all.

  • USA: VA Scandal: Feds Finally Seeking to Protect Americans' Personal Information

    The recent security breach at the Department of Veterans Affairs, in which personal data on millions of veterans were compromised, has created a firestorm of criticism from military families across the nation, especially since no one was notified that they were a victim of information theft.

    In addition to the VA data theft, a computer hacker was successful in stealing a file containing the names and Social Security numbers of more than 1,500 people working for the Energy Department's nuclear weapons agency.

  • Vorratsdatenspeicherung in der Europäischen Union

    Die Initiative Electronic Frontier Finland (EFFI) hat ein Papier des Rates der Europäischen Union veröffentlicht, das einen Überblick über die Haltung der einzelnen Nationen zur Vorratsspeicherung von Daten gibt. Grundlage für das Papier ist eine Umfrage unter allen Mitgliedsstaaten über deren derzeitige Praxis und Haltung zu einer Änderung der bisherigen europäischen Regelung. Diese begrüßen die Mitgliedsstaaten mehrheitlich. Deutschland macht dabei die Zustimmung zu einer europäischen Regelung davon abhängig, dass diese für die grenzüberschreitende Strafverfolgung unerlässlich und mit der deutschen Verfassung vereinbar sein müsse.

  • Wahl des obersten EU-Datenschützers

    Österreicherin Waltraut Kotschy in der engeren Wahl | Renommierte Datenschützer Hustinx und Brühann ausgeschieden

  • Widerstand im US-Senat gegen ''Total Information Awareness''

    Senatoren sehen Orwellsches Amerkia heraufziehen

    Das Pentagon-Projekt "Total Information Awareness" (TIA) stößt auf Widerstand im US-Senat. Der demokratische Senator Russ Feingold hat einen Gesetzesantrag eingebracht, der die Data-Mining-Aktivitäten des Verteidigungsministeriums und anderer Institutionen der US-Regierung begrenzen soll. Ein zweiter Senator, Ron Wyden, will dagegen die Finanzierung des Projekts per Gesetz stoppen. Beide Initiativen werden von Bürgerrechtsgruppen wie der Electronic Frontier Foundation unterstützt.

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