Law enforcement officials are vastly expanding their collection of DNA to include millions more people who have been arrested or detained but not yet convicted. The move, intended to help solve more crimes, is raising concerns about the privacy of petty offenders and people who are presumed innocent. Until now, the federal government genetically tracked only convicts. But starting this month, the Federal Bureau of Investigation will join 15 states that collect DNA samples from those awaiting trial and will collect DNA from detained immigrants — the vanguard of a growing class of genetic registrants. The FBI, with a DNA database of 6.7 million profiles, expects to accelerate its growth rate from 80,000 new entries a year to 1.2 million by 2012 — a 15-fold increase. FBI officials say they expect DNA processing backlogs — which now stand at more than 500,000 cases — to increase
The risk to spacecraft from a collision with space debris could be reduced by equipping launchers with a gossamer-thin sail
. The idea is to deploy the sail after the rocket has released its payload to amplify the drag of the last vestiges of the atmosphere, and so force the rocket out of orbit. Rocket stages are a particular risk to spacecraft because they often contain large amounts of unused fuel, which can explode when sunlight heats the tank. Leaking fuel can also act like a mini-thruster, pushing the rocket into an orbit where it may cause a collision. One way to tackle the problem is to vent unused fuel in a controlled way, and drain power from the battery, but this is unlikely to eliminate all collisions
A court in Sweden has jailed four men behind The Pirate Bay, the world’s most high-profile file-sharing website, in a landmark case. Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde were found guilty of breaking copyright law and were sentenced to a year in jail. They were also ordered to pay $4.5m in damages. Record companies welcomed the verdict but the men are to appeal and Sunde said they would refuse to pay the fine. Due to outrage over the verdict, the Swedish Pirate Party has gained 3000 members in less than seven hours. It is now bigger than three of the seven parties represented in the Swedish parliament
Broadband operator Bahnhof is continuing to destroy the IP address details of its customers in an open and fully legal bid to undermine Sweden’s new anti-file sharing laws. Bahnhof CEO Jon Karlung, a vociferous opponent of the measures that came into force on 1 April, has said he is determined to protect the company’s clients. The new file sharing law is based on the European Union’s Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED) and allows courts to order internet operators to hand over details that identify suspected illegal file sharers. As such, the law enables Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to retain the IP addresses of file sharers. But ISPs also remain at liberty to destroy information about their users if they so wish
A sophisticated FBI-produced spyware programme has played a crucial behind-the-scenes role in federal investigations into extortion plots, terrorist threats and hacker attacks in cases stretching back at least seven years, newly declassified documents show
A study into spam has blamed it for the production of more than 33bn kilowatt-hours of energy every year, enough to power more than 2.4m homes. The Carbon Footprint of e-mail Spam report estimated that 62 trillion spam emails are sent globally every year. This amounted to emissions of more than 17 million tons of CO2, the research by climate consultants ICF International and anti-virus firm McAfee found. Searching for legitimate e-mails and deleting spam used some 80% of energy. The study found that the average business user generates 131kg of CO2 every year, of which 22% is related to spam
Social news website Digg.com has made key changes to its recently introduced DiggBar. The browser add-on had been much criticised for its use of frames to host
third-party websites within the digg.com domain using an obfuscating short URL, thereby boosting its own traffic figures to the detriment of those third parties. Registered Digg users that have not opted out will continue to see the DiggBar, but they will only see the bar when logged in, and opting out will be made much easier
The National Security Agency intercepted private e-mail messages and phone calls of Americans in recent months on a scale that went beyond the broad legal limits established by Congress last year, government officials said in recent interviews. Several intelligence officials, as well as lawyers briefed about the matter, said the NSA had been engaged in overcollection
of domestic communications of Americans. They described the practice as significant and systemic, although one official said it was believed to have been unintentional
Amazon has said it will not allow online advertising system Phorm to scan its web pages to produce targeted ads. Phorm builds a profile of users by scanning for keywords on websites visited and then assigns relevant ads. It has proved controversial because it scans almost all sites a user visits and there is an ongoing political debate about how a user gives consent. Last month the Open Rights Group wrote to the world’s leading websites asking them to opt out of Phorm
Online auction site eBay has offered to buy South Korean online retailer Gmarket for up to $1.2bn. The offer price of $24 per share is a 20.2% increase on Gmarket’s most recent closing price of $19.96. eBay said it had acquired 67% in the Korean firm, after Yahoo and Interpark agreed to sell their Gmarket stakes. The news comes a day after eBay said it was looking to spin off internet call service provider Skype and list shares in the firm in the first half of 2010
If you’re a Windows user who wasn’t tempted to download Internet Explorer 8 the minute the final release went live, take note: it’s probably about to appear on your system anyway courtesy of Automatic Update. Microsoft’s official IEBlog notes that the final IE8 is already being distributed via Automatic Update to users with earlier beta versions, and will shortly be rolled out as to most Windows users. Microsoft typically rolls outs these updates by region to minimise server impact, so there’s no telling straight away how soon you’ll see it in your suggested update list
Can a data centre heat your home or office? It can in London, where excess heat from servers at the new Telehouse West data center in the Docklands will soon be used in nearby houses and businesses. The Greater London Authority has approved a plan in which waste heat from the $180 million Telehouse colocation facility will be used in a district heat network for the local Docklands community. The project is expected to produce up to nine megawatts of power for the local community, and allow the 130,000 square foot Telehouse West to reduce its carbon footprint by 1,110 tons
eBay is moving away from its traditional laissez-faire approach regarding buyer and seller interactions on its marketplace, and instead will get more involved in transaction disputes. Starting around mid-June, eBay will in some cases issue refunds at its own expense to buyers who claim they either didn’t receive the item they bought, or received a different product. eBay will do this even if it determines the seller wasn’t at fault. In addition, eBay will begin steering buyers to take their complaints to eBay for resolution, as opposed to reporting them to its PayPal online payment unit
The internet auctioneer eBay is to spin off its global online telephone business, Skype, through a stockmarket flotation which will end an unhappy four-year relationship between the two companies. eBay announced tonight that it intends to separate Skype through a public offering of shares by the first half of 2010. Based in Luxembourg, Skype has 405m users and its low-cost service accounts for 8% of the world’s international phone calls
The first reaction many people have to Twitter is befuddlement. Individually, many of those 140-character tweets
seem inane. But taken collectively, the stream of messages can turn Twitter into a surprisingly useful tool for solving problems and providing insights into the digital mood. By tapping into the world’s collective brain, researchers of all kinds have found that if they make the effort to dig through the mundane comments, the live conversations offer an early glimpse into public sentiment — and even help them shape it
Because there’s so much attention to this, I’ll offer spokesman Drew Herdener’s comments unfiltered: This is an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloguing error for a company that prides itself on offering complete selection. It has been misreported that the issue was limited to Gay and Lesbian themed titles — in fact, it impacted 57,310 books in a number of broad categories such as Health, Mind and Body, Reproductive and Sexual Medicine, and Erotica. This problem impacted books not just in the United States but globally. It affected not just sales rank but also had the effect of removing the books from Amazon’s main product search. Many books have now been fixed and we’re in the process of fixing the remainder as quickly as possible, and we intend to implement new measures to make this kind of accident less likely to occur in the future
The Queensland Government has outlined plans to offer a Wi-Fi service on the state’s trains as part of a roll-out of real-time security monitoring technology
President Obama yesterday announced a series of steps aimed at easing the US relationship with Cuba, breaking from policies first imposed by the Kennedy administration and stepping into an emotional debate over the best way to bring democratic change to one of the last remaining communist regimes
As if it wasn’t hellacious enough working customer support for Amazon.com on Easter, the online book store’s reps must now explain why gay romances (and other books) are too adult
to rank. Straight romance like Jackie Collins and straight porn is still ranked on Amazon. But not the homosexual stuff: Gay romance publisher Mark Probst noticed hundreds of such books lost their rankings over the past two days. There is now a full-fledged Twitter shitstorm spreading virally
Google gets to keep its Don’t be evil
mantra for now, but at the cost of crippling the Korean version of its online video service, YouTube. In a surprise decision Thursday, Google blocked South Korean users from uploading videos and posting comments on YouTube’s Korean-language site in order to avoid government requirements for the real-name registration of users. Korean Internet users now have to submit their resident registration codes, the Korean equivalent of social security numbers, and names, before posting files or commenting on Web sites with more than 100,000 daily visitors, including YouTube. The new rules kicked in April 1, but Google had been refusing to enforce real-name verification for YouTube users, reluctant to bend its rules only for Korea
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