international law

Patriot Act can 'obtain' data in Europe, researchers say

European data stored in the "cloud" could be acquired and inspected by U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies, despite Europe's strong data protection laws, university researchers have suggested.

A research paper written by legal experts at the University of Amsterdam's Institute for Information Law and titled "Cloud Computing in Higher Education and Research Institutions and the USA Patriot Act" supports previous reports that the antiterror Patriot Act could theoretically be used by U.S. law enforcement to bypass strict European privacy laws to acquire citizen data within the European Union.

The Patriot Act, … Read more

NASA hacker judicial review date set

A date has been set for a High Court judicial review of NASA hacker Gary McKinnon's case.

The review, set for June 9 and 10, will focus on whether McKinnon's diagnosis with Asperger's syndrome was taken into account during his appeals process.

McKinnon's mother, Janis Sharp, told ZDNet UK about the judicial review date via an e-mail on Friday. Sharp said she had felt "broken" and "beaten up" by a Crown Prosecution Service decision on Thursday not to prosecute McKinnon in the U.K., but that she was now "getting back … Read more