William A. Celey became the latest State Department employee to plead guilty to illegally accessing passport files. Celey had been charged with unauthorized computer access and will be sentenced in October. As reported on Examiner.com: In pleading guilty, Celey admitted that between June 22, 2004, and July 15, 2004, he logged onto the PIERS database…
NSW seeks laws to stop wave of ID frauds
Tough new laws aimed at clamping down on identity fraud are being drafted by the NSW government. Almost half a million Australians lost a combined $997 million to identity fraud in the last year, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). The ABS attributed the crime wave to the rapid expansion of internet technology,…
TALX Corp. settles FTC charges
TALX Corporation, a subsidiary of Equifax Inc., has agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it violated federal law by failing to provide certain disclosures to users of their consumer reports and to entities that provide information for consumer reports. The proposed settlement requires TALX to pay a $350,000 civil penalty and bars future…
Terrorist Surveillance Program, unplugged
A long-awaited report on the Terrorist Surveillance Program was released today. An unclassified version of the report prepared by the Office of Inspectors General for the Departments of Defense, Justice, the CIA, NSA, and DNI is entitled Unclassified Report on the President’s Surveillance Program (pdf). The report’s discussion of the President’s Surveillance Program (PSP) makes…