Free Republic

“It’s good to be king!” is an oft-quoted line from Mel Brooks’ “History of the World, Part I.” In America, every man is supposed to be king, every woman queen, and members of Congress are supposed to be our servants. We sometimes forget that last part. Three people in Orlando have not. On Aug. 15, Charles Klein, Sally Baptiste and Theresa Kajkowski filed a lawsuit in Florida's Middle District Federal Court. Nothing unusual in that -- lawsuits are filed every day, especially in litigation-prone America. What’s unusual is that the plaintiffs name the entire membership of the U.S. House and...

Film directors, authors, journalists and socialites who raised £200,000 to secure Julian Assange bail face losing thousands after the WikiLeaks founder breached his bail.

DEVELOPING: MasterCard is reportedly investigating a possible breach of cardholder account data involving a U.S.-based payment processor, the company said Friday. The Wall Street Journal reports that the Purchase, N.Y., credit-card company said law enforcement has been notified of the matter and an "independent data security organization" is conducting an ongoing forensic review. The company is alerting card-issuing banks regarding "certain MasterCard accounts that are potentially at risk." "MasterCard's own systems have not been compromised in any manner," a company spokesman told the newspaper. The spokesman declined to say how many cards may have been compromised or how many banks...

<p>GILBOA, N.Y. (AP) - Residents of Schoharie County downstream of the Blenheim-Gilboa Dam are being advised to move to higher ground because of the potential for flooding along the Schoharie Creek.</p> <p>The New York City Department of Environmental Protection, which owns the dam as part of its upstate water supply, says warning sirens were triggered Sunday afternoon by rising water due to higher-than-predicted rainfall and the loss of electronic monitoring devices at the dam.</p>

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) – CBS News has confirmed that authorities are looking into a shocking security breach that took place at John F. Kennedy International Airport last week. WCBS 880′s Pat Farnack With Former NTSB Chairman Mark Rosenker Investigators say Olajide Oluwaseun Noibi, a Nigerian, boarded Virgin America Flight 415 to Los Angeles without a valid passport or identification, using an expired boarding pass for a flight the day before that belonged to someone else. 1010 WINS’ Carol D’Auria reports: Passengers Say Security Agents Fell Down On The Job Officials say Noibi got through security and was able to board...

Palestinian youths on Friday hurled stones at Israeli security forces near the Temple Mount compound in Jerusalem and tried to breach a barrier to gain entry to the area, which has been sealed off amid concerns over violence. Police Commissioner Dudi Cohen on Friday discussed the increased police presence in the area saying, "The deployment of police and extra security forces in Jerusalem at this hour is in line with the situation." Police forces managed to prevent the youths from breaching the Ras el-Amoud checkpoint near East Jerusalem, and one Palestinian was arrested after he assaulted a police officer.

ROMULUS, Mich. – A portion of a terminal at Detroit Metropolitan Airport was evacuated Monday after a man walked through a passenger screening checkpoint and refused to obey security officers, officials said. The passenger failed to stop about 7:45 a.m. at the McNamara Terminal, the Transportation Security Administration said. The man was arrested by airport police and was being questioned, airport spokesman Mike Conway said. "The Transportation Security Administration asked him to stop and he didn't comply," Conway said. TSA workers activated an alarm and called police. Security doors were lowered at the portion of the terminal between the security...

The Department of Homeland Security has initiated unspecified personnel actions against individuals involved in the bungled online posting this spring of a government document that revealed airport screening secrets, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told senators Wednesday morning. A contract employee was responsible for failing to properly redact a 93-page Transportation Security Administration operating manual onto a government procurement Web site, allowing computer users to recover blacked-out information by copying and pasting them into other documents, Napolitano said. TSA supervisors were also involved, Napolitano said. "The security of the traveling public has never been put at risk," Napolitano assured the...

In a massive security breach, the Transportation Security Agency (TSA) inadvertently posted online its entire airport screening procedures manual, including some of the most closely guarded secrets regarding special rules for diplomats and CIA and law enforcement officers. Photo: Massive TSA Security Breach As Agency Gives Away Its Secrets: On-line Posting Reveals a ?How To? for Terrorists to Get Through Airport Security In a massive security breach, the Transportation Security Agency (TSA) inadvertently posted online... Expand In a massive security breach, the Transportation Security Agency (TSA) inadvertently posted online its entire airport screening procedures manual, including some of the most...

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 03, 2009 No Accident If you believe the so-called "experts," the recent, on-line publication of a detailed report on U.S. nuclear facilities was nothing more than an "accident." How can we be so sure? Government policy mandates the creation, editing and publication of classified reports on systems cleared for that type of information. Typically, a "confidential" report would be produced on a SECRET-level system, and published on an intranet cleared for that level of data. In the Department of Defense, the intranet for SECRET information is called SIPRNET. Other government agencies also have access to SIPRNET, or utilize...

WASHINGTON - Detailed plans for the new U.S. Embassy under construction in Baghdad appeared online Thursday in a breach of the tight security surrounding the sensitive project. Computer-generated projections of the soon-to-be completed, heavily fortified compound were posted on the Web site of the Kansas City, Mo.-based architectural firm that was contracted to design the massive facility in the Iraqi capital. The images were removed by Berger Devine Yaeger Inc. shortly after the company was contacted by the State Department. "We work very hard to ensure the safety and security of our employees overseas," said Gonzalo Gallegos, a department spokesman....

"Second Life," the fast-growing online site where hundreds of thousands of people play out fantasy lives online, has suffered a computer security breach that exposed the real-world personal data of its users. Linden Lab, the San Francisco-based company behind the "Second Life" site, said in a letter to its 650,000 users this weekend that its customer database, including names, addresses, passwords and some credit card data, had been compromised. All users--or residents in "Second Life" parlance--are being required to request a new password. Some 286,000 residents have used the site in the past 60 days, according to a count on...

When the history of personal privacy is written--and there are persons who monitor this sort of thing--they will call this "The Year of the Stolen Laptop." The number of incidents has been astounding, topped by the theft of a laptop computer last May from the residence of a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs staff person; the computer contained millions of names, birth dates and Social Security numbers. Law enforcement officers actually recovered the stolen laptop and arrested two suspects, and they have found no evidence that the data inside was used to compromise anybody's privacy. But up to 26 million...

AT&T on Tuesday said hackers broke into one of its computer systems and accessed personal data on thousands of customers who used its online store. The information that was illegally accessed includes credit card numbers, AT&T said in a statement. The cyberattack affects about 19,000 customers who purchased equipment for high-speed DSL Internet connections through AT&T's Web site, the company said. "We deeply regret this incident," Priscilla Hill-Ardoin, chief privacy officer for AT&T, said in the statement. "We will work closely with law enforcement to bring these data thieves to account." The break-in occurred over the weekend and was discovered...

A SENIOR adviser to Police Commissioner Mal Hyde knew two years ago police were breaking strict laws controlling the State's DNA database but did not suspend its operation, court documents have revealed. Transcripts of closed hearings held earlier this year during the prosecution of a suspected armed robber show hundreds of DNA samples instead were sent to a special police taskforce, Operation Helix, which used DNA to arrest more than 150 people over 1100 unsolved crimes. Among police documents suppressed during the hearings were reports prepared for Assistant Commissioner of Crime Madeleine Glynn. The criminal barrister who obtained the documents...

The US state of Georgia has allowed a remote attacker to access a database containing the details of 570,000 members of the state’s pension scheme. The cause of the breach has been blamed on an unpatched flaw in one of the state’s security programs, although the supplier of the software has not been disclosed. The attacker is said to have breached the system towards the end of February, using a variety of hacking tools to access the server hosting the database. Georgia said it was in the process of fixing the security flaw in the system, before the hacker got...

County officials have sent 94,000 letters warning people of possible identity theft after some documents containing their confidential information were publicly exposed in January. The documents were left next to a recycling bin outside a Department of Public Social Services office in Exposition Park.

Quote from Terry Ebbert, New Orleans' homeland security chief, August 31, 2005 to the AP: "It's a very slow rise, and it will remain so until we plug that breach. I think we can get [the breach] stabilized in a few hours"

Data Theft Information On Dec. 31, 2005, tapes and disks containing confidential information of 365,000 patients who have received care from Providence Home Services were reported stolen. Please note: This affects Providence Home Services patients only. Other Providence patients who did not receive care through Home Services are not affected. There is no indication that the stolen information has been used for identity theft. Providence recognizes the significance of the personal information that was stolen. We are deeply sorry this has happened and truly apologize to all those affected. Q&A on breach

NEW ORLEANS - Hurricane Rita's wind and rain breached two of New Orleans' battered levees Friday and sent water gushing into already-devastated neighborhoods just days after they had been pumped dry. In the impoverished Ninth Ward, water streamed through gaps at least 100 feet wide in a levee and was soon waist-deep on a nearby street. It began covering buckled homes, piles of rubble and mud-caked cars that Katrina had swamped with up to 20 feet of water nearly a month ago. Officials with the Army Corps of Engineers said other levees appeared secure, including those breached during Katrina, but...