Friday, June 19, 2009

Netizens Of Iran Fighting Back Internet Censorship

As the disturbing events unfold in Iran, with reports of Internet censorship and government crackdowns on communications as the political unrest continues, a search engine developed in India is providing a ray of hope for those trying to tunnel under the radar. Indian developed Yauba.com is touted as the world's first privacy safe, real-time search engine, offering Iranian protesters anonymous access to information from outside the country which would otherwise have been blocked by Iranian censors.

SOURCE: TWEAKDOWN

The Technical Assistance For Law Enforcement In The 21st Century Act Of Canada

The Conservative government is trying to give police better access to online communications, introducing a new bill Thursday that will force ISPs to hand over subscriber data without a warrant and implement intercept-capable technologies.

Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan introduced The Technical Assistance for Law Enforcement in the 21st Century Act in an effort to modernize Canada’s Criminal Code to keep up with the Internet and other emerging technologies. Without a legal requirement for ISPs to make their networks wiretappable, the Conservatives argued that criminals will continue to exploit online “safe havens.”

“What the government is proposing today is new legislation that will update our legal framework for interception that was designed nearly 40 years ago in the era of the rotary telephone,” Van Loan said at an Ottawa press conference. “We are simply seeking to modernize our laws to reflect the realities of a 21st (century) high-tech society.”

US Congress Showed Concerns Over E-Mail Surveillance By NSA

The US' National Security Agency is facing scrutiny over the breadth of its domestic surveillance program. According to critics in Congress, its recent penetrations of private telephone calls and emails are broader than previously stated, The New York Times reports.

A new law, enacted by Congress in 2008, gave the NSA greater freedom to collect American's private messages as long as such collections were an incidental byproduct of investigating people "reasonably believed" to be overseas. But it is difficult to distinguish between email being sent by ordinary Americans and being sent from foreign countries — a gray area that's driven some lawmakers to question whether the privacy of Americans in general is being adequately protected.

SOURCE: MARKETINGVOX

Crime and Criminal Tracking Network And Systems Of India

With a view to ensure speedy and transparent stations through Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems. The Informatinvestigation, the Centre today cleared a Rs 2,000 crore project of interlinking all police ion Technology enabled project proposal — Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS) — with an outlay of Rs 2,000 crore in the 11th Five Year Plan was cleared by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

The CCTNS project aims at creating a comprehensive and integrated system for enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of policing at the police station level by adopting principles of e-Governance, Union Home Minister P Chidambaram told reporters here. The objectives of the CCTNS project are streamlining investigation and prosecution processes, strengthening of intelligence gathering machinery, improved public delivery system, citizen-friendly interface and nationwide sharing of information on crime and criminals. "This is a critical requirement in the context of the present day internal security scenario," Chidambaram said.

It will facilitate collection, storage, retrieval, analysis, transfer and sharing of data and information among police stations, district, state headquarters and other organisation or agencies, including those at Government of India level, the Union Minister said.

The system will also help in enabling and assisting the senior police officers in better management of police force, besides keeping track of the progress of the crime and criminal investigation, he said.

People will also be able to file complaints to concerned police station and can get status of complaints or cases registered. Besides, copies of FIRs, postmortem reports and other permissible documents can also be obtained through this system, he said.

The project, to be completed in three years, would be initiated by the Ministry of Home Affairs and implemented by the National Crime Records Bureau. "The CCTNS project is to be implemented in a manner where the major role would lie with the state governments in order to bring in the requisite stakes, ownership and commitment...Apart from the required review and monitoring of project implementation on a continuing basis," he said.

With the launching of CCTNS, the erstwhile Common Integrated Police Application (CIPA) programme would be subsumed into it in a manner that the work already done there under is not disrupted. "CIPA had been initiated to computerize and automate the functioning of police stations with a view to bringing in efficiency and transparency in various processes and functions at the police station level and improve service delivery to the citizens," Chidambaram said. So far, 2,760 police stations, out of a total of around 14,000 police stations across the country, have been covered under the scheme.

SOURCE: BUSINESS STANDARD

NATO Would Develop Strategies For Cyber Defense Activities

According to Kenneth Geers of NATO's Cooperative Cyber Defense Center of Excellence, located in Tallinn, Estonia, the challenge for cybersecurity operations these days is keeping law up to date with the latest threats. "Government and militaries and intelligence organizations can't by law do anything that has not been approved and told they can do," he says. The center has been tasked with developing concepts and strategies for cyberdefense activities, as well as with clarifying the issue for government policymakers.

SOURCE: SMARTBRIEF