UBS AG, the largest Swiss bank by assets, is in talks with the U.S. government to settle a lawsuit seeking the names of 52,000 American account holders suspected of using Swiss secrecy laws to evade taxes. The bank agreed with the U.S. and Swiss governments to seek a settlement and postpone an evidentiary hearing [on…
Category: Govt
Chips in official IDs raise privacy fears
Todd Lewan of the Associated Press has an article on the vulnerability of identity documents that have embedded RFID chips. […] Neville Pattinson, vice president for government affairs at Gemalto, Inc., a major supplier of microchipped cards, is no RFID basher. He’s a board member of the Smart Card Alliance, an RFID industry group, and…
Ohio drivers sue over sale of their data
The Ohio Department of Public Safety and Bureau of Motor Vehicles has been hit with a potentially costly class action lawsuit alleging that two senior employees contravened federal privacy laws when they authorized the sale of information in the state’s databanks. “At this point we don’t know what motivated them to sell the data,” says…
Bloggers react to the PSP report
I’ve been reading a number of mainstream news sources and columnists on the report that was released yesterday about the President’s Surveillance Program. It’s interesting to see what others feel the headline should be or the take-home message should be. Glenn Greenwald highlights one aspect of the report that I didn’t mention in my commentary…