Judy Wallman, a professional genealogy researcher here in southern California , was doing some personal work on her own family tree. She discovered that Harry (senator (D) fromNevada ) Reid’s great-great uncle, Remus Reid, was hanged for horse stealing and train robbery in Montana in 1889. Both Judy and Harry Reid share this common ancestor.
The only known photograph of Remus shows him standing on the gallows in Montana territory.

On the back of the picture Judy obtained during her research is this inscription:

‘Remus Reid, horse thief, sent to Montana Territorial Prison 1885, escaped 1887, robbed the Montana Flyer six times. Caught by Pinkerton detectives, convicted and hanged in 1889.’

So Judy recently e-mailed Senator Harry Reid for information about their mutual great-great uncle.

Harry Reid’s staff sent back the following biographical sketch for her genealogy research:

‘Remus Reid was a famous cowboy in the Montana Territory . His business empire grew to include acquisition of valuable equestrian assets and intimate dealings with the Montana railroad. Beginning in 1883, he devoted several years of his life to government service, finally taking leave to resume his dealings with the railroad. In 1887, he was a key player in a vital investigation run by the renowned Pinkerton Detective Agency. In 1889, Remus passed away during an important civic function held in his honor when the platform upon which he was standing collapsed.’

72 % of likely voters said Obama did a good or excellent job in the debate, compared to 59% for McCain.

In the ‘one-word’ question (give me one word to describe Candidate X in the debate), the following results came up:

• Obama:
  • 50% “confident”
  • 31% “inexperienced”
  • 31% “intelligent”
    
  • 28% “presidential”
    
• McCain
  • 61% “experienced”
  • 38% “old”
  • 33% “knowledgeable”
  • 26% “confident”

Obama’s up 51% to 33% on who would handle the economy better, and overall 49% to 43% ahead of McCain.

That’s welcome, and long overdue.  Bruce Schneier wrote about it back in 2006.  California has for some time had a mandatory disclosure law, and it’s forced companies to take notice of the cost of losing data – especially in terms of their reputation:

Disclosure laws force companies to make these security breaches public. This is a good idea for three reasons. One, it is good security practice to notify potential identity theft victims that their personal information has been lost or stolen. Two, statistics on actual data thefts are valuable for research purposes. And three, the potential cost of the notification and the associated bad publicity naturally leads companies to spend more money on protecting personal information — or to refrain from collecting it in the first place.

Think of it as public shaming. Companies will spend money to avoid the PR costs of this shaming, and security will improve. In economic terms, the law reduces the externalities and forces companies to deal with the true costs of these data breaches.

So, let’s hope Dermot Ahern is serious about this.  We’ve got far stronger data protection laws than the US in most areas – they need to be extended to mandatory disclosure.  This is exactly what I was trying to get done when I first wrote those Parliamentary Questions in January, so it’s good to see it come to some level of fruition.

Update:

Digital Rights Ireland have more on this.

Today, a new series of PQs shows that they’re heading for 45 devices lost this year alone.  That’s almost one a week.  That’s bad.

What’s worse, though, is that, despite the repeated losses of personal information all year, neither the Department of Communications, Energy & Natural Resources nor the Department of Education & Science have introduced any whole disk encryption solutions.

Ruairi Quinn:

Ruairi Quinn TD (with Pat Rabbitte TD)

It beggars belief that the Department of Communications, tasked with developing our country’s IT infrastructure, has absolutely no policy on securing IT devices.

I wouldn’t even allow my personal laptop go out and about without Truecrypt encryption.  Why are two Government departments so closely associated with technology allowing my data to be left on buses and stolen from cars without any protection?  Especially when there’s little or no cost (Truecrypt is free).

What are Ministers Eamon Ryan and Batt O’Keeffe up to that they’ve missed the news all year?

By the way, if you think you can spot my fingerprints all over this, yes I did write the original PQs and this week’s followup PQs.  I wrote the Januar press release, but not this month’s one.

Update:

Mulley has a list of the actual responses.