Commentary by Allan B. Colombo September 11, 2012 – A new facial recognition effort by the FBI promises to track known criminals using iris scans, voice prints, and live video images from a variety of sources. This report provides additional information on this most interesting development that has some privacy advocates up in arms....
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Commentary by Allan B. Colombo August 7, 2012 – Those who know me well know that I do not advocate placing critical data onto the Internet simply because it will be compromised over and over again. This is one of the reasons why government and corporations alike use to use leased lines for connectivity....
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July 26, 2012 – Apple blackballed the genius that figured out a way to hack their smartphone. This is not something that most of us would have to worry over simply because the hacker must be very close to the phone to do it. However, it is something you need to consider if you...
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July 24, 2012 – I always knew there was a reason why I didn’t want a tattoo on my body. For years I was tempted but I continued to just say no. Now I know exactly why that is… because the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) wants to create a database of people with...
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July 18, 2012 – The United Kingdom (UK) has had it’s share of illegal banking activities. Last week, “another UK banking executive was made to squirm in front of the TV cameras as he was grilled by angry parliamentarians over alleged corruption in his organisation,” says Paul Marks, writer with New Scientist. As it...
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July 18, 2012 – Truly we are witnessing the best of times from a technological standpoint, and yet we see the worst of man filtering through the clutter of high-tech gadgets we use on an everyday basis. The recent discovery of malware that will not only capture the geographic location of the android user,...
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July 17, 2012 – As I read this story, I was struck by the fact that 90 to 95 percent of all networks in country are private. That leads me to question why the general public is demanding that the US Government do something about cyber security when the brunt of network ownership lies...
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Recently Nadim Kobeissi of Montreal, the developer of a new encrypted communication service called Crypto (Crypto.com), was detained by U.S. Customs agents at the U.S. border and interrogated about the algorithms employed in his online creation.
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Company releases full version of FCC’s report on company’s controversial gathering of personal data with Street View cars. 29 April 2012 – The Federal Communication Commission (FCC) launched an investigation (Click to read more) of Google’s Street View program, which included the capture of information from unsecured WiFi connections all across the United States....
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Sunday, 18 March 2012 – One small fact that most of us fail to realize is that every time we take a picture with our cell phone, the GPS coordinate is nested within the data. For military this represents a definite security threat, as the following article attests. But for the average person, it...
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March 17, 2012 – Google Charged With One Again Pilfering User’s Private Information From video surveillance cameras along streets to the precise location of any phone number you enter (in the past), Google is once again accused to pilfering user’s private information. Consumer Watchdog organization, a non-partisan public interest organization with offices in Santa...
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4 March 2012 – There are self proclaimed activists who refuse to jump onto the Facebook bandwagon. The reason for this is a general lack of privacy. If you think about it, but that’s why these individuals are activists. So what’s the problem here? What else would you expect? In a move that’s unlikely...
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The list of data breaches off the Internet is enormous to say the least. On our Facebook Group we regularly feature links with excerpts that further demonstrate the difficulty related to securing critical data-related infrastructure. Congress is working on the problem...
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12/31/11 – The use of biometric identifiers for security sake, be it physical or logical security, has some privacy advocates up in arms. But there is a program afoot, sponsored by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), that makes this concern appear as child’s play by comparison. Good access control hinges on one or...
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While e-mail may be the new snail mail to the iPhone generation, the fact is that it is the most-used conduit for communication in our world today. E-mails routinely contain business deal discussions, social security numbers, bank account information, and personal information intended only for the recipient.
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