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Tokyo police lose 2 floppy disks containing info on public housing applicants

mainichi.jp

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Re: Tokyo police lose 2 floppy disks containing info on public housing applicants

#141

Post by Nbox9 »

grishka wrote: post #119
egeozcan wrote: post #6

Will we pretend that the usage of floppy disks is normal in almost 2022? Or perhaps the news value comes from this fact, but then, they don't make any comment on it... Weird. I also love that they seem to be taking this seriously, even when it's just 38 people, while all over the world, governments (cough Turkey cough) don't even apologize when they leak the personal details of ALL of their citizens. Well.

Also — name, date of birth, and sex are considered highly guarded top-secret personal information. Most people would voluntarily publish this and more on any social media platform without giving it a second thought. And I don't see anything wrong with floppies, besides them and drives no longer being produced. USB sticks are too expensive, and optical media are too delicate, often single-use and an overkill for this…

Isn’t the most sensitive information here that they applied for public housing?

Re: Tokyo police lose 2 floppy disks containing info on public housing applicants

#142

Post by nine_k »

denton-scratch wrote: post #124

Haven't seen a floppy disk for 20 years. Haven't seen an 8" floppy since about 1988. Floppies got bitrot quite badly; I doubt they're readable without forensic equipment (come to think of it, even without the bitrot, equipment for reading floppies isn't common).

Equipment to read floppies is readily available on eBay, and is not excessively expensive.

Re: Tokyo police lose 2 floppy disks containing info on public housing applicants

#143

Post by goldcd »

howdydoo wrote: post #117
egeozcan wrote: post #6

Will we pretend that the usage of floppy disks is normal in almost 2022? Or perhaps the news value comes from this fact, but then, they don't make any comment on it... Weird. I also love that they seem to be taking this seriously, even when it's just 38 people, while all over the world, governments (cough Turkey cough) don't even apologize when they leak the personal details of ALL of their citizens. Well.

I think using floppies is a great way to safeguard privacy. Even if someone finds those disks, they won't be able to read them

"Security by obscurity [of medium]"

Re: Tokyo police lose 2 floppy disks containing info on public housing applicants

#144

Post by kahrl »

np_tedious wrote: post #92
egeozcan wrote: post #6

Will we pretend that the usage of floppy disks is normal in almost 2022? Or perhaps the news value comes from this fact, but then, they don't make any comment on it... Weird. I also love that they seem to be taking this seriously, even when it's just 38 people, while all over the world, governments (cough Turkey cough) don't even apologize when they leak the personal details of ALL of their citizens. Well.

So 3MB of personal information? That's well under 1 byte per citizen how bad can it be? /s

If they are 5.25" 1.2MB high density floppies, that's a max of 64k per person. What the what?

Re: Tokyo police lose 2 floppy disks containing info on public housing applicants

#146

Post by ngcc_hk »

alerighi wrote: post #115
onion2k wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will we pretend that the usage of floppy disks is normal in almost 2022? What's wrong with them? They're reasonably robust for short term shortage, easily copyable, and you can design your own format if you want to. The space limitation is only a problem if you need to actually store more than 1.4MB or so. And if you want to lock down an environment so USB devices can't be used there aren't many other portable storag…

They are not reliable at all. And if you don't want to use USB... well good luck finding a modern motherboard with a floppy disk interface. These days you obviously have to use a USB floppy disk readers. The argument of not using USB doesn't make a lot of sense, USB is not dangerous, it's how the OS is configured. Also how do you plug in mouse and keyboard, with PS2? And by the way, if you don't want to use USB at al…

I found it depends upon the make. The windows 95 floppy are good. Only linux in CD-ROM at that time. Both work ok.

Re: Tokyo police lose 2 floppy disks containing info on public housing applicants

#147

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #87
ab_testing wrote: post #70

So less than 3MB of data.

There were 2.88MB floppies, or... I think that was actually an encoding thing? That is, I think you could take a "standard" 3.5" floppy and use special software to format it up to 2.88MB. (Maybe it just changed the track sizes or something, and hoped your disk was high enough quality to take that)

ED floppies have a different media notch. You can't get higher capacity in them using HD disks. You can however superformat HD media to 30MB in the later LS120 drives. The catch is they don't support random writes. New data requires a total rewrite.

Re: Tokyo police lose 2 floppy disks containing info on public housing applicants

#148

Post by im3w1l »

dagw wrote: post #50
ace2358 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m under the impression it’s a similar thing in Sweden regarding trains. I heard they give you money to cover a taxi if the train is late by a few minutes or something.

I heard they give you money to cover a taxi if the train is late by a few minutes or something. LOL. If that was true the Swedish train companies would have been bankrupt decades ago. Swedish trains are extremely unreliable. As someone who used to take the Stockholm-Gothenburg train a lot for work I was happy every time I arrived less than an hour late.

With Stockholm public transport, you get up to $130 for a taxi if the (expected) delay is more than 20 minutes. My guess is that it works out fincancially because so few people know about it / can be arsed to send in the paperwork.

For intercity routes you get 25% off the ticket after 1h delay and 50% after 2h delay.

Re: Tokyo police lose 2 floppy disks containing info on public housing applicants

#149

Post by gattilorenz »

ibejoeb wrote: post #137
howdydoo wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think using floppies is a great way to safeguard privacy. Even if someone finds those disks, they won't be able to read them

I still have a functioning zip 250 drive. Step.

Functioning until the clic of death arises, you mean.

Re: Tokyo police lose 2 floppy disks containing info on public housing applicants

#150

Post by omoikane »

I am disappointed by all the comments being focused on the use of floppy disks, as opposed to questions about whether contents on these removable media were encrypted. Even the original news article doesn't mention what are the data security practices employed by these agencies, other than the physical storage was locked.
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