h/t: Oom!
http://www.washingtonpost.com…
By Brian Krebs
Washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 6, 2009; Page D02
Businesses, governments and educational institutions reported nearly 50 percent more data breaches last year than in 2007, exposing the personal records of at least 35.7 million Americans, according to a nonprofit group that works to prevent identity fraud.

http://www.theregister.co.uk…
Former top prosecutor slams planned ‘data hellhouse’
John Leyden
31st December 2008 11:36 GMT
A private sector firm may be given the job of maintaining a proposed super-database tracking the telephone and internet records of Brits.
The option of turning over the task of running the planned communication database to a private firm, due to feature in a Home Office [...]

Walmart Photo Keychain Comes Preloaded With Malware…“With the Christmas holidays just past and opening up your electronic presents may get you all excited, but not for a selected lot of people who got the Mercury 1.5″ Digital Photo Frame from Walmart (or other stores)…

Giant US air travel data suck fails own privacy tests…But gets cleared [...]

http://www.cio.com [h/t: SOTT]
Grant Gross
IDG News Service
Wed, 03 Dec 2008 01:21 UTC
The U.S. Congress should limit government data-mining efforts because some techniques don’t work and many raise serious privacy concerns, two experts said Monday.
No credible study has found predictive data-mining, which involves combing data for trends to help identify possible terrorists or criminals, to work, [...]

http://it.slashdot.org…
Steve writes:
“SecurityFix reports that a group of researchers from Germany published a study in which they analyzed several hundred so-called ‘drop zones,’ i.e. anonymous collection points of illicitly collected data stolen with the help of keyloggers. ‘Their findings, which drew from stolen data harvested from these drop zones between April and October 2008, were staggering: [...]

http://crooksandliars.com…
Three years after the New York Times first revealed the Bush administration’s program of illegal domestic surveillance by the NSA, whistleblower Thomas Tamm has acknowledged his role in making public the President’s lawbreaking. In its expose Sunday, Newsweek details how the former Justice Department official came to discover the White House’s violations of the FISA [...]

http://www.washingtonpost.com…
via: SOTT
Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post
Fri, 12 Dec 2008 13:46 UTC
Immigration and civil liberties groups condemned a new U.S. government policy to collect DNA samples from all noncitizens detained by authorities and all people arrested for federal crimes.

http://www.theregister.co.uk…
RFID technology that allows the remote identification of travellers in moving vehicles is being rolled out at US land border crossings this month. Crossing points with Canada at Blaine, and with Mexico at Nogales, came online last week, with Buffalo, Detroit and San Ysidro to follow, and a total of 39 planned.

http://www.americablog.com…
John Aravosis (DC)
Wow. This company has records on 15% of the entire US population - and those records now appear to be in the hands of criminals.
Corporate custodians of confidential medical data should be closely monitoring events connected to a nightmarish computer security breach in the St. Louis region.
Express Scripts is one of the [...]

http://www.upi.com…
GAINSVILLE, Fla., Nov. 13 (UPI) — The University of Florida College of Dentistry says a computer hacker accessed the records of more than 344,000 patients.
The data included dental information, names, addresses, Social Security numbers and birth dates of patients dating back to 1990, The Gainsville (Fla.) Sun reported Thursday.
The breach was discovered last month during [...]