• "Absent individualized suspicion": DHS "search at will" policy violates the Fourth Amendment

    Customs agents can now instruct you to log on to your laptop so they can read your e-mails and personal files and examine which Web sites you have visited; they can make a copy of your hard drive, and of any other storage device, so the government can comb through the contents more leisurely; this contents, without your knowledge, may be shared with any other government agency; it can be kept in perpetuity; the same applies to your BlackBerry, iPhone, and other digital devices; customs agents can do all that, according to DHS policy, “absent individualized suspicion”; a law professor says the government’s substitution of “search at will” for “reasonable suspicion” is a flagrant violation of the Fourth Amendment

  • U.K.'s ubiquitous camera network to be made smarter

    U.K. researchers develop behavioral recognition software which will focus CCTVs in public places — and on public transportation — on people behaving in a suspicious or odd manner; developers say their software would have spotted a man carrying a samurai sword to a bus in Leeds — which he used to attack the bus driver

  • DHS collects -- and keeps -- large amount of information on U.S. citizens traveling abroad

    Are you an American citizen frequently traveling abroad? You may be surprised by how much of your personal information DHS collects — and stores; now you have a way of finding out

  • Einstein 3 raises privacy concerns

    New cyber security system — Einstein 3 — will be rolled out across all U.S. government agencies; in addition to detecting malicious software, the system can read e-mails and other Internet traffic

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  • Russian security services step up snooping

    The heightened interest might stem from authorities’ fear about possible public unrest connected to the economic crisis; in the first half of this year, the secret services filed nearly 77,200 requests for search warrants, more than 66,000 requests to tap phones and nearly 7,800 requests to read mail

  • Protecting DNA privacy

    New mathematical tool protects genetic privacy while giving genomic data to researchers

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  • New disappearing ink developed

    Nanoparticle inks that fade away in hours could be ideal for secure communications, top-secret maps, and other sensitive documents

  • U.K. banks lax on Internet fraud

    U.K. Payments Administration (formerly APACS) reports that online banking fraud reached £52.5 million in 2008, more than doubling from the £22.6 million recorded in 2007; not all banks take measures which are adequate

  • Worries about Iraq's biometric database

    The U.S. biometric database in Iraq, now containing identification information on more than 2.5 million Iraqis, has been helpful to U.S. troops in identifying the bad guys and thwarting acts of terror; as the U.S. forces prepare to leave Iraq, worries grow that the same database may be used for monitoring critics of the regime and for political repression

  • U.K. to share fingerprints with Canada, Australia

    U.K., Canada, and Australia have begun to implement the fingerprint data sharing among g them, aiming to catch criminals and better evaluate the cases of asylum seekers; U.S., New Zealand will soon join

  • Über-hacker Albert "Segvec" Gonzalez's plea scuttled by indictment

    Gonzalez’s attorney was close to taking responsibility for his crimes and agreeing to a sentence of about twenty years when hew was indicted on new counts on Monday

  • Kemesa: Solving the identity theft problem

    The ideal solution to the online identity theft problem is to not transmit personal information to Web sites in the first place; with Kemesa’s Shop Shield, personal information can not be stolen because it is never revealed during the online transaction process

  • Cyber-criminals targeting social networks

    Cyber-criminals are drawn to the wealth of personal information supplied by users of social networks

  • Widespread privacy failings in online social networks

    A Cambridge University study finds serious privacy weaknesses in the way social networking sites are run; those who join such site are often unaware of these weaknesses

  • This product description will self-destruct

    Huskies researchers develop a tool to make online personal data vanish; after a set time period, electronic communications such as e-mail, Facebook posts, and chat messages would automatically self-destruct, becoming irretrievable from all Web sites, inboxes, outboxes, backup sites, and home computers