Canada forces personal data from ISPs

Canada is considering legislation allowing the country's police and national security agency to readily access the online communications and personal information of ISP subscribers, reports The Register.

"We must ensure that law enforcement has the necessary tools to catch up to the bad guys and ultimately bring them to justice. Twenty-first century technology calls for 21st-century tools," justice minister Rob Nicholson said in announcing two new Bills at a press conference in Ottawa.

The Technical Assistance for Law Enforcement in the 21st Century Act would require ISPs to install "intercept-capable" equipment on their networks, and provide police with "timely access" to subscribers' personal information, including names, street addresses and IP addresses.

The future of the controversial ID cards scheme is in further doubt, after reports that the UK government has delayed awarding a key contract until after the next general election, says Computing.co.uk.

Fujitsu, IBM and Thales have been bidding to be selected as supplier for one of the core deals in the £4.8 billion programme - for designing and producing the actual identity cards.

But, according to The Financial Times, the Home Office has delayed the project, and said it might not be awarded until autumn 2010, after the election that must be held next year.

Protests have forced China to clarify whether Internet-filtering software has to be used on every new PC, says the BBC.

From July, every PC sold in China was supposed to be supplied with the Green Dam Youth Escort software.

The software was created to stop people looking at "offensive" content such as pornographic or violent Web sites.

An Atlas 5 rocket thundered to life and streaked into space on Thursday, hurling two Nasa spacecraft toward the moon for a $583 million mission to scout out landing sites for future manned missions and to search for evidence of hidden ice near its frigid poles, reports CNet.

One spacecraft will map the cratered surface from a perilously low 50km-high orbit, while the other will blast out 350 tons of pulverised rock and soil for chemical analysis, digging a shallow 20m-wide crater in a kamikaze crash visible from Earth.

"First, we want to identify safe landing sites," says project scientist Rich Vondrak. "Then, we want to search for resources on the moon. And, finally, we want to get better insight into the space radiation environment and how it may be harmful to humans."

The Universal Music Group, owned by Vivendi, and other record labels were awarded $1.92 million on Thursday in the retrial of a Minnesota woman accused of swapping music over the Kazaa Internet service, says The New York Times.

The federal jury in Minneapolis said the woman, Jammie Thomas-Rasset (32) of Brainerd, should pay $80 000 for each of the 24 songs that were posted on the site so others could download them.

The first time the case went to trial, in 2007, a jury awarded $9 250 a song, or $222 000.