A California appeals court has ruled that the owners of a bar had a duty to intervene in an attack on a patron. In the case, the court ruled that bouncers at a bar who anticipated an assault did not attempt to keep the parties separated, resulting in the injury of a patron and liability for the bar.
A Washington appeals court has ruled that Steven White can proceed with his invasion of privacy lawsuit against his employer, a municipality. White, who was a town marshal, claims that when his boss revealed to a local newspaper that White suffered from epilepsy, the town illegally disclosed his private information. The town argues that since White suffered a seizure in public, the information was no longer private.
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has ruled that a company’s confidentiality agreements violated federal labor laws because they prohibited employees from discussing their wages and conditions of employment with one another.
It’s been 20 years since a weapon was tested in space—the so-called “Star Wars” program of the Reagan Administration. Now, the president has revived the notion of space weapons, as embodied in an Air Force strategy to “dominate” space, through the use of weapons. Scholars at the Henry L. Stimson Center, a nonpartisan Washington, D.C., think tank, warn that militarizing outer space will create a galaxy of problems. A Stimson Center guide addressing these issues says that if the United States tests space weapons, “others will follow.” And if a space-arms race occurs, satellites could be easily destroyed by space weapons, which would lead to major disruption because satellites play a central role in government, the military, business, and emergency operations. @ Get Space Security or Space Weapons? a guide to the issues via SM Online.
Asked to give their opinions about mass transit security, witnesses from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), consultants, and transit operators for the United States and the United Kingdom gathered to testify before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. @ Visit Security Management Online to read the hearing testimony of Senator Susan Collins, Senator Joe Lieberman, DHS Assistant Secretary, Edmund Hawley, Chief Operating Office, of London Underground Michael Brown, Chief Metro Transit Police Department, Polly Hansen, President , New Age Security Solutions Rafi Ron.
Two Senate bills have been introduced to address communication issues that arose in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. One bill (S. 1554), introduced by Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), would establish a grant program to improve overall communications equipment for first responders. Collins, who is chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, said that “This bill takes an important step toward improving emergency communications nationwide so no community experiences the communications failure we saw in parts of the Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.” The bill has one cosponsor—ranking minority member on the committee Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-CT)—and has been referred to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Another bill (S. 1762), introduced by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), would also establish a grant program. However, it would be designed to establish an interoperable communications system for first responders.
A bill (H.R. 3165) introduced by Rep. Al Green (D-TX) would hold companies criminally liable for the deaths of contract employees that result from willful violations of safety standards set out by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. H.R. 3165 has 12 cosponsors and has been referred to the House Education and the Workforce Committee.
The Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill, signed into law (P.L. 109-90) by President Bush in October, contains $940 million for border security initiatives, including 1,500 new border patrol agents and expanded detention capacity.
A bill (S. 1256) introduced by Sen. Joseph Biden (D-DE) would require the Department of Homeland Security to issue regulations for the rail shipment and storage of extremely hazardous materials by railroads.
A bill (S.B. 62) recently signed into law in Georgia has created the new crime of “initiation of deceptive commercial e-mail.” Designed to punish those who lure children via chat rooms and instant messaging, the crime is a misdemeanor and is punishable by a fine of up to $1,000 and 12 months in jail. On the second offense, however, the act is a felony and is punishable by a fine of up to $50,000 and five years in prison. The law also allows law enforcement officers to subpoena an Internet service provider to obtain the identity of a computer user under investigation for stalking children online.
When the Zotob worm appeared only days after Microsoft released a patch that would have prevented infection, 700 Department of Transportation (DOT) computers were infected after a contractor connected a laptop to the DOT’s network against the department’s policy. This incident, which is recounted in a report on the department’s IT security by the DOT’s Inspector General (IG), is just one indication that some federal IT professionals are having trouble in meeting the challenges of locking down networks.
Here’s another. The IG notes that “about half of all Federal Railroad Administration computers are not subject to routine vulnerability checks because they are being used by employees who telecommute (or travel around the country) for the majority of the year.” As is made clear by the Zotob example, these laptops, “if infected with hostile software, could become conduits for spreading problems to the rest of the networks.”
@ The IG’s full report is available at SM Online.
Web-page bookmarks are a great way to keep track of your own frequently traveled Web sites. But how can you find out what sites are most popular with other people? “Social bookmark” sites allow anyone who stumbles across an interesting site to immediately bookmark it and then post it to a central Web site to encourage others to visit it as well. One of the most prominent of these sites is del.icio.us, which posts hundreds of bookmarks each day. Posters can add comments to their bookmarks and categorize them under any number of different tags, including security, software, and hacks, that allow other users to search for new sites in specific categories. The del.icio.us site also provides a location for saving personal bookmarks that can be accessed from any computer so that if you’re on the road and want to visit a bookmarked page but don’t have your regular computer, you can find the links easily nonetheless. Best of all, the site is completely free.Social bookmarking is a great way to find new sites in any category of interest to you, and that makes del.icio.us A Site to See. @ Get there viaSM Online.
How many passwords do you need to remember? A survey by RSA Security Inc. of 1,700 enterprise technology end users found that 71 percent had as many as 12, and almost one-quarter had more than 15. To keep track of these, the majority of users said that they keep a record on a PDA or a document on their PC; 19 percent keep a note attached to their computer or have another type of paper record in their office. @ More details of the RSA's security survey are at SM online.
The Department of Defense (DoD) is using radio frequency ID (RFID) tags throughout its supply-chain operations; by January 2007, all DoD commodities will have these tags. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports that the Pentagon has identified many of the challenges it needs to resolve before this can happen but notes that “it has not yet developed a comprehensive strategic management approach” to guide, monitor, and assess implementation. @ Read the full GAO report at SM Online.
The time between the disclosure of a computer vulnerability that can allow infection by a worm or virus and the release of an exploit that can attack that vulnerability has dropped from 6.4 days to 6.0 days. Meanwhile, the average time between the appearance of a vulnerability and the release of a patch is 54 days. Those statistics, which come from antivirus vendor Symantec’s most recent Internet Security Threat Report, are even more frightening when you consider that 1,862 new vulnerabilities were found in the first half of 2005. @ The Symantec report is available at SM online.
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