Issues

Government must do more to protect personal data, privacy experts say By Liz F. Kay and Brent Jones, The Baltimore Sun

July 21, 2010 - 8:28am

A state employee posted the Social Security numbers of nearly 3,000 Maryland residents online for weeks, a security breach that experts say raises questions about the way the government guards personal data and whether it needs it in the first place.

Full article-http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/bs-md-employee-posts-ssn-20100720,0,3560895.storywww.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/bs-md-employee-posts-ssn-20100720,0,3560895.story

Justice Dept promises not to plunder Census data

March 4, 2010 - 9:54pm

The Assistant Attorney General has sent a letter to concerned members of Congress   insisting that personal data collected on Americans by the U.S. Census Bureau will not be disclosed to "law enforcement or national security officials."  This is a commendable position.  It would be nice if the NSA Director released a similar letter.

This concern would not be so pronounced if the Census stuck to their Constitutional mandate in the first place and only inquired as to the number of persons in the household. 

U.S. enables Chinese hacking of Google

January 26, 2010 - 6:09am

By Bruce Schneier, Special to CNN

Google made headlines when it went public with the fact that Chinese hackers had penetrated some of its services, such as Gmail, in a politically motivated attempt at intelligence gathering. The news here isn't that Chinese hackers engage in these activities or that their attempts are technically sophisticated -- we knew that already -- it's that the U.S. government inadvertently aided the hackers.

In order to comply with government search warrants on user data, Google created a backdoor access system into Gmail accounts. This feature is what the Chinese hackers exploited to gain access.