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Social Security Numbers Can Be Guessed 268

Posted by timothy
from the oh-there's-a-scheme-all-right dept.
BotScout writes "The nation's Social Security numbering scheme has left millions of citizens vulnerable to privacy breaches, according to researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, who for the first time have used statistical techniques to predict Social Security numbers solely from an individual's date and location of birth. The researchers used the information they gleaned to predict, in one try, the first five digits of a person's Social Security number 44 percent of the time for 160,000 people born between 1989 and 2003. A Social Security Administration spokesman said the government has long cautioned the private sector against using a social security number as a personal identifier, even as it insists 'there is no fool-proof method for predicting a person's Social Security Number.'" Update: 07/07 00:01 GMT by T : Reader angrytuna links to Wired's coverage of the SSN deduction system, and links to the researchers' FAQ at Carnegie Mellon, which says that the research paper will be presented at BlackHat Las Vegas later this month.
Privacy

Social Security Numbers Can Be Guessed->

Submitted by
BotScout
BotScout writes "The nation's Social Security numbering scheme has left millions of citizens vulnerable to privacy breaches, according to researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, who for the first time have used statistical techniques to predict Social Security numbers solely from an individual's date and location of birth. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University used the information they gleaned to predict, in one try, the first five digits of a person's Social Security number 44 percent of the time for 160,000 people born between 1989 and 2003. A Social Security Administration spokesman said the government has long cautioned the private sector against using a social security number as a personal identifier, even as it insists "there is no fool proof method for predicting a person's Social Security Number.""
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Government

Brazilian President Lula da Silva stumps for FOSS->

Submitted by
christian.einfeldt
christian.einfeldt writes "Brazilian President Lula da Silva recently attended the FISL 10 Free Open Source Software conference in Porto Alegre, Brazil, where he reaffirmed Brazil's support for unencumbered document formats and for Free Open Source Software. President da Silva toured the conference hall, packed with media, where he donned at various times a red Fedora hat, a Java ring, and an ODF baseball cap. In his 15 minute address to the general conference, President da Silva stressed that Free Open Source Software helps Brazil maintain control over its IT future, and supports Brazil's goal of widening digital inclusion among disadvantaged Brazilians. Brazil is the world's fifth most populous nation, and the world's fifth larges nation by land mass."
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Government

Canada's Libraries favor ODF, Net Neutrality->

Submitted by
christian.einfeldt
christian.einfeldt writes "A consortium of Canada's public and university libraries, called the Canadian Library Association/Association canadienne des bibliothèques )(CLA/ACB), has passed a formal resolution in favor of ODF over OOXML, and a second resolution in favor of Internet Neutrality, in a vote of the group's 63rd Annual meeting on May 24, 2008, in Vancouver. The Net Neutrality resolution urges the Canadian government to:

're-examine the Telecommunications Act in order to clearly legislate in favour of a neutral Internet, requiring ISPs to comply with common carriage provisions and conduct business in a manner that is open, transparent, and accountable'
The open format resoltuion states that ODF is more well-suited to allowing libraries to 'fulfill their role of preserving and providing access to information', in contrast to OOXML, which the CLA/ACB find is 'not sufficiently open, interoperable, or vendor-neutral' to assist libraries in their role of disseminating information."
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Microsoft

The Inside Story on Norway's Yes to OOXML-> 1

Submitted by
Steve Pepper
Steve Pepper writes "The former Chairman of the Norwegian ISO committee, who resigned two weeks ago in protest against his country's vote of Yes to OOXML, tells the inside story of how the decision was reached: how a single bureaucrat from Standards Norway sidelined the overwhelming majority of Norwegian technical experts and changed Norway's vote from No to Yes. The story is so surreal it's hard to believe.

P.S. A topic for "Open standards" would be more appropriate."
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Microsoft

OOXML protesters outside ISO meeting

Submitted by
howcome
howcome writes "Steve Pepper, the chairman of the committee handling OOXML in Norway called on users all around the world to "Raise a storm of protest!" against OOXML. Steve addressed a crowd of 150 protesters in the streets of Oslo, just outside an ISO meeting. From his speech: "We are not here because we want to discredit the ISO. We are here because we want to defend ISO's integrity ... What we are against is the way in which what has always been an open and democratic organization, where each country has one vote, has been subverted by a large multinational corporation.""
Government

Microsoft's View of Standards as Tools of War->

Submitted by
christian.einfeldt
christian.einfeldt writes "Tech media maven Roy Schestowitz and Pamela Jones of Groklaw have unearthed 1997 documents from the Iowa anti-trust case of 'Comes v. Microsoft,' in which Microsoft Technical Evangelist James Plamondon talks about the importance of stacking seemingly 'neutral' panels to assure that Microsoft platforms are adopted as de facto standards. In a 'Highly Confidential' document entitled 'Evangelism is War', Plamondon justifies his step-by-step strategy for stacking 'neutral' panels as a necessary act of 'war.' He suggests ways to enhance the apparent popularity of Microsoft platforms as standards for the purpose of convincing 'enemies' that adoption of the Microsoft platform as a standard is inevitable, and 'surrender' is the only option. Groklaw's Pamela Jones draws a parallel to the current-day work of Technical Evangelist Rick Jelliffe, who says that he has been hired by Microsoft to act as a 'Devil's Advocate' for the National Board of Australia in Microsoft's upcoming bid to have Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) accepted as a second international electronic document format ISO standard. Recent efforts by Microsoft to change the composition of the ISO national panels have resulted in some controversy and have spawned a new EU probe into potential anti-trust claims based on the way that Microsoft influenced the composition of some of the national boards to vote in the upcoming ISO ballot."
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Government

Microsoft standing firm on OOXML ISO vote->

Submitted by
christian.einfeldt
christian.einfeldt writes "Microsoft has responded via the industry trade goup ECMA to some of the thousands of criticisms of its submission of Office Open XML (OOXML) as an ISO standard. Open standards advocate Russell Ossendryver takes a look at those responses to see if Microsoft has made significant changes in either the substance of OOXML or the manner in which the OOXML specification will be maintained going forward. Ossendryver concludes that Microsoft's position has not siginficantly changed, but only hardened in place in advance of the Ballot Resolution Meeting which is to occur from February 25 through 29 in Geneva, Switzerland. While no one can say for certain whether Microsoft will succeed in having its OOXML specification win the nod from the international community, Ossendryer thinks that Microsoft's firm stance will actually backfire."
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Questions are never indiscreet, answers sometimes are. -- Oscar Wilde