Vijay Pandurangan writes: Recently, thanks to a Freedom of Information request, Chris Whong received and made public a complete dump of historical trip and fare logs from NYC taxis. It’s pretty incredible: there are over 20GB of uncompressed data comprising more than 173 million individual trips. Each trip record includes the pickup and dropoff location and time, anonymized hack licence…
Category: Breaches
Michigan woman files lawsuit against Iowa magazine publisher
Tom Gilchrist reports: A Huron County woman, represented by four attorneys, has filed a federal class-action lawsuit alleging an Iowa magazine publisher illegally shared personal information about her and other Michigan magazine subscribers, and demanding $5 million on the group’s behalf. Deborah Kinder alleges Des Moines-based Meredith Corp. — publisher of Better Homes and Gardens,…
Northern Ireland abuse inquiry breach exposes names of witnesses
As I’ve often said, sometimes just disclosing someone’s name in a context can be a serious problem for the individual. Here’s another case in point: The body investigating historical claims of abuse at Derry care homes for children has been forced to issue an apology – after an error led to a number of names of witnesses…
USPS: Snail mail snooping safeguards not followed – Report
Josh Gerstein reports: Cutting-edge data-gathering techniques may have grabbed the spotlight lately, but it turns out the government has been playing fast and loose with a more old-school surveillance method: snail-mail snooping. The U.S. Postal Service failed to observe key safeguards on a mail surveillance program with a history of civil liberties abuses, according to…