New cyber-monitoring measures have been quietly introduced giving police and Security Intelligence Service officers the power to monitor all aspects of someone’s online life. The measures are the largest expansion of police and SIS surveillance capabilities for decades, and mean that all mobile calls and texts, email, internet surfing and online shopping, chatting and social networking can be monitored anywhere in New Zealand. In preparation, technicians have been installing specialist spying devices and software inside all telephone exchanges, internet companies and even fibre-optic data networks between cities and towns, providing police and spy agencies with the capability to monitor almost all communications. Police and SIS must still obtain an interception warrant naming a person or place they want to monitor but, compared to the phone taps of the past, a single warrant now covers phone, email and all internet activity. It can even monitor a person’s location by detecting their mobile phone; all of this occurring almost instantaneously
Swedish hunters have begun culling wolves for the first time in 45 years after parliament ruled that numbers needed to be reduced again. More than half the quota of 27 may have died on the first day alone with nine shot dead in Dalarna and up to nine killed in Varmland, Swedish radio says. Hunters have until 15 February to complete the cull, which will leave Sweden with an estimated 210 wolves. Some 10,000 hunters were reported to be planning to take part in the hunt
The first effects of France’s new law against internet piracy will begin to be felt as the new year begins. The law was passed after a long struggle in parliament, and in the teeth of bitter opposition from groups opposed to internet restrictions. Illegal downloaders will be sent a warning e-mail, then a letter if they continue, and finally must appear before a judge if they offend again. The judge can impose a fine, or suspend their access to the internet
Researchers believe they have identified the source of fatal tumours that threaten to wipe out the wild population of Tasmanian devils
The Italian Supreme Court has ruled that ISPs can be forced to block BitTorrent sites, even if they are not hosted in Italy or operated by Italian citizens. According to the decision by the Supreme Court, sites offering torrent files that link to copyrighted material are engaging in criminal activity
A Canadian company behind a search engine called Groovle.com has won a case filed against it by online search giant Google. Google said the domain name used by the small business, 207 Media, was too similar to its own, but mediators the National Arbitration Forum disagreed. In the complaint, Google asked for the judges to rule that 207 Media transfer the domain name over to it. But three judges appointed by the forum refused the request. They said the name was not similar enough to confuse people and the word groovle
was more closely linked to groovy
or groove
rather than Google
Virtual goods such as weapons or digital bottles of champagne traded in the US could be worth up to $5bn in the next five years, experts predict. In Asia, sales are already around the $5bn mark and rapidly growing. For many, virtual goods are one of the hottest trends in technology and are fuelling huge growth in the social gaming sector
China on Saturday launched what it described as the world’s fastest train service covering a distance of 1,068 kms at the average speed of 350 kms an hour. The distance between Wuhan in central China and Guangzhou in the country’s south was covered by the high-speed train in two hours forty five minutes. The new service will cut the travel time between these cities by more than six hours. The train reached a maximum speed of 394.2 km per hour during trail runs that begun on December 9. The commercial operation was launched today with two trains covering the distance while passing through 20 different cities along the route
Generally speaking, the BBC isn’t allowed to encrypt or restrict its broadcasts: the license fee payer pays for these broadcasts. But the BBC has tried to get around this, asking Ofcom for permission to encrypt the metadata
on its broadcasts — including the assistive information used by deaf and blind people and the ‘tables’ used by receivers to play back the video. As Ofcom gears up to a second consultation on the issue, there’s one important question that the BBC must answer if the implications of this move are to be fully explored, namely: How can free/open source software co-exist with a plan to put DRM on broadcasts? — via Slashdot
The time has come for WikiLeaks, which calls itself the first intelligence agency of the people
, to think locally, says Daniel Schmitt, a German computer engineer who is a full-time unpaid spokesman for the Web site. We are trying to bring WikiLeaks more directly to communities,
he said in a telephone interview. The organisation has applied for a $532,000 two-year grant from the Knight Foundation to expand the use of its secure, anonymous submission system by local newspapers. The foundation’s News Challenge will give as much as $5 million this year to projects that use digital technology to transform community news. WikiLeaks proposes using the grant to encourage local newspapers to include a link to WikiLeaks’ secure, anonymous servers so that readers can submit documents on local issues or scandals. The newspapers would have first crack at the material, and after a period of timeperhaps two weeks, Schmitt saidthe documents would be made public on the main WikiLeaks page
Australia is the only Western democracy where human rights are not formally protected, either by law or by the Constitution. Minorities, elderly, and disabled want a human rights charter. But a proposal for a charter has unleashed fierce opposition from church groups and opposition politicians
The Government’s nicely-timed announcement last week that they will proceed next year with their Internet censorship scheme has not only drawn widespread ire in Australia but has continued to raise eyebrows overseas. The filter has been covered around the world from the BBC to news outlets in Poland, Pakistan and even China. Unfortunately, it’s not a good look — despite any nuances the policy might have, we’re gaining a reputation as the Iran of the South Pacific
European authorities may soon approve a global standard for SIM cards designed to operate in harsh conditions that could open new enterprise markets for mobile carriers. France Telecom’s enterprise group Orange Business Services, said that the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) could ratify the standard as early as next year. Anne-Marie Thiollet, machine-to-machine (M2M) marketing vice president for Orange Business Services, said ETSI was close to achieving consensus between carriers, and modem and SIM card manufacturers
Three library associations have asked the Justice Department to oversee Google’s plans to create a massive digital library, so as to prevent excessively high pricing for institutional subscriptions. They said that there was unlikely to be an effective competitor to Google’s massive project in the near term. They also asked for academic author representation on the Registry board — via Slashdot
A Paris court has found Google guilty of copyright infringement in a ruling which could have ramifications for its plans to digitise the world’s books. The search giant must pay 300,000 euros in damages and interest to French publisher La Martiniere. It was one of many to take Google to court for digitising its books without explicit permission. Google was also ordered to pay 10,000 euros a day until it removes extracts of the books from its database
Hungarian Parliament has made the use of open standards mandatory by law in the intercommunication between public administration offices, public utility companies, citizens and voluntarily joining private companies, conducted via the central governmental system
A Sunshine Coast man has admitted to being the mastermind behind the world’s biggest email scam and faces fines of up to $200,000 next week. In a separate action, a Queensland man and a company were fined $6.5 million for a mobile phone texting scam that targeted users of dating web sites. For that scam, fines have yielded the Federal Government’s anti-spam body, the Australian Communications and Media Authority, more than than $22 million in the past year.
Google Australia posted a statement today on its official blog calling the government’s ISP filter heavy handed
and outlining the search giant’s concerns about the scope of filtered content. Google’s major concern is that the scope of filtered refused classification content is too wide, citing a recent report by Australian media academics, professors Catharine Lumby, Lelia Green and John Hartley
The New Zealand government has reintroduced a newly rewritten addition to the Copyright Act which will allow rights’ holders to send copyright notices to ISPs, and force them to pass them on to account holders. Section 92A of the Copyright Act will allow rights holders to take people who have been identified as infringers more than three times in front of a Copyright Tribunal. This law will allow the Copyright Tribunal to hand down either a $15,000 fine or six months internet disconnection. The law specifies that the account holder himself is responsible for what is downloaded via the account, and doesn’t make allowances for identifying the actual copyright infringer if there are multiple computers tied to an account — via Slashdot
Given the recent coverage and controversy over Australia’s forthcoming web censorship system, it is somewhat surprising (and worrying) that Clause 11 of the UK’s proposed Digital Economy Bill seems to have gone by largely unnoticed. It amends the Communications Act 2003 to insert a new section 124H that could give the Secretary of State powers to order ISPs to block pretty much any website for pretty much any reason. Such orders would not require the scrutiny of parliament, or anyone else for that matter, because the Secretary of State would not be required to publish them — via Slashdot
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