Cody Taylor

Saudi Arabian officials boast that the Care Rehabilitation Center has successfully deprogrammed scores of former jihadis, including scores of ex-inmates from the U.S.’s Guantánamo Bay military prison. The Obama Administration has announced that Gitmo will close within a year, and is already being accused by some of jeopardizing national security.

Milton Ahlerich, the NFL’s vice president for security, says that if you’re in the stadium watching the Super Bowl, you are in “one of the safest locations you can possibly be on Super Bowl Sunday in the United States of America.”

patentpundit writes “Word has started to circulate that President Barack Obama may be close to appointing John W. Thompson, the outgoing chief executive of network security firm Symantec Corp., to be the next Secretary of Commerce. According to the LA Times, over the last several days Thompson has spoken on the telephone and met with key senators, and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), a member of the commerce committee that would hold confirmation hearings for any appointed Secretary of Commerce, is “extremely supportive and hopeful he’ll be the nominee.” The appointment of Thompson to head the Department of Commerce would be an exceptionally interesting choice given that only days ago President Obama asked Scott McNealy, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems, to lead his open source charge and conduct a study and report back regarding the feasibility of the US government forgoing proprietary software and moving toward open source software solutions.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

And the data security you should get.

How much private information is available about you in cyberspace? Social Security numbers are just the beginning. She had me at hello … or just about. Our conversation had barely started when privacy activist Betty Ostergren interrupted me to say that she had found my full name, address, Social Security number and a digital image of my signature

Google Chrome was built from the ground up to be a more secure Web browser, and Google and its Chromium developers should be applauded for the attention they have brought to browser security.

cweditor writes in with an updated version of a story the likes of which you might have read before, What the Web Knows About You. But reporter Rob Mitchell found out vastly more about himself (his research subject) online than he could have even a year or two ago. The big difference is that state and local governments are putting online digitized records, often with Social Security numbers and other personal details intact. Mitchell ends by questioning how much good it does for banks or credit card companies to require 4, 5, or more independent identity “factors” before providing access to account details, when most or all of the factors they request can be found online about nearly anyone.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.