Chris Berg writes in The Age: What’s the point of having a charter of human rights if it just gets ignored? The Summary Offences and Control of Weapons Acts Amendment 2009 is burrowing its way through State Parliament at the moment. Designed to tackle ”knife violence”, this bill will give police an extraordinary new array…
Category: Surveillance
Man pleads guilty to stalking ESPN’s Erin Andrews
The L.A. Times and KTLA report: An Illinois man has pleaded guilty to stalking ESPN reporter Erin Andrews and shooting videos of her that he posted on the Internet and tried to sell, federal authorities said today. Michael David Barrett, 48, of Westmont, Ill., admitted that he had the intent to “harass or to cause…
Israel tests biometric database
John Oates had this news report in the The Register earlier this week: The Israeli Knesset has voted in favour of a bill for a compulsory biometric database of all citizens. The Biometrics Database Law passed the Knesset 40 votes in favour to 11 against. A big row over privacy forced the bill back to…
In France, your employer can read files on your computer if you don’t tag them as personal
Cecile Martin writes: By a decision of October 21, 2009 (n°07-43877), the French Supreme Court ruled that files created by an employee on a computer issued by his employer for work purposes were presumed professional unless the employee identified them clearly as personal. This being said, the Court concluded that the employer was entitled to…