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New Zealand Widens DNA Database
A new law will allow police to collect DNA data at the same time they take fingerprints from people they intend to charge and match it against profiles from unsolved crimes. Previously New Zealand
Read More »Front Towards Enemy – Apple i-spy
In Old Russia you don't listen to i-pod, i-pod listens to you. Sounds like a throw away line form a spoof movie.. right? Actually its just a small part of what Apple
Read More »Why does Turkey censor the Internet?
by KLAUS JURGENS Has surfing the Net become a crime? Are we not entitled to live in a knowledge-based economy? We must resist the temptation to judge the Turkish civic liberties book by its
Read More »Spyware on your phone?
How suspicious spouses, protective parents, and concerned companies are turning to cheap and hard-to-detect commerical spyware apps to monitor your mobile communications. Sometime in early 2007, Richard Mislan, an assistant professor of cyberforensics at
Read More »New anti-slavery legislation and the workplace
By Kirstie Skeaping It is now a criminal offence to hold a person in servitude, so what does this mean for employers and their staff? The latest round of employment law changes saw new
Read More »Pentagon bans journalists from Guantanamo trial
By Scott Horton The Gates Pentagon has decided to ban four journalists from covering the Guantánamo proceedings. The Washington Post’s Jeff Stein reports: The Pentagon said they were expelling the reporters because they had
Read More »ID card officials back away from scandal-hit database
Government plans to store ID card biometrics data on a controversial system used by thousands of public workers might be scrapped. Tony Collins The Home Office has confirmed it is reconsidering plans to use
Read More »Police in Wales have taken DNA samples from more than 55,000 innocent people
POLICE in Wales have taken DNA samples from more than 55,000 innocent people, we can reveal. Almost half of these – an estimated 23,651 – were taken by South Wales Police alone, costing the
Read More »ID cards snubbed in Manchester
Matthew Davis ONLY 8,000 people have enquired about getting the government’s controversial ID cards, which will be launched in Manchester. During a live webchat at the M.E.N offices, Lord Bill Brett, the minister responsible for
Read More »Police admit CCTV not effective – solves less than 1 crime per year
Ewan Turney The news takes on extra relevance for pubs after reports of several police forces in parts of the country, including Islington, Richmond and Liverpool, objecting to licence applications where venues don’t agree
Read More »UK ID cards will be useless in Europe
David Neal | ACCORDING TO the UK’s Identity Minister, the Government’s ID cards won’t be worth the paper they’ll be printed on. Despite the fact that the cards are almost in UK citizens’ wallets
Read More »Home Office shrugs off ID card hack demo
A researcher who claims to have cloned a UK identity card has had his offers to demonstrate the security breach turned down by the Home Office. Adam Laurie said he had made repeated approaches
Read More »Government plans to install CCTV in 20,000 homes
Adam Hartley The UK Government’s Children’s Secretary Ed Balls has announced a controversial new CCTV monitoring scheme, in which thousands of problem families are to be monitored 24 hours a day, 7 days a
Read More »Privacy Breaches By ID Card Staff
Nine staff have been sacked from their local authority jobs for snooping on personal records of celebrities and personal acquaintances held on the core database of the government’s National Identity Scheme. Mark Ballard They
Read More »Indians to get biometric ID cards
The Indian government plans to give all of its 1.2 billion citizens biometric ID cards, and Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani will lead the project. The project team will face a huge challenge in securing
Read More ȣ24m: The cost of tracking your emails and phone calls
The Home Office has revealed the multimillion-pound cost of monitoring the UK’s communications. Home Office policing and security minister, David Hanson, told Parliament last week that millions are now being spent to fund ISPs’,
Read More »IBM biometrics ID cards contract to last 7 years
IBM’s contract to supply technology for ID cards will last seven years, despite the possibility that a change in government could scupper the scheme. The company and the Identity and Passport Service (IPS) announced
Read More »Government replies to EU legal challenge on Phorm
The government has replied to a legal challenge from the European Commission (EC) over the online advertising technology Phorm. Phorm provides a model that allows advertising to be targeted at users online. In April
Read More »Scrap The National Identity Register
Chris Grayling told a House of Commons debate on scrapping identity cards on 6 July 2009 that a Conservative government would not go ahead with the National Identity Register (NIR) database. In response to
Read More »The increase of the surveillance society
Following the 9/11 and 7/7 terrorist attacks, there has been an exponential increase in Britain’s surveillance: currently, Britain has a quarter of the world’s security surveillance cameras with around four million cameras in use
Read More »NO2ID: ID Cards are not ‘voluntary’
Readers may be aware that the Home Secretary, Alan Johnson, has announced that the planned ID cards will be “voluntary”, and that no-one will have to carry one. However, the Government is still pressing
Read More »Government burying ID card costs in passports
The Conservatives have accused the government of burying the cost of ID cards in a hike in the price of passports. Yesterday the government announced an increase in the price of a 10-year adult
Read More »UN Chief Speaks Out Against Lack of Human Rights
Using the power of his office, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon achieved a rare diplomatic feat during his recent visit to military-ruled Burma. He broke a taboo by delivering a public speech about the lack
Read More »ID cards are not being scrapped but accelerated
Home secretary Alan Johnson has flatly denied killing off the ID card programme with his announcement last week that the scheme will be entirely voluntary for UK citizens. He delivered the denial in a
Read More »Battle for ID cards hits the Commons
ID cards have finally reached the Commons again, with a Conservative opposition day debate on the scheme due for debate this afternoon. The opposition is calling for the plan to be scrapped altogether. This
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