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A US judge ordered Twitter to hand over data of three users in contact with the controversial website WikiLeaks, rejecting arguments the move violated freedom of speech and privacy. President Barack Obama's administration obtained a court order last year seeking information from the Twitter accounts as it considers action against WikiLeaks, which has released a flood of secret diplomatic documents. One of the accounts belongs to an Icelandic lawmaker, Birgitta Jonsdottir. Iceland's Foreign Ministry in January summoned the US ambassador to express "serious concern" about the Twitter order. Magistrate Judge Theresa Buchanan, based in the Washington suburb of Alexandria, Virginia, rejected the argument made by the three Twitter users' that the order would have a "chilling effect" on freedom of speech. Read more: http://www.zeenews.com/news692795.html#ixzz1Gx5lH0D1

Facebook has quietly expanded the availability of technology to automatically identify people in photos, renewing concerns about the privacy practices of the world's top social networking service. The feature, which Facebook automatically enabled for Facebook users, has been expanded from the US to "most countries", Facebook said on its official blog. Its "Tag Suggestions" feature uses facial recognition technology to speed up the process of labeling friends and acquaintances that appear in photos posted on Facebook.

"The officials have already collected the data relating to 33,316 fishermen in 66 villages after conducting an extensive survey in the 10 coastal mandals of the district for issue of tamper-proof ID cards using fingerprinting technology and pooling the information in a centralised database of the centre to better manage the internal security. The ID card comprising details like the name of the fisherman, parents' names, address, educational qualification, ration card number and voter ID card number, would be very be very useful particularly when fishermen were stranded in the high seas at times of natural calamities, he added. In all, 4,190 fishing boats were registered in the district so far as per the Centre's directive, he said."

Many Indians have raised data security and privacy issues over the ambitious UID number project. Now, even the US is concerned that the number could be issued to terrorists through fake ID

"NEW DELHI: "Right to privacy," like other fundamental rights in the Constitution and statutory rights under various laws, will soon become a reality. Union Law Minister Veerappa Moily indicated that a bill in this regard would be introduced in the monsoon session. The Right to Privacy Bill (a copy is with The Hindu) is to provide for such a right to citizens of India and to regulate collection, maintenance, use and dissemination of their personal information. Talking to The Hindu, Mr. Moily said the bill also provided for penal action for violation of such right."

" Internet giant Google said sorry to New Zealanders for collecting personal data from wireless networks for its "Street View" mapping service, in the latest in a series of apologies. The company said it did not realise until earlier this year that cars it was using to photograph public streets were also gathering information known as "payload data" sent over unsecured Wi-Fi systems. Unencrypted information sent on Wi-Fi systems that are not password-protected potentially contains personal information, including the content of emails. "

The Commissionerate Task Force police on Tuesday arrested 13 persons and seized nine computers and a laptop from them on the charge that they were downloading obscene content and circulating them among the youth. According to Deputy Commissioner of Police M. Ravindranath Babu, the task force police team comprising Inspector K. Govindaraju and Sub-Inspector U. Rama Rao conducted raids on internet centres and cell points at Prakashnagar, Governorpet, Moghalrajapuram and Krishna Lanka areas on receiving complaints from local people. All the arrested persons were circulating the obscene content in chips used in mobile phones and computers.

Nineteen Eighty-Four may arrive sooner than you think. And, it will be the income-tax department that could take on the role of an Orwellian Big Brother should the government clear a far-reaching proposal to create a directorate of criminal investigation on the lines of a similar wing of the internal revenue service in the US. Under a blueprint currently being vetted by the I-T department, the directorate will house a centralised repository of data culled from telephone and Internet intercepts, banking and market transactions, cross-border deals and even your friendly neighbourhood ATM. To analyse this data and red-flag suspicious activities, the department will also acquire state-of-the-art forensic tools, including software to follow cash trails, track money laundering, conduct forensic audits, mine books and other texts, as well as plug into overseas servers and social networking sites.

o not be surprised if you are asked to furnish information under more than eight mandatory heads - demographic and biometric - when you go for registration under the Unique Identification (UID) number project in Himachal Pradesh. The state has tapped the UID project at its initial stage and combined it with its own food and civil supplies department project aimed for better delivery of services in future. Along with the eight mandatory questions under the UID project - name, residence, date of birth, photo, all 10 finger prints and iris image - the citizens will now also be asked to provide information about their status on ration cards, PAN cards, LPG connection and bank accounts. This additional information would be used exclusively by the state government for future planning and eliminating duplication in delivery of services by the food and civil supplies and consumer affairs department. The department is the nodal agency for monitoring the UID project in Himachal.

The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation has decided to construct, for the first time, exclusive women's toilets at public places in the city. Charminar and Birla Mandir are among several locations where these conveniences will be constructed. There will be no charge for use of the toilets. The decision has been welcomed by women's welfare organisations and the medical fraternity involved in women's health problems. But they have warned that unless the toilets are clean and hygienic, with sufficient water supply, privacy and security and are easily accessible, they will meet the same fate of disuse and decay as other public toilets in the city.

Social-networking sites such as Facebook, or search engines such as Google, may face court action if they fail to obey planned EU data privacy rules, European Union justice chief Viviane Reding has said. Reding will propose an overhaul of the EU's 16-year-old laws on data protection in the coming months to enforce more safeguards on how personal information is used.

In an attempt to end humiliation of rape victims, the Union Health Ministry has decided to make the "finger test" or the per vaginal (PV) test optional. Till now, rape victims were being subjected to forensic examinations, including the degrading "finger test". The ministry has now made it clear that the PV test would be conducted only "if medically indicated" and with the "consent of the victim". In a letter to all central government hospitals, Union Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad has asked them to follow the new format without any delay. "The word finger testing sounds rude and is not used in the format now. The PV examination will be done only if the doctor feels that it is necessary and that too with the consent of the victim," said a senior official in the ministry. Health Ministry officials along with various experts, including gynaecologists, representatives from the Law and Justice department and forensic experts finalised the format last month. While the format has been simplified, certain descriptions like behavioural symptoms (shame, grief and depression), physical symptoms (pain and discomfort while walking), family history (father being alcoholic, family discord), parental/caretaker history (negligible parental support) have all been removed.

Google on Thursday announced it will begin collecting images in Bangalore for its controversial Street View service, which will be offered on Google Maps. The service will allow you to explore places through its 360-degree, street-level imagery. This, it intends to do by using cars and "trikes" (three-wheel pedicab) fitted with a camera system on top. The vehicles "will start gathering images from select locations in and around Bangalore, such as the Nrityagram Dance Village over the next few weeks," Google said in a communiqué.

The law ministry is working on a proposal to make right to privacy a fundamental right in the Indian Constitution. The right to privacy would include the right to confidentiality of communication, confidentiality of private or family life, protection of his honour and good name, protection from search, detention or exposure of lawful communication between individuals, privacy from surveillance, confidentiality of banking, financial, medical and legal information, protection from identity theft of various kinds, protection of use of a person's photographs, fingerprints, DNA samples and other samples taken at police stations and other places and protection of data relating to individual.

So much so, it has asked the telecoms department to make it mandatory for all mobile phone companies to secure suitable clearances from LEAs before running the Tiger application on their networks. "Use of the (Tiger Text) application by Indian telecom service providers can create operational problems for national security agencies

The ambitious project of one radio frequency identification (RFID) smart tag for all toll plazas across the country is likely to be tested on Delhi-Chandigarh stretch on NH-1 and this would be done on pilot basis. S The RFID based single tag for all tolled roads will be rolled out across the country by 2013. The RFID tag promises to improve vehicle clearance at toll plazas that often experience major traffic snarls since most of the vehicles use cash lanes. The new tags will come cheaper and are likely to shift most of the cash land users to tag users. "You have no option than to go for a technology that will improve traffic flow at toll plazas

In a bid to check smuggling by air passengers of satellite phones, which could be a potential weapon for terrorist activities, the government has made it mandatory for inbound travellers to declare them. A new column has been inserted in the immigration or arrival card. The changes have been implemented following "increasing imports of satellite phones in passenger baggage" without obtaining authorisation, an official communication said. "The CBEC desires that the Commissioners in-charge of International Airports ensure that instructions are complied with and correct forms are used by the arriving passengers," a Central Board of Excise and Customs circular said.

SAN FRANCISCO: An internet privacy group that prodded US regulators to scrutinize Google Inc is miffed about getting cut out of a class action settlement over the search behemoth's Buzz social network. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) objected to the settlement in a court filing this week, claiming Google and others decided to fund groups already benefiting from the company's largesse.

Search giant Google Inc has settled with US regulators investigating privacy problems that cropped up in its botched roll-out of social network Buzz, the Federal Trade Commission said. Under the deal, Google agreed to have independent privacy audits every two years for the next 20 years. "This order technically applies only to Google but we think that many of the provisions of the order are good business practices" that the rest of the industry should follow, said Jessica Rich, deputy director of the FTC's Consumer Protection Bureau.