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US intelligence: Snowden's latest leaks 'road map' for adversaries
The US Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has issued a response to the latest revelations from Edward Snowden with a warning that the information is "not news," but has nevertheless harmed the agency's ability to keep America and its allies safe.
On Thursday ProPublica, The New York Times, and The Guardian …
Yahoo! Comes! Clean! On! Global! Government! Data! Requests!
Yahoo! has joined such companies as Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter in pledging to release semiannual reports on how often it responds to requests from governments for information about its users.
The first such report, published on Friday, summarizes data compiled from January 1 through June 30, 2013, and it shows …
Now we know why UK spooks simply shrugged at SSL encryption
Analysis In July 2012, Britain's top spook Charles Farr made a rare public appearance: sat across a table from MPs in Parliament, he was quizzed by backbenchers scrutinising Home Secretary Theresa May's widely criticised plan to snoop on Brits' internet connections.
At the time, the government was trying to get politicos to agree that …
Oz government-in-waiting releases new online child protection policy
Australia's Liberal/National coalition, the right-of-centre political bloc likely to take power after Saturday's general election, has released its second "Policy to Enhance Online Safety for Children" in 24 hours, and this time it has omitted a proposed national smut filter that would have applied to every new mobile phone and …
Australia's anti-smut internet filter blueprint lasts LESS THAN A DAY
Australia goes to the polls on Saturday to elect a new national government - but the likely winners of the election have just suffered an embarrassing reversal after a day during which they proposed, then withdrew, a plan for a national anti-smut internet filter.
The proposal was contained in a policy document published today, …
Gov IT write-off: Universal Credit system flushes £34m down toilet
The UK's spending watchdog has scolded the Department for Work and Pensions for so far wasting £34m of taxpayer money on its botched attempt to implement a one-dole-to-rule-them-all IT system.
In a stinging rebuke of the government's handling of Universal Credit, the National Audit Office concluded that the DWP, which is led by …
Australia's opposition cuts funds to IT research outfit
National ICT Australia (NICTA), the IT research organisation established by a Liberal/National coalition government in 2002 may not survive the next government of that political persuasion, after the body that funds it was earmarked to have its funding cut.
Australia goes to the polls on Saturday, with the right-leaning Liberal/ …
Kim Dotcom quits Mega to head new political party, fight extradition
Internet mogul Kim Dotcom has stepped down from his position as managing director of file-sharing site Mega to focus on his legal battles and his political ambitions.
The loquacious entrepreneur says he plans to form a new political party in New Zealand, of which he will be head, and will lobby for "a new submarine cable, fair …
NAO: UK border bods not up to scratch, despite billion-pound facial recog tech
The UK Border Force's inefficient use of technology is one reason it's failing to carry out enough customs checks or detections of illegal immigrants, according to the National Audit Office.
The NAO said in a report that border staff managed to cut immigration queue times down during the London Olympics, but only at the expense …
Universal Credit CRUNCHED: Dole handouts IT system to be rebuilt
The man brought in to steer the government's crisis-hit one-dole-to-rule-them-all IT system has admitted that the Department for Work and Pension's Universal Credit project has been poorly managed and needs to be completely overhauled.
Howard Shiplee was hired by Work and Pensions Secretary of State Iain Duncan Smith in May this …
UK fraud office hauls Olympus into court over accounting scandal
Japanese camera firm Olympus will be prosecuted by the UK's Serious Fraud Office along with its British subsidiary Gyrus Group following a £1bn accounting scandal at the company.
The SFO has been investigating both companies after three of Olympus' former execs admitted to falsifying financial statements, overstating net assets …
MPs blocked from ogling 'web smut' 300,000 times – WHILE IN PARLIAMENT
British politicians triggered grumble-flick website filters within the Houses of Parliament more than 300,000 times in the past year.
Figures released under the Freedom of Information Act show that ministers and their staff upset the anti-porn blocking systems on the Westminster network 309,316 times in 12 months - a rate of 850 …
AT&T helping US drug cops in 'vast, troubling' phone snoop scheme
The US Drug Enforcement Administration has enlisted telecom giant AT&T to develop a massive telephone records database that may put the National Security Agency's domestic phone surveillance to shame.
Dubbed the Hemisphere Project, the partnership sees AT&T employees working closely alongside DEA agents to supply them with phone …
Deloitte research says NBN a winner for households
As Australia races towards a federal election likely to kill off the country's current model for a national broadband network, the (probably) outgoing government has released a report saying the annual value of the network to households will be in the order of $AU3,800.
The study, by Deloitte Access Economics, suggests that most …
Tory think tank: Hey, civil servants! Work with startups to save £70bn
Analysis Articulated-truck-loads of paperwork awaiting the ministrations of a rubber stamp- or pen-wielding civil servant should soon be a thing of the past, according to Tory think tank Policy Exchange.
It wants to see bureaucrats mashing up APIs with Silicon Roundabout startups instead and leaders "driv[ing] digital into the DNA of …
Verizon, Experian and pals bag £25m to inspect Brits' identities for UK gov
The first private companies to win UK government contracts to verify Brits' identities online have been named. And PayPal is absent from the list despite being in the running for a slice of the £25m pot of public cash.
Credit agency Experian, the Post Office, Brit upstart Mydex, Verizon and crypto biz Digidentity have now inked …
Syrian Electronic Army hacks US Marines, asks 'bros' to fight on its side
A US marines recruitment website, www.marines.com, was hacked and defaced by hacktivists from the infamous Syrian Electronic Army over the weekend.
The attack was used to post a propaganda message (full text here) claiming that the Syrian Army have been fighting Al Qaeda insurgents for three years and describing Obama as a " …
Beat the UK's incoming smut filter: Pre-censor your grumble flicks
SFW Smut-lovers across the UK will be able to beat Cameron's censorship ban and watch grumble movies - as long as they don't mind all the rude bits being cut out.
A new website is now offering fully Tory-proof filth by taking pornographic films and then slicing away all the naughty moments, leaving only the appallingly scripted …
Telstra, Moto in lead for $AU450m-plus wireless contract
Telstra and Motorola have been named as the preferred tenderers for a major refresh of the Queensland Government's public safety networks.
Over the 15 year life of the contract, the government expects the network to cost $AU457.3 million, with the first $AU56.7 million allocated this year to get coverage in Brisbane, the Gold …
Brit music body BPI lobbies hard for 'UK file-sharers database'
Britain's biggest ISPs are in talks with copyright-holders to find ways to nag broadband subscribers about illegal file-sharing or downloading that may have happened on their connections.
But plans apparently tabled by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) that include maintaining a database of customers whose IP addresses are …
Taiwan bids to bolster security with free malware database
Taiwan’s National Centre for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) has launched what it claims to be the world’s first free malware database designed to help businesses, academics and researchers better identify and defend against criminally-coded attacks.
The centre, one of the 11 which comprise Taiwan’s National Applied Research …
Australian coalition promises digital pigeonhole for all
Australian coalition promises digital pigeonhole for all Policy document outlines procurement, industry assistance plans Australia's government-in-waiting opposition parties have released their “Policy for E-Government and the Digital Economy”.
Available here as a PDF, the policy offers the following four “policy measures”: …
Oz government expanding data centre footprint
The Australian government is continuing its cloud rollout with a new tender for data centre services.
In line with a policy that's attracted criticism from international providers, the government is sticking with its requirement that Australian government data is kept onshore.
The tender, posted on August 30, is looking for …
Snowden journo's boyfriend 'had crypto key for thumb-drive files written down' - cops
Journalists and their associates involved in the Edward Snowden NSA leaks affair followed almost unbelievably poor security practices while handling top-secret government files, according to a statement made in court by a British official today.
The hearing was looking into the case of David Miranda, the partner of journalist …
China: Forget running water, bumpkins. Have some lovely broadband
The Chinese government has pledged to provide nationwide broadband coverage by 2020, an ambitious goal which should see significant extra investment in all kinds of networks, both wired and wireless, in order to reach the country’s vast rural areas.
This will almost certainly change the global supply ecosystem for all types of …
HMRC nabs 5 after £500k 'cyber attack' on tax systems
Computer systems operated by the UK's tax authority have been subjected to a cyber attack in an attempted tax scam, it has said.
HMRC said that it suspects five men it arrested of using "illegally obtained personal data from third parties" to set up fake tax self-assessment accounts online in a bid to "steal large sums of false …
Steelie Neelie accused of killing €0.01-per-megabyte roaming fee cap in Europe
EU Commissioner Neelie Kroes has reportedly dropped her plan to dramatically slash wholesale mobile roaming fees, a move that could have helped drive down Europeans' phone bills.
In a fresh draft proposal for the future of telecoms on the Continent, seen by Reuters this week, Steelie Neelie did not mention the caps on charges as …
UK gov dials 999 over Serco prison escort fraud claims
Outsourcing giant Serco is being probed by the cops over allegations of fraud relating to its Prisoner Escort and Custody Services (PECS) contract with the Ministry of Justice.
Under the terms of the contract, Serco is supposed to ferry defendants from prison to court on time and is measured against this.
The suspected fraud …
Qld Health starts briefing industry on IT refresh
Queensland Health, home to the now-famous payroll debacle that has cost executive jobs, a billion worth of budget blow-outs and earned IBM a ban from the sunshine state, is embarking on an IT refresh.
The agency, via the Department of Science, Information Technology, Innovation and the Arts (DSITIA), has announced a partners …
Obama prepares to crawl up NSA's ass with microscope
President Barack Obama has quietly put together an intelligence review group to look at how to make people more comfortable with the US's snooping.
In a short statement, the White House said Obama had met with the panel, made up of intelligence officials including former CIA deputy director Michael Morrell and academics like …
Another big SAP project hits the rocks in Oz
Fujitsu has become the latest service provider to be associated with a failed SAP project in Australia, after a project it led saw the buyer underwhelmed despite going over time and over budget.
The project in question was an asset management system for the government of Australia's Northern Territory. The Territory is huge – …
United Nations to grill US over alleged NSA bugging of its HQ – report
The United Nations has said that it plans to contact the US over a report that the NSA had bugged its New York headquarters.
Germany's Der Spiegel, citing secret documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, reported on Sunday that the US had "cracked the encryption" of the internal video conferencing system at the UN in …
UK gov call-centre serfs told: Fondle your button for HAPPINESS
Has anyone in the world ever phoned up a call centre to pass on how overjoyed they are about an organisation and its services?
The British government certainly seems to think so, because it's introduced a new on-screen button for its headset-sporting apparatchiks to hit whenever someone rings up to heap praise.
Designed by El …
Guardian teams up with New York Times for future Snowden GCHQ coverage
Faced with a mounting backlash from UK authorities, The Guardian newspaper has announced that it will collaborate with The New York Times to release further documents detailing the activities of the UK's Government Communications Headquarters.
"In a climate of intense pressure from the UK government, the Guardian decided to …
Silicon Valley slurped millions of NSA cash for PRISM participation
New documents from Edward Snowden published in The Guardian have shown for the first time the financial relationship between the NSA and some of the largest names in the tech business over the PRISM data-collection scheme.
Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Facebook are all named in a document, dated December 2012, relating to the …
Russian spyboss brands Tor a crook's paradise, demands a total ban
Russia's spybosses are contemplating blocking access to the Tor network and similar privacy tools that try to prevent netizens from being traced online.
The proposal - pushed by Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (the FSB) - sets out a clampdown on technologies top spooks branded tools for "weapon traffickers, …
Germany warns: You just CAN'T TRUST some Windows 8 PCs
Microsoft's new touchy Windows 8 operating system is so vulnerable to prying hackers that Germany's businesses and government should not use it, the country's authorities have warned in a series of leaked documents.
According to files published in German weekly Die Zeit, the Euro nation's officials fear Germans' data is not …
Total cost of that axed NHS IT FIASCO to taxpayers: £10.1bn
The shambolic nationwide NHS patient record computer system, abandoned by Whitehall in 2011, will ultimately cost UK taxpayers a staggering £10.1bn.
US-headquartered Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC), alongside UK telecoms giant BT, failed to fully implement the massive project, sparking widespread derision before the plug was …
ASIO seeks new hires for telecoms interception teams
Australia's security intelligence organisation (ASIO) is hiring a clutch of telecoms intelligence staff.
The agency is after a new “Assistant Director Telecommunications Interception” , a pair of ”Telecommunications Investigations Officers (we've linked to the better-paid of the two positions) and also a “Telecommunications …
Corruption cops warn on old-school project management
The New South Wales Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) has cast its eye over the IT sector, and suspects that there's a gap between project management practise and the real world that opens the door to corruption.
The issue the ICAC is trying to address is the way that a shift from staff to contractors can open the …
Oh noes! New 'CRISIS DISASTER' at Fukushima! Oh wait, it's nothing. Again
The world's media is working itself into an unedifying state of hysteria (again) following the news that radioactive water has leaked from a holding tank at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, damaged two years back by a tsunami and earthquake which led to the death and injury of more than 20,000 people - though not a single one …
Assange's WikiLeaks Party running-mate departs in blaze of glory
Arguments over how the Australian political party founded by Julian AssangeTM, the WikiLeaks Party, directs votes in the Australian Senate have prompted the resignation of high-profile candidate and Assange's running mate in Victoria, Leslie Cannold, who announced today: "To keep being a candidate feels like I'm breaking faith …
