Tony Blair's personal details leaked

Leaked details of Tony Blair included his National Insurance number -- similar to a U.S. Social Security Number.Spokesman for Tony Blair's office denies the systems of former PM have been hackedHe says the details seem to be from the personal email account of a former staff memberDocument appears to give personal details for Blair and address details for personal contactsMember of hacker group Team Poison says the information was obtained in December

London (CNN) -- Personal details about Tony Blair that appear online were apparently not hacked from the former British prime minister's computer systems, but from the email account of a former staffer.

Responding to a report about a hacker group that claims to have accessed Blair's personal data, a Blair spokesman said Saturday, "This information has not been obtained from Tony Blair or any of his office systems."

"This appears to be information from the personal email account of a former member of staff from a few years ago," the spokesman said in an emailed statement to CNN. He didn't elaborate on the situation.

The claim by a member of the hacker group TeaMp0isoN (Team Poison) was first reported by the United Kingdom's Telegraph newspaper Saturday. The group posted the information on a website called Pastebin.com that allows users to upload text.

The information on Pastebin.com appears to include Blair's National Insurance number -- similar to a U.S. Social Security Number -- and the addresses and phone numbers of numerous personal contacts.

The document has a note at the top that reads: "The information in this article was obtained in 2010 December, we still have access to the webmail server, phone numbers may have changed but all the information is 100% legit."

It claims to include information on members of Blair's office, his address and phone book -- including the details of "family, friends, MPs and lords" -- and the contact details and resume of his former special adviser Katie Kay.

CNN was not able to verify the authenticity of the information published on Pastebin.com. The PC Magazine website reported that the material had been leaked by a member of Team Poison known as TriCk.

According to posts on TriCk's Twitter feed Friday night, the hacker group obtained the information in December.

"Tony Blair's Private Info is getting leaked tonight, so is his Personal Adivsors CV and UK MPs & Lords who supported the war in iraq," one of the Twitter post said.

An hour later, another post read: "doing the writeup now - Tony Blair and his cockroaches are getting owned tonight. - War IS Terror."

This week, members of the Team Poison hacker group appeared to step into a row over recent actions by hacker group Lulz Security, tweeting that it would expose the identities of its members.

LulzSec published Arizona police documents Thursday, obtained by hacking the Arizona Department of Public Safety. The agency confirmed it had been the victim of a cyber attack by LulzSec.

The group has also claimed attacks on websites belonging to the CIA, the U.S. Senate and the United Kingdom's Serious Organised Crime Agency. It also obtained more than 1 million e-mail addresses, passwords and other personal information from the U.S.-based Sony Pictures.

CNN's Bharati Naik contributed to this report.

CNN

Last call for Madoff's personal property

Bernard Madoff was convicted of running the largest Ponzi scheme in historyHe cheated thousands of victims out of billions of dollarsThe U.S. Marshals Service is auctioning his belongings to compensate those swindled

(CNN) -- The last of Bernie Madoff's ill-gotten gains that remain in the hands of the U.S. Marshals Service will go on the auction block next week, authorities said Friday.

A diamond watch, platinum diamond rings and artwork belonging to Madoff and his wife, Ruth, will be up for grabs on June 4, the Marshals Service said.

Proceeds from the auction will go into a U.S. Department of Justice fund and be used to compensate the victims of Madoff's Ponzi scheme, described by authorities as the largest in history. He cheated thousands of people out of billions of dollars.

Auctioneers in Miami will sell off 276 lots of property taken from the Madoff residences in New York and Palm Beach, Florida, the Marshals Service said. The auction will also be simulcast online, authorities said.

Madoff was known as an aficionado of fine watches, and the auction will include a men's Audemars Piguet watch with a diamond dial.

Other items will include an English rosewood apothecary; a carved wood bull sculpture; and a John Wootton oil painting, authorities said.

The auctioneers are also putting 262 bottles of fine wine and liquor on the block, though some of the alcohol is more valued because of the scandalous background of its owner.

"As artifacts of history they are unique, which is why we have chosen to offer all of the bottles seized, including those which normally wouldn't pass muster and make it into our auction," Morrel Wine Auctions said in a news release. "Some of the bottles are better viewed as conversation pieces rather than valued for their contents, but conversation pieces they are."

To date, about $23 million in property sales and $80 million in cash assets from the Madoffs have been recovered, the Marshals Service said.

Madoff's scheme fell apart with his arrest in December 2008, and he pleaded guilty in federal court in New York in March 2009 to multiple federal counts of running the largest, longest-running Ponzi scheme ever. He was sentenced to 150 years in prison and is serving time at a federal facility in Butner, North Carolina.

CNN

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Trump Downplays Romney as 'Small Business Guy,' Touts Personal Fortune

Associated Press

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Potential presidential candidate Donald Trump says he's a better businessman than a leading GOP hopeful in 2012, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. 

Trump tells CNN's "State of the Union" that he has a "much, much bigger net worth. I mean my net worth is many, many, many times Mitt Romney." 

Trump describes Romney as a "small business guy." Trump says he's created thousands of jobs and built a "great company." 

Romney is a former venture capitalist with a record of turning around failing companies. While heading Bain Capital, he helped launch the Staples office supply chain, as well as buy Domino's Pizza. Romney invested more than $40 million of his own money in the 2008 race.

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Kerry, McCain Seek to Give Consumers Upper Hand in Personal Data Online

AP

Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., and John McCain, R-Ariz., unveiled an online privacy bill Tuesday aimed at strengthening the protection of personal information that companies collect from consumers over the Internet.

The Commercial Privacy Bill of Rights Act of 2011 would require companies to collect personal data only if they receive affirmative consent, or an opt-in, from consumers. Under the bill, the companies would then offer consumers the option to opt out of having their data shared with third parties. 

The bill would also allow collection and sharing of personal information only by companies that do advertising or marketing.

"Right now there is no law protecting the information that what we share. Companies can harvest our personal information online and keep it for as long as they like," Kerry told reporters, emphasizing that the senators are not opposed to companies collecting information from consumers to target ads at them.

"But the data deluge is worrying at the same time," Kerry said. Companies can sell information "without asking permission or even letting you know that they're selling your own information. ... You shouldn't have to be a computer genius in order to be able to opt out of information sharing."

Yahoo, which already allows users to opt out of targeted advertising, offered cautious support for the bill.

"As a pioneer in protecting user privacy, Yahoo! Believes that Sens. Kerry and McCain have taken an important step in trying to establish industry-wide baseline protections for consumer privacy," Yahoo said in a statement to FoxNews.com. "While there certainly remain some fundamental issues to be worked out to make sure that this legislation protects the extraordinary breadth of free services for consumers made possible by online advertising, Yahoo! commends the hard work that Sens. Kerry and McCain have done thus far."

In recent years, the Federal Trade Commission has been under pressure from privacy advocates to crack down on companies that track users' Internet usage, saying that the practice poses risks to consumer privacy. After issuing a report late last year on Internet privacy that underscored highlighted dissatisfaction with the self-regulating efforts by companies, the agency began pushing Congress to introduce legislation.

The Obama administration gave its blessing to online privacy legislation for the first time last month. Lawrence Strickling, who oversees the telecom arm of the Commerce Department, told a Senate legislative committee that "ground rules" are needed to "promote innovative uses of information while respecting consumers' legitimate privacy interests."

He added that those privacy guidelines should avoid creating "an overly complicated regulatory environment."

McCain said their bill balances the business interests of companies and the privacy concerns of consumers.

"Our bill seeks to respect the ability of businesses to advertise, market and recruit new customers while also respecting consumer's personal information," McCain said. "Striking this balance was the hard part of our negotiations and our efforts to bring forth this legislation. "

This isn't the first online privacy bill introduced in this year's Congress. In February, Rep. Jackie Speier , D-Calif., unveiled her Do Not Track Me Online Act of 2011. Her bill would direct the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to develop standards for a "Do Not Track" mechanism that would allow consumers to opt out of having their data used by third parties instead of relying on companies the way the Kerry-McCain bill does.

Her bill is under committee review.

Kerry said he and McCain didn't include the do-not-track feature because "it didn't seem to fit into our ability to get the balance between the consumer support and the industry support that we wanted to get."

Kerry added that if the opt-out clause is strong enough a do-not-track mechanism is not necessary.

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