There’s a bunch of news reports of a medical database in Libertyville, Illinois, was hacked. The invaders locked up the data and are demanding a ransom to release it.
That’s new. Most people fear hacking because of the exposure their data will get. There hasn’t been much of a concern regarding the seizure of data and its being held hostage.
I read about this disturbing (and inevitable) development in several places, including William Knowles quite amazing newsletter, and a Bloomberg article. The Bloomberg article credits the original story to the "privacy blogger Dissent Doe".
I visited Dissent Doe’s website, and it’s fantastic: http://www.pogowasright.org/
Remember Pogo? That’s the comic strip character of many years ago, famous for the line "we have met the enemy and it is us". Great title for a blog about privacy and the issues involved today.
If you spend a few minutes visiting Dissent Doe’s website, you’ll soon conclude the same thing that famed Sun Micrososytems CEO Scott McNealy concluded in a speech he gave a number of years ago to a small gathering of people of which I was a part. His conclusion: "Privacy is dead; get over it."
But having your data held hostage – now THAT strikes me as new.