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May 17, 2009

Loss of gadgets: £21,000, Loss of private data: PRICELESS

Apparently in the last three years almost £21,000 worth of gadgets have been lost by Welsh Assembly civil servants and even the odd minister, Huw Thomas reports.

Breakdown of losses
2005: no losses were reported
2006: 16 laptops lost/stolen [All civil servants]
2007: 4 laptops lost/stolen [All civil servants]
2008: 8 laptops lost/stolen [All civil servants]; 7 blackberries lost/stolen [6 civil servants and 1 Minister/Deputy Minister]; 2 mobile phones lost/stolen [All civil servants]

So far in 2009 they have already lost: 'three laptops (civil servants), four mobiles (civil servants) and three Blackberries (from two civil servants and one special adviser)'.

Although £7,000 per year may seem insignificant in the grand scheme of things, you have to wonder what data was on these devices. Was it anything private? Secret? Was it encrypted? Also, it's unclear whether most of the gadgets were lost or stolen - are these civil servants incompetent, or are they being targeted by criminals or opportunists?

I think we need to know more.

Filed under  //   datahole   rants  

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October 11, 2008

Help me improve the @datahole feed!

Firstly, I need to find some good sources. I'm starting with the Open Rights Group (data protection tag) and The Register (Security / ID tag). I'd look at the EFF, but they seem to be down at the moment. I'm also using a Twitter Search feed for #datahole. I'm open to any and all suggestions for good news sources. I'm hoping the Twitter and Identica community will contribute other valuable links and commentary too.

Some of these feeds should probably be filtered using keywords like lost, personal and data. Suggest any more?

Secondly, I need a plumber. Well, not exactly! I've used Yahoo! Pipes for some pretty basic stuff before, but for some reason, I can't seem to get the Reg stories to mix in with the other feeds. I think it's because their pubDate is formatted differently, but I don't know how to fix that. I've published the pipe. Please, have a look and feel free to rewire the feed.

It'd be nice to make some other tweaks too. I'd like to cite the source at the start of the tweet (eg: [EL REG]), and strip out all the other gubbins, so each post becomes: [SOURCE] Headline - Link.

Click for the Datahole 0.5 pipe

Filed under  //   datahole   twitter  

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October 10, 2008

Progress report for #datahole

  1. Template given a paintjob.
  2. New avatar/logo (still a work in progress).
  3. Any tweets tagged with #datahole should now be re-tweeted, so please share any stories you find.
    Oh, and...
  4. Created an account on Identi.ca too.
  5. Tweaked Twitterfeed settings - posts should be a bit cleaner now.

Follow @datahole (and @datahole)

Filed under  //   datahole   twitter  

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October 10, 2008

Tweeting every time your data is compromised

Tonight, my project is to add some polish to my Twitter project: Data Hole. It's an automated Twitter account that uses Twitterfeed to post links to news stories about companies and governments that loose personal data records, or otherwise compromise your privacy. The goal is to raise awareness about the issue. At the moment it's just taking in a Google News feed, but I plan to use Yahoo! Pipes to refine it a bit, and add some other features. I'm going to look into using TweetLater too.

I may also write a follow up to my blog post, 'Build a Robot Slave in Twitter'. But probably not.

Filed under  //   datahole   twitter  

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