Here we go again with what we hope is a week’s worth of news regarding the issues that Blindside is commissioned to cover:

As usual, we start at Kable, with this report about SOCITM offering to help pass on IT security skills: “The Society of Information Technology Management has developed a framework for passing on IT security skills. It has issued an invitation to UK organisations to run programmes based on the materials it developed for the EU funded iScan initiative, it said on 29 June 2007.”

Also from Kable, news that the UK, Europe and the US are planning to upgrade their border databases by using multiple forms of biometrics to identify people. Money quote: “There’ll never be a situation where the world will agree to have one biometric,” said Paul at a Homeland Security Conference in Brussels on 26 June 2007. “What we will have is a multi-modal environment.” Hope they don’t store all the data in one place. Hope also that when they send that information it’s encrypted. Hope they also use a good data management system. But no discussion of any of thosse topics.

From the Risks Digest, news that in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, “computers and cyber systems have been infected with viruses and malicious scripts that could compromise passwords and information on U.S. citizens, intelligence operations and the nation’s critical infrastructure.” Oops.

Via Bruce Shneier, we learn from Wired that, surprise, data collected for one, innocent reason can on occasion be used later for reasons less honorable. “We learned the news in March: Contrary to decades of denials, the U.S. Census Bureau used individual records to round up Japanese-Americans during World War II.

The Census Bureau normally is prohibited by law from revealing data that could be linked to specific individuals; the law exists to encourage people to answer census questions accurately and without fear. And while the Second War Powers Act of 1942 temporarily suspended that protection in order to locate Japanese-Americans, the Census Bureau had maintained that it only provided general information about neighborhoods. New research proves they were lying.”

If you don’t think this is relevant, watch the career moves of NHS staff with Middle Eastern or Pakistani origins in the next few months.

Also via Bruce, this article in Technology Review that talks about CCTV cameras designed to blur faces automatically. So we could monitor movements and protect privacy, if we wanted.

Boasting or targeting? Via the Institute for the Future comes a link to a mash-up of a map of the United States with the location of nanotechnology companies, research centres and organisations. Looking at the map, I am sadly reminded both of the old video game Missile Command and the security issues around mash-ups.

Whoops! Late for a meeting, so that’s all for today.