Philip Campbell Smith, the man at the centre of the News of the World (NOTW) computer hacking allegations, has been convicted of conspiring to illegally access private information for profit. Legal restrictions around Smith’s involvement were lifted yesterday revealing he allegedly hacked the computer of Ian Hurst, a former British Army intelligence officer, in 2006…
Category: Breaches
NZ: Lawyers look at privacy after Snapper email marketing
Mathew Dearnaley reports: Auckland Transport has called in lawyers to review its privacy policy after a technology company used email addresses of more than 50,000 bus passengers to send them marketing offers. Chief executive David Warburton told his board yesterday the policy had been put under an independent legal microscope as part of an investigation…
Ie: Is data misuse finally becoming a criminal matter?
TJ McIntyre writes: There’s a long and ignominious history in Ireland of personal data abuse by employees in the public sector and insurance industry. Sometimes it’s a garda using phone records to spy on her ex, sometimes it’s nosiness on the part of Revenue staff, and in still other cases it’ssystematic abuse of social welfare records by…
Disruptions: So Many Apologies, So Much Data Mining
Nick Bilton writes: Last week, Arun Thampi, a programmer in Singapore, discovered that the mobile social network Path was surreptitiously copying address book information from users’ iPhones without notifying them. David Morin, Path’s voluble chief executive, quickly commented on Mr. Thampi’s blog that Path’s actions were an “industry best practice.” He then became uncharacteristically quiet as the…