Tom Reilly reports: Police will soon have sweeping powers to search people at random, including strip-search, even if there is no reasonable suspicion those targeted have done anything wrong. The ”stop and search” tactic is part of a law and order crackdown set to be passed by State Parliament, despite the Government conceding that the…
NV: Metro admits to improper release of criminal history data
J. Patrick Coolican reports: At least 12 Metro employees have been found since 2005 to be improperly accessing and disseminating criminal history information for reasons unrelated to police work, according to a Metro filing in a recent lawsuit. Given Metro’s roughly 6,000 employees, that means one in 500, or 0.2 percent, have been caught improperly…
Viviane Reding picked to re-write EU data protection laws
Paul Meller reports: Viviane Reding, the European Commissioner who for the past five years has championed consumer rights in the telecommunications and IT arenas, has been picked to take charge of a re-write of the European Union’s 15-year-old data protection laws due to start next year. Reding is famous for slashing the cost of roaming…
Virgin Media to trial filesharing monitoring system
Chris Williams reports: Virgin Media will trial deep packet inspection technology to measure the level of illegal filesharing on its network, but plans not to tell the customers whose traffic will be examined. The system, CView, will be provided by Detica, a BAE subsidiary that specialises in large volume data collection and processing, and whose…