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Domain: rte.ie
Stories and comments across the archive that link to rte.ie.
Stories · 12
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German Minister Wants Facial Recognition Software At Airports and Train Stations (www.rte.ie)
An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes a surprising report from Ireland's National Public Service Broadcaster (based on a report in the German newspaper Bild am Sonntag): Germany's Interior Minister wants to introduce facial recognition software at train stations and airports to help identify terror suspects following two Islamist attacks in the country last month... "Then, if a suspect appears and is recognised, it will show up in the system," he told the paper. He said a similar system was already being tested for unattended luggage, which the camera reports after a certain number of minutes. The article reports that other countries are also considering the technology. -
Sweden Makes Another Request To Ecuador For Permission To Question Assange (thelocal.se)
cold fjord writes: Thelocal.se reports that Sweden's state prosecutor's office said today that it has formally asked Ecuador in writing for permission to interrogate Julian Assange. They don't know when Ecuador will reply. The request follows the signing of an agreement in December on general legal cooperation between the two countries. Ecuador required the agreement before it would consent to an interview of Assange. The Swedish prosecutors want to question Assange regarding rape allegations that have a statute of limitations that run till 2020. The statue of limitations for other sex crimes Assange has been accused of have expired while Assange has been in hiding. Sweden had previously asked to question Assange in the embassy, but Ecuador declined permission. In another peculiar twist to the case, RTE.ie is reporting that Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino has stated that the exact procedures that will be used are not known, but that Ecuadorian prosecutors will be the ones actually questioning Assange although Swedish officials can be present. Sweden's view on this is unclear. -
Irish Data Protection Commissioner Ordered To Investigate Facebook Data (www.rte.ie)
New submitter bigtomrodney writes: Following last week's ruling by the European Court of Justice ruling on Safe Harbor, the Irish High Court has quashed the former decision of the Data Protection Commissioner not to investigate Facebook. In the current vacuum of legislation and given that this challenge is directly focused on U.S. intelligence agency's gathering of European citizen's data, this makes for interesting times ahead. See this story from earlier this month for a bit more background; all this fuss comes down mostly to efforts by one determined gadfly (Max Schrems) and the attention he's brought to the issue of privacy when data crosses national (or at least notional) borders. -
Official MPG Figures Unrealistic, Says UK Auto Magazine
Taco Cowboy (5327) writes "Research carried out by UK consumer magazine What Car? which concluded that official manufacturers' MPG figures are unrealistic. Based on the research, new car buyers in the UK who trust official, government-sanctioned fuel economy figures will pay an average of £1,000 (€1,216) more than they expect on fuel over a three-year period. Since launching True MPG two years ago, What Car? has tested almost 400 cars in real-world conditions, using cutting-edge test equipment and achieving economy figures that are on average 19% lower than the government figures." -
FBI Admits It Controlled Tor Servers Behind Mass Malware Attack
MikeatWired writes "It wasn't ever seriously in doubt, but the FBI yesterday acknowledged that it secretly took control of Freedom Hosting last July, days before the servers of the largest provider of ultra-anonymous hosting were found to be serving custom malware designed to identify visitors. Freedom Hosting's operator, Eric Eoin Marques, had rented the servers from an unnamed commercial hosting provider in France, and paid for them from a bank account in Las Vegas. It's not clear how the FBI took over the servers in late July, but the bureau was temporarily thwarted when Marques somehow regained access and changed the passwords, briefly locking out the FBI until it gained back control. The new details emerged in local press reports from a Thursday bail hearing in Dublin, Ireland, where Marques, 28, is fighting extradition to America on charges that Freedom Hosting facilitated child pornography on a massive scale. He was denied bail today for the second time since his arrest in July. On August 4, all the sites hosted by Freedom Hosting — some with no connection to child porn — began serving an error message with hidden code embedded in the page. Security researchers dissected the code and found it exploited a security hole in Firefox to identify users of the Tor Browser Bundle, reporting back to a mysterious server in Northern Virginia. The FBI was the obvious suspect, but declined to comment on the incident. The FBI also didn't respond to inquiries from WIRED today. But FBI Supervisory Special Agent Brooke Donahue was more forthcoming when he appeared in the Irish court yesterday to bolster the case for keeping Marque behind bars." -
Irish Judge Orders 'The Internet' To Delete Video
New submitter edanto writes "A young Irish man wrongly accused of jumping from a taxi without paying the fare has secured a judgement from an Irish court ordering the video removed from the entire Internet. Experts from Google, Youtube, Facebook, and others must tell the court in two weeks if this is technically possible. The thing is, the video is accurate, it is only a comment that wrongly identified Eoin McKeogh as the fare-jumper in the video that is inaccurate. It's not clear if the judge has made any orders about the comment." -
Faulty Patch Freezes Millions of UK Bank Accounts
frisket writes with news from The Register about ongoing problems for some UK banks: "'RBS and Natwest have failed to register inbound payments for up to three days, customers have reported, leaving people unable to pay for bills, travel and even food. The banks — both owned by RBS Group — have confirmed that technical glitches have left bank accounts displaying the wrong balances and certain services unavailable. There is no fix date available.' Customers of NatWest subsidiary Ulster Bank in Ireland have also been left without banking services. RTE reports that 'the problem had arisen within the systems of parent bank RBOS when an incorrect patch was applied.'" -
7000 e-Voting Machines Now Deemed Worthless By Irish Government
First time accepted submitter lampsie writes "Despite spending at least 51 million euro over the last decade buying and storing 7000 e-voting machines from Dutch firm Nedap, the Irish Finance minister has announced that they are now 'worthless'. The machines were originally trialled in 2002 on three regional elections, but a nationwide rollout in 2004 was put on hold after a confidential report expressed serious concern over the security of the voting machines. According to the report, the integrity of the ballot could not be guaranteed with the equipment and controls used. Several years on, and tens of millions later, it looks like the pen and paper ballot will remain for now." -
Irish Judge Orders 13-Year-Old To Surrender Xbox
An anonymous reader writes "In Belfast a High Court judge has ordered a 13 year old to surrender his Xbox to the authorities. The boy was charged with a series of robberies and in the bail application the judge asked the boy what he owned that meant a lot to him. The teenager said it was his Xbox games system. The judge told the youth that the surrender of the Xbox would show him what it was like to have something he really valued taken from him." -
Ireland's Largest ISP Settles With Record Industry
An anonymous reader writes "In what has been billed as a world first, four music companies and Irish ISP Eircom have agreed to work together to end illegal music downloading. The Irish branches of the record companies (EMI Records Ltd, Sony BMG Music Entertainment Ltd, Universal Music Ltd and Warner Music Ltd.) brought a High Court action against Eircom last March which has resulted in this settlement after eight days of trial. Eircom will be implementing a three-step process — informing a subscriber that their IP address has been detected infringing copyright; warning the subscriber that if they do not stop they will be disconnected; and finally disconnecting the user if they fail to heed the warning. Which technology they will be using to spy on their customers is currently unknown. EMI and the other record companies have recommended US-based Audible Magic, which (among other things) claims to block copyright violating web content from sites like Youtube and MySpace. However, digital surveillance is nothing new in Ireland and Eircom may have already tested and implemented the necessary technologies." -
ISP Sued By Irish RIAA
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "An ISP in Ireland has been sued by the Big Four record labels because its subscribers have engaged in P2P sharing of the record companies' song files. The record companies claim the ISP should be buying Audible Magic's CopySense, the software being peddled by the RIAA's expert witness, which supposedly would filter out copyright infringement. Of course, not everyone agrees." -
MIT Media Lab Europe: An Obituary
David R writes "Media Lab Europe, offspring of the famous MIT Media Lab, is closing its doors forever, as announced today. The corporate funding strategy hasn't worked out. Strangled by the stopped river of Irish government funding, the lab ceases its operations. Having worked there for quite some time, I can give you the gory details and a lot of background on MLE's closure. It has sure been the fanciest, geekiest and most open work, research and play environment I've seen. The moral? I think it is questionable whether basic or visionary, interdisciplinary (and often badly evaluated) research will be funded by private corporations. But secondly, European companies need a culture of sponsorship, which has existed in America for a long time."