• U.K. Home Office denies remote snooping plan

    There have been discussions among EU ministers about giving police more authority to snoop on crime and terror suspects remotely, but the legal framework to do so is yet be created; what is more, techies says it cannot be done

  • Britain may outsource large surveillance database

    The U.K. Home Office is moving forward with a £12 billion plan for a massive database to track phone calls, e-mails, and chat conversations in the country; the Home Office said it is considering outsourcing the database’s maintenance to private firms

  • Not yet ready for prime time: RFID technology

    RFID technology is incorporated into more and more documents (e-passports, enhanced driver’s licenses); trouble is, the technology still suffers from privacy and security vulnerabilities

  • U.S. air travel database fails own privacy tests

    DHS privacy report says the department is in violation of U.S. law and the DHS-EU agreement on the handling of Passenger Name Record (PNR) data

  • Unisys study shows U.S. public trusts biometrics for data protection

    Privacy advocates may be worried about the proliferation of biometrics for identification purposes, but a recent Unisys survey shows that Americans are comfortable with the idea of banks and government agencies asking them for biometric data for identity verification

  • Twenty-one million German bank accounts for sale

    Criminals steal 21 million German bank records; reporters posing as buyers working for a gambling business managed to strike a a price of €0.55 per record, or €12 million for all the data

  • U.S. to restrict laptop searches at border

    Laptops contain e-mails, pictures, financial documents, and more; searching them may offer law enforcement officials far more revealing pictures of travelers than suitcase inspections at airports might yield

  • U.K. government grants itself even more data sharing power

    A U.K. government proposal debated in Parliament this week would increase the ability of different government arms to share data

  • EU moves on data breach notification law

    Security professionals debate the recommendations of independent research to introduce tough European data breach and security regulations

  • Stolen laptops "broadcast" their location to rightful owners

    Huskies researchers develop a software tool which uses the Internet as a homing beam; if the thief uses the stolen laptop to connect to the Internet, the owner receives information on the laptop location (and Macintosh owners also recvied a picture of the thief)

  • Colorado to remove Social Security numbers from public Web sites

    Colorado attorney general asks counties to remove documents containing Social Security numbers from public Web sites, saying that the “The availability of this information online increases the possibility of Colorado citizens becoming the victims of identity theft”

  • DHS: Progress and priorities, II

    Since its creation more than five years ago, DHS has made significant progress — uneven progress — in protecting the United States from dangerous people and goods, protecting the U.S. critical infrastructure, strengthen emergency response, and unifying department operations

  • Germany tightens data protection laws after scandals

    After a wistle-blower revealtions, the German authorities decided o find for themselves how easy it was managed to obtain personal information on consumers; government agents managed, in only a few days, to buy six million items of personal data — for just €850 euros ($1,230); the government decided that tightening of regulations was necessary

  • Calls for tougher debit card regulation

    On Tuesday the Justice Department announced the indictment of eleven people for stealing and selling more than 40 million credit card and debit card numbers; watchgroups say this is evidence, if one were needed, that federal laws governing debit cards should be tougher — and more uniform

  • U.S.-EU private data sharing agreement near

    The United States and the EU are near an agreement to share private data of their citizens, including credit card information, travel history, and internet browsing information; one issue yet to be resolved: the right of EU citizens to sue the U.S. government for mishandling the information