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Bloomberg Reporters Caught Spying On Terminal Users
theodp writes "Big Bloomberg is watching you. CNN reports that was the unsettling realization Goldman Sachs execs came to a few weeks ago when a Bloomberg reporter inadvertently revealed that reporters from the news and financial data provider had surveillance capabilities over users of Bloomberg terminals. 'Limited customer relationship data has long been available to our journalists,' acknowledged a Bloomberg spokesman. 'In light of [Goldman's] concern as well as a general heightened sensitivity to data access, we decided to disable journalist access to this customer relationship information for all clients.' Business Insider is now reporting on allegations that Bloomberg reporters used terminals to spy on JPMorgan during the 'London Whale' disaster; Bloomberg bragged about its leadership on this story."
I would like to welcome Wall Street and banking institutions (and the financial branches of several governments) to what web consumers have faced for years --- surreptitious tracking without consent, without knowledge, and without any concern for consequences. How does it feel to be treated like a raw material rather than a customer?
The only shocking aspect is that you think Google is not using the information from user queries for financial gain.
Are they equally concerned about failures of the Chinese wall between, say, the corporate advisory arm of a bank and the investment division?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/weekinreview/13segal.html
One suspects not.
This wasn't spying between two different sides of one company. This was someone in the Bloomberg corporation who was able to spy on people in Goldman Sachs corporation - two different companies. It isn't clear that you could firewall this as it seems to be covert functionality built into the software.
Keep in mind that this is the company started by the current mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg. That is the same Mayor Bloomberg that tried to limit the size of sodas in New York City to 16 oz., and started the scandal ridden "Mayors against Guns."
Although John Stewart said this about the soda ban, I'm thinking it might have wider application.
"combines the draconian government overreach people love with the probable lack of results they expect." -- Jon Stewart, The Daily Show
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
`the same Mayor Bloomberg that tried to limit the size of sodas in New York City to 16 oz. [townhall.com], and started the scandal ridden "Mayors against Guns [saf.org]."'
Yea, without huge-sodas and the ability to blow away your neighbours, America would have fallen to those commie-liberal-bastards a long time ago.
AccountKiller
not even really shocking. That did the journalists have access to? When someone was on or offline. OMFG! Think of what you can do with that. They also had access to what functions they were using. I'm sure the journalists were elated to know that a bond trader at GS was using the Bloomstink terminal to price bonds.
"But as it turned out, what the subscribers were doing was not always confidential. Bloomberg reporters used the "Z function" — a command using the letter Z and a company's name — to view a list of subscribers at a firm. Then, a Bloomberg user could click on a subscriber's name, which would take the user to a function called UUID. The UUID function then provided background on an individual subscriber, including contact information, when the subscriber had last logged on, chat information between subscribers and customer service representatives, and weekly statistics on how often they used a particular function. A company spokesman said both of those functions had been disabled in the newsroom. "
America, land of the obese,
Don't worry, Europe is competitive - especially certain countries.
Obesity in America Compared to Europe
Europe is competing with the U.S. for first place in the obesity crisis. According to a report issued by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development out of Paris, more than half of European adults are overweight or obese. Obesity rates have doubled in the past 20 years for the 27 member states of the European Union. It is estimated that 1 in 7 children in these states is obese. The disparity among countries is significant, however. The prevalence of obesity is less than 10 percent in Romania and Italy, but greater than 20 percent in the UK, Ireland and Malta
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home of the gun NUT
Tough Targets - When Criminals Face Armed Resistance from Citizens
Stories That Happened In MI
In some countries, the following two people would likely be dead or badly injured. Can you figure out why they aren't?
80-year-old Flint man fires shots at five robbery suspects
Elderly Woman Shoots at Intruder
A rather different picture than what has happened in the UK.
Two Cautionary Tales of Gun Control
Self-Defense: An Endangered Right
The withdrawal of a basic right of Englishmen is having dire consequences in Great Britain, and should serve as an object lesson for Americans. Today, in the name of public safety, the British government has practically eliminated the citizens’ right to self-defense. That did not happen all at once. The people were weaned from their fundamental right to protect themselves through a series of policies implemented over some 80 years. Those include the strictest gun regulations of any democracy, legislation that makes it illegal for individuals to carry any article that could be used for personal protection, and restrictive limits on the use of force in self-defense. . . .
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Yea, without huge-sodas and the ability to blow away your neighbours, America would have fallen to those commie-liberal-bastards a long time ago.
It might be too soon to tell.
The IRS’s Tea-Party Targeting
Cheers
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
This is not really news. The terminal has an instant messenger application built into it. If you have a buddy list with the users in question in it, you can see without doing ANYTHING whether or not that user is signed into their terminal. Furthermore, even if you are not using the instant messenger, you can always do the equivalent of a "whois" search for a user and it will tell you their status. As far as determining the functions a user is using, that is due to the analytics department whose function it is to assist users with obtaining information and helping them use various functions of the terminal. Not sure why the news division had access.
I was once called by a Bloomberg reporter who wanted a comment on the movement of a particularly thinly traded security that I owned. I asked her how she knew to call me, and she replied that I ran news and analytics on that specific ticker regularly on my Bloomberg terminal.
It makes me wonder how often I was front-run by Bloomberg reporters or their cronies over the years.
That is the same Mayor Bloomberg that tried to limit the size of sodas in New York City to 16 oz
"Conservatives" shouldn't be up in arms about that, after all there is absolutely nothing different between this and the federal government preventing you from smoking something you found in your back yard, except ...
Wait, a sec. Your talking about weed, right? There's weed growing behind my house? I'll be right back. afk
Man you gun nuts stretch things to insane limits.
So let me recap,
John Stewart condemned Mayor Bloombergs big soda ban.
Mayor Bloomberg ALSO doesn't like guns (which is not surprising in a gun crime riddled city).
You apply John's comment to Bloomberg's anti-gun stance (to which it doesn't apply, except that you want it to).
You then point out that Bloomberg founded Bloomberg.com, the trading and financial data company.
So you did a very tiresome long winding way into promoting guns.
Great, but how many people died of gun crime while you were telling that story? 2? 5?