James Slack and Michael Seamark report: The Home Secretary has halted Gary McKinnon’s extradition to consider new medical evidence about the computer hacker’s mental state. The Asperger’s victim had been told he could be sent to the U.S. – where he faces 60 years in jail for hacking into military computers – by the end…
Security boss calls for end to net anonymity
Dan Goodin reports: The CEO of Russia’s No. 1 anti-virus package has said that the internet’s biggest security vulnerability is anonymity, calling for mandatory internet passports that would work much like driver licenses do in the offline world. The comments by Eugene Kaspersky, who is also the founder of Kaspersky Lab, came during an interview…
Met under fire over picture database
Michael Peel, James Boxell and Marc Vallée report: Scotland Yard has been accused of “tarring the innocent” with Big Brother-style surveillance after it emerged that it holds at least 1,500 photographs of protesters on a computer database, many of whom have not been convicted of a crime. Lawyers and privacy experts questioned whether the image…
CBP officer charged with unlawful access to govt databases
Nogales, Ariz.-based U.S. Customs and Border Protection Officer Natan Ben-Shabat, 42, of Tucson, made his initial appearance last week before U.S. Magistrate Judge Hector C. Estrada on charges of Unauthorized Access to a Government Computer. Ben-Shabat was released pending a December 1, 2009, trial date. The three-count information alleges that while employed as a U.S….