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Submission + - IRS Says It Exposed Some Confidential Taxpayer Data On Website (marketwatch.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Internal Revenue Service inadvertently posted what is normally confidential information involving about 120,000 individuals before discovering the error and removing the data from its website, officials said Friday. The data are from Form 990-T (PDF), which is often required for people with individual retirement accounts who earn certain types of business income within those retirement plans. That typically includes people whose IRAs are invested in master limited partnerships, real estate or other assets that generate income, not those whose IRAs are solely invested in securities.

The disclosures included names, contact information and financial information about income within those IRAs. It didn’t include Social Security numbers, full individual income information or other data that could affect a taxpayer’s credit, the Treasury Department determined, according to a letter that the administration is sending to key members of Congress on Friday. The IRS and Treasury Department blamed a human coding error that happened last year when Form 990-T began to be electronically filed. The nonpublic data was mistakenly included with the public data and all of it was available for searching and downloading on the agency’s website. The Wall Street Journal, which routinely analyzes nonprofit tax filings, downloaded at least some of the data before its removal.

Submission + - UK Challenges $69 Billion Microsoft/Activision Deal, Citing Potential Harm (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The United Kingdom's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is challenging Microsoft and Activision Blizzard to justify their planned merger, saying the deal "could substantially lessen competition" in the gaming industry. A CMA announcement today cited concerns about "competition in gaming consoles, multi-game subscription services, and cloud gaming services (game streaming)." Microsoft announced its plan to buy Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion in January.

"Microsoft is one of three large companies, together with Sony and Nintendo, that have led the market for gaming consoles for the past 20 years with limited entries from new rivals," the CMA said. "Activision Blizzard has some of the world's best-selling and most recognizable gaming franchises, such as Call of Duty and World of Warcraft. The CMA is concerned that if Microsoft buys Activision Blizzard it could harm rivals, including recent and future entrants into gaming, by refusing them access to Activision Blizzard games or providing access on much worse terms."

The CMA said these "concerns warrant an in-depth Phase 2 investigation," so Microsoft and Activision Blizzard have been ordered "to submit proposals to address the CMA's concerns" within five working days. "If suitable proposals are not submitted, the deal will be referred for a Phase 2 investigation," which would "allow an independent panel of experts to probe in more depth the risks identified at Phase 1," the CMA said. Besides Microsoft's Xbox console, the CMA noted Microsoft's Azure cloud computing platform and the Windows operating system. "The CMA is concerned that Microsoft could leverage Activision Blizzard's games together with Microsoft's strength across console, cloud, and PC operating systems to damage competition in the nascent market for cloud gaming services," the announcement said.

Submission + - White House Bans Paywalls On Taxpayer-Funded Research (extremetech.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The White House has updated federal rules to close a loophole that enabled journals to keep taxpayer-funded research behind a paywall. This policy guidance will end the current “optional embargo” that allows scientific publishing houses to paywall taxpayer-funded research behind a subscription to the whole journal. These costs add up quickly. For a college or university, even the bare minimum of journal subscriptions can add up to thousands of dollars a year, which is a hard sell on a limited budget. And that’s just the required reading.

The new rule also expands the definition of a “scholarly publication” to include “not only peer-reviewed articles but also book chapters and conference proceedings.” And unlike the previous policy, which covered some 20 federal agencies, this new rule applies to all of them. In short: If we the people paid for the research, you the company don’t get to refuse us access to it.

While this announcement was something of a surprise, it builds on trends dating back a decade. The growth of preprint servers where authors could publish studies submitted for public review has made research more widely available. There are, or rather were, restrictions on how long journals could hide federally-funded research behind a paywall. This new rule supersedes them all. Under the new policy, research performed with federal dollars must be made public on the same day it appears in a scientific journal. While research may still be published in paywalled journals, the same work must also be made available for free. Federal agencies should have plans in place to support the initiative within a year.
Security

Submission + - Sysadmin gets 30 months for planting logic bomb (computerworld.com) 1

Submitted by
cweditor
cweditor writes: "A former Medco Health systems administrator was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison and ordered to pay $81,200 in restitution for planting a logic bomb on a network that held customer health care information, Computerworld reports. The code was designed to delete almost all information on about 70 company servers. This may be longest federal prison sentence for trying to damage a corporate computer system, although Yung-Hsun Lin faced a maximum of 10 years."

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