Free Software Linux

The Department of Homeland Security has launched a Cybersecurity Awareness Campaign to raise public engagement on the issue. They have announced a competition seeking ideas from industry and individuals on how to best tackle the problem of engaging the general public in understanding the importance of securing digital devices from threats. A public education campaign for a Web 2.0 world seems to the goal. Deadline for submitting ideas is April 30, 2010, submit proposals to cyberchallenge@dhs.gov. If you have questions they should go to challengequestions@dhs.gov

The Electronic Privacy information Center has obtained documents, from the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) under a Freedom of Information Act request, disclosing that passengers were not informed prior to being subjected to whole body scanning. The TSA has claimed that air travelers when given a choice prefer the experience of the digital strip search of whole body scanning machines to medal detectors and the pat down option. The TSA claimed that where the machines were in use passengers were fully informed about the technology before undergoing screening.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) fined LifeLock, a prominent ID theft protection company, $12 million for deceiving customers regarding the effectiveness of its service. The FTC fined the company $11 million and an additional $1 million for state cost of investigating the company. The $11 million will go to customers who file reimbursement claims against the settlement. Last year the Consumer Federation of American published a report on identity theft prevention services, which raised questions about their effectiveness.

Employees at the Jet Propulsion Lab run by NASA are seeking help from the Supreme Court in a case about long-time employees being subjected to invasive background checks to continue to be employed at the agency. The case began in California, but has been approved for a hearing before the U.S. Supreme Court. The case can have consequences for private sector employees due to the push for mandatory use of E-verify an employment verification system to be run by the Department of Homeland Security.

The largest mobile operator in Japan, NTT docomo, which covers approximately 50% of Japanese population, has started offering OpenID authentication on March 9.

Every docomo user has an identifier called i-modeID. Using this, users have been able to single sign on to the mobile sites using docomo handsets, making one-click payment, and so on. These kind of features were one of the reason for the great success of the mobile commerce in Japan. However, this merit has not been extended to the non-docomo handset world, notably PC. For PC, docomo has been offering a separate identifier called “docomo ID” but since it remained independent of “i-modeID”, it did not enjoy the same kind of popularity.

This situation was changed today by linking the two identifiers by OpenID.

Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan, METI, opened a site called “IdeaBox”.

IdeaBox is a web site that solicits the idea for IT Policy widely. At the site, people can propose policy and discuss about them, and vote on them. METI positions it as a network based committee which is open to public. A similar site was operated last year from October to November and attracted over 1700 policy idea.

This version of IdeaBox, which opend on Feb.23  accepts OpenID so that one can login with the account at mixi, Yahoo! Japan, Livedoor and Google. It has various other social components so that one can also tweet about it directly from the site, bookmark it on delicous and hatena bookmark, etc. This version runs until March 15.

Robert A. Harding, a retired major general of the U.S. Army was named by the President to be the next head of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Harding has 33 years of experience with the Army and if confirmed will take over one of the more prominent sub-agencies of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The Transportation Security Administration was created post-September 11, 2001, and assigned to the Federal Transportation Administration, but later moved to DHS when it was formed.

Two vacancies on the Federal Trade Commission were filled when the Senate confirmed President Obama's appoints to the agency. Julie Brill, former Vermont Assistant Attorney General, to fill a vacancy for FTC Commissioner. Brill served for over 20 years as Vermont's Assistant Attorney General for Consumer Protection and Antitrust, and currently serves as Senior Deputy Attorney General and Chief of Consumer Protection and Antitrust for the North Carolina Department of Justice. Brill has had experience with several important consumer protection issues, including tobacco, food and drug, antitrust, and privacy and identity theft.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has filed a "friend of the court" brief in the United States Supreme Court, urging the Justices to protect the privacy of those who sign petitions. In Doe v. Reed, the Court has been asked to determine whether the state of Washington may force disclosure of the names of citizens who have signed petitions for ballot initiatives.

If you are in Hannover, Germany, don’t hesitate to come to Hall 2 and the Open Source Project Lounge where KOffice has a table in the Linux Media AG stand.  And at the same time, you can take a look at the KOffice based office viewers for the Nokia N900 Linux phone.

Note: the N900 unit will leave Hannover on thursday, because then our partner from Nokia will go home.

The KOffice stand at CeBIT 2010

Religious reasons were given for why a woman refused to undergo whole body scanning at a Manchester airport. The woman was "selected at random" to undergo the screening prior to boarding a flight to Pakistan. Her female traveling companion also female declined undergo the screening citing 'medical reasons' and also did not board the flight.

Muslim woman refuses body scan at airport, Will Pavia, London Times Online, March 3, 2010

Washington, D.C. and San Francisco — March 3, 2010 — Industry leaders Google, PayPal, Equifax, VeriSign, Verizon, CA, and Booz Allen Hamilton today announced at the RSA Conference 2010 the formation of the Open Identity Exchange (OIX) www.openidentityexchange.org, a non-profit organization dedicated to building trust in the exchange of online identity credentials across public and private sectors. With initial grants from the OpenID Foundation (OIDF) and Information Card Foundation (ICF), OIX has been approved as a trust framework provider by the United States Government to certify online identity management providers to U.S. federal standards for identity assurance.

The Obama Administration released an outline of the federal government's policy regarding its cyber-security strategy. The strategy was geared around protecting federal and privacy computer networks from cyber attacks. The details related to the outline would allow an evaluation of what the federal government would consider important, and what actions are approved for protecting the covered networks. The Electronic Privacy Information Center is pursuing the release of National Security Presidential Directive 54, in an effort to assure the public better understands the goals and objectives of U.S. cyber-security strategies.

The New York Police Department between 2004 and 2009 have stopped over 1 million persons on the street for questioning without probably cause. There is a proposal to formalize the practice by logging persons stopped into a database. Over 90% of the people stopped are innocent, but the practice continues. The majority of those involved are poor Latino or African American males. The practice has increased while crime in the city has declined.

Watching Certain People, Bob Herbert, Opinion New York Times

Groups call for the end of whole body scanning at U.S. Airports. They said that the technology has not been independently reviewed for effectiveness and health impact. Further, they charge that privacy protections must be assured in a way that prevents changes in policy, without public notice. At the beginning of last year the TSA announced plans to replace medal detectors with whole body scanning technology.

Suspend airport body scanner program, privacy groups say, Jaikumar Vijayan, Computerworld, February 26, 2010