Identity Resolution Daily

MyFox St. Louis: Contact 2 - Catching Shoplifters

“Organized retail crime is the fastest and increasingly most potent form of shoplifting. Simply put, ‘professional’ shoplifters travel the country to do one thing: Steal $30 billion every year. The thieves blend in, looking like real shoppers. Then, in a matter of seconds, they stuff special ‘booster’ bags with hundreds, often thousands of dollars in merchandise. More and more, retail crime experts say the hot merchandise is ‘fenced’ online–It’s called electronic fencing.”

Wired.com: Abracadabra! Bush Makes Privacy Board Vanish

“In a 2007 measure implementing 9/11 Commission recommendations, Congress reconfigured the oversight committee, known as the Privacy and Civil Liberty Oversight Board. The intent was to make the board more independent of the White House, require it to be bipartisan and make it more accountable to the public.”

Stores Magazine: Trends
Some interesting loss prevention statistics from the January 2008 issue of Stores Magazine:

• Shoplifting’s share of global shrinkage - 42%
• Cost of retailer shrinkage worldwide - $98.6 billion
• Security video cameras in stores that are not monitored - 20%
• Estimated value of goods fraudulently returned to stores this holiday season - $3.7 billion

Homeland Security Watch: DHS FY09 Budget Request Reflects 7.6% Increase, Focus on Technology

“President Bush’s FY 2009 federal budget is the largest in history at $3 trillion. The government-wide homeland security portion of that represents a 10.7% plus-up compared to 2008. Within DHS, spending will increase by 7.6 percent from FY08.”

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The Bunker Blog: Five Common Indicators Of Employee Theft

“Do you trust your employees? Sure we all want to believe that our employees are honest, and that they would never betray our trust in them by stealing money or merchandise from us. However, the fact is that, statistically, 2 in 10 employees will steal, given the right opportunity. That rate rises even higher when numerous conditions are met. So, do you, as a business owner, know what to look for so that you can minimize your risk of being a victim of theft by your employees?”

U.S. News & World Report: Air Your Security Gripes on TSA Blog

“Frustrated by long airport-security lines? Certain those screeners aren’t paying attention? Wondering why your grandma always gets frisked? The federal government wants to hear - or at least read - your gripes at the “Evolution of Security” blog the Transportation Security Administration introduced Wednesday. And it promises those complaints and suggestions won’t vanish into thin air.”

beye.com - Business Intelligence Network: Clinton and Obama Debate Data Integration. (Who Knew?)

“Tihs isn’t a partisan blog. I’ve been watching both the Democratic and Republican debates, and there are lessons for business all ’round. But there aren’t always lucid links between politics and data. So I was particularly rapt during last week’s Democratic Clinton-Obama debate at L.A.’s Kodak Theater (not co-incidently the home of American Idol, another popular circus), when our old friend Wolf Blitzer raised the topic of health care, speculating on how potential reforms would be funded. In her characteristic earnest and prepared style, Hillary Clinton advocated electronic medical records (EMRs) as one of the ways of paying for reform.”

[Note: Look for our upcoming blog post on Identity Resolution vs. Data Integration, a part of our series on Mistaken Identity Resolution.]

ars technica: Unchecked surveillance threatens security as well as privacy

“The debate over changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act —the legal framework governing how agencies like the NSA conduct wiretaps—is typically framed as a contest between the competing values of security and privacy. But in an article published in the latest issue of IEEE Security & Privacy, a team of top network security experts argue that large-scale digital surveillance creates new security risks and vulnerabilities as well.”

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[Post from Infoglide Software] Mistaken Identity Resolution

“Sometimes identity resolution is hard for folks to correctly categorize. That’s because it resembles a number of other technologies.”

KCRA.com: 3 Generations Accused Of Lodi Shoplifting

“A grandmother, mother and grandchildren were all arrested earlier this week on suspicion of shoplifting at a Lodi Target store, police said.”

PogoWasRight.org: Webcasts from Data Privacy Day 2008 Available Online

“Webcasts of the Jan. 28 conference at Duke University, Data Privacy in Transatlantic Perspective: Conflict or Cooperation?, are available online for free viewing with Real Player.”

beye.com - Business Intelligence Network: Wouldn’t It Be Cool? Our Business Intelligence and Data Integration Wish List for 2008

“We recently jotted down our industry predictions for 2008. But more than once during this process, one of us would say, ‘Naah. That will never happen.’ Then we’d move on to more practical predictions. But our wheels were still turning. We kept brainstorming about what would be cool to see in the world of business intelligence (BI) and data integration, however unrealistic. So we made a list of capabilities, features, and fabulous functions that we (and, more to the point, our clients) would love to see in the coming year. Or the next year, for that matter.”

ABC: Computers can recognise Mr Average

“The researchers have developed an imaging technique that merges several photos of the same person into one composite. They found when composites of different people were shown to a computer it was able recognise all of them. Such a method could improve face recognition programs already in use to identify suspects at airports, for example, or as part of immigration and employment verification.”

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