HSBC admits huge Swiss bank data theft

About 24,000 clients of HSBC's private banking operation in Switzerland had personal details stolen by a former employee, the company has admitted.
In December, HSBC said that just 10 account holders were affected by the theft, which happened three years ago.
The information stolen concerns 15,000 accounts that are still active. Another 9,000 accounts have been closed since the theft.
HSBC says that it does not think the data can be used to access accounts.
"We deeply regret this situation and unreservedly apologise to our clients for this threat to their privacy," said Alexandre Zeller, chief executive of HSBC Private Bank (Suisse).
"We are determined to protect our clients' interests and are taking every necessary measure to do so, actively contacting all our clients with Swiss-based accounts," he said.
The former employee, Herve Falciani, who worked in HSBC's IT division, fled to France while under investigation in Switzerland.
French authorities subsequently seized the data, and then passed it to the Swiss Federal Prosecutor.
Switzerland's financial and banking regulator said it had launched "formal administrative proceedings against HSBC" over the security breach, adding that the stolen data was "extensive".
HSBC, which first learnt of a data breach in December 2008, said it had since invested 100m Swiss francs ($93.3m; £62.3m) to upgrade and improve the security of its data systems.
Mr Zeller said, however, that it was "still unclear how Falciani managed to steal the information".
He said that HSBC had only become aware of the extent of the leak after Swiss authorities received the information from France and then alerted the bank on 3 March.
HSBC said that the account holders were based in several European countries, including Britain.
Tax evasion
News of the theft comes as the US and some countries in Europe try to crack down on tax evasion through the use of overseas accounts.
In recent years there has been pressure on Switzerland and Liechtenstein to become more transparent about accounts held there.
This is thought to have led to some bank employees stealing account data and passing it to tax authorities.
In Germany, an anonymous informer has offered to sell data stolen from an unnamed Swiss bank to tax officials.
Previously, Germany bought similar stolen data about clients of a bank in Liechtenstein. Some of this information was handed to tax authorities in the UK, which is also thought to have paid for the data.
French tax authorities are thought to be investigating up to 3,000 of its nationals using bank accounts outside the country.
Government authorities have defended paying for stolen data as in the public interest. However, the practice has been strongly criticised.
The UK's Revenue & Customs (HMRC) office paid around £100,000 for information about its taxpayers with bank accounts in Liechtenstein, according to accountants UHY Hacker Young.
"Paying criminals for data stolen from banks is highly questionable," said the firm's tax partner, Roy Maugham.
"If people know that there is a market for this data, they will steal it in expectation that HMRC or another tax authority will hand over a six figure sum," he said.

China warns Google to comply with censorship laws

China's top internet official has warned that Google will "pay the consequences" if it continues to go against Chinese law.
Google announced in January that it would no longer comply with China's internet censorship laws.
It warned that it may shut down google.cn because of censorship and a hacking attack on the portal.
Minister of Industry and Information Technology Li Yizhong was speaking at China's annual legislation session.
"We need to preserve our nation's interest, our people's interest, we cannot be relaxed with any information that will cause harm to the stability of our society, to our system, and to the health of our under-age young people," he said.
"So, of course, what needs to be shut down will be shut down, what needs to be blocked will be blocked."
'Up to them'
Google began operations in China in 2006 to widespread criticism. While many argued Google was complicit in the censorship imposed by Chinese government, Google insisted it was nevertheless serving the public interest even though it was furnishing censored results.
Relations between China and Google cooled in January after what Google described as a sophisticated cyber attack in which the webmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists were targeted.
Since then, the firm has been in talks with Chinese officials about how to provide an unfiltered service but still remain within the law. Google chief executive Eric Schmidt said this week that he hoped the results of those consultations would be revealed soon.
Mr Li said that whether the firm quits China or not is "up to them", saying the internet would flourish in China regardless.
"I hope that Google will abide and respect the Chinese government's laws and regulations," he said.
"But, if you betray Chinese laws and regulations... it means that you are unfriendly, irresponsible, and you will have to pay the consequences."
Google is a distant second in search engine stakes in China, holding less than a third of the market; rival Baidu has about 60%.

Net clash for web police projects

Social media activists are up in arms over plans by the UK's police watchdog for a project with the same name as an existing web initiative.
MyPolice.org was set up in mid-2009 to funnel feedback from victims of crime and others to police forces.
But Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) has unveiled plans for a project based around a site called Mypolice.org.uk.
The MyPolice.org founders say they may change their name to avoid confusion.
Force feedback
"This came completely out of the blue," said Lauren Currie, one of the founders of MyPolice.org.
Ms Currie said she and co-founder Sarah Drummond have been working on MyPolice.org since the summer of 2009 and were now getting close to launch.
The idea is to use the website as a central point through which to route messages to police forces about the job they are doing. It will also gather information about local issues and pass them on to UK forces.
"We are about giving feedback and we want that to result in change," said Ms Currie. "That's why it's called MyPolice. We are empowering people to make changes and make their voice heard."
"We have a lot of forces itching to be the pilot," she said adding that people were bound to be puzzled by a the HMIC launching a different service with the same name and very similar website.
Confusion was evident even before the HMIC site formally launched.
"It's causing a huge problem," said Ms Currie. Many supporters had got in touch in reaction to media reports about the launch of MyPolice, she said, only to find out that the reports were about the HMIC project.
One disgruntled supporter of MyPolice.org has set up a parody website called My HMIC.org to collect comments about the clash. Many others have vented their feelings on micro-blogging service Twitter.
HMIC said its mypolice.org.uk website would be used by members of the public to find out information about how their local force is performing.
In a statement an HMIC spokesman said: "We spoke with the owners of www.mypolice.org, and it is clear that we offer very different online products. Both however aim to improve engagement between the public and their police; and this is to be applauded.
"We remain very happy to work with www.mypolice.org to offer the best possible service to the public."
A spokeswoman for HMIC declined a chance to expand on its statement.
Ms Currie said the two projects have discussed the domain name confusion. The HMIC said it has no plans to change the name of its project nor move it to another site.
Legal action by MyPolice.org has been ruled out, said Ms Currie. "We don't want to go down that route," she told.
A spokesman for Nominet, which oversees the .uk domain, said Mypolice.org may have a case under its dispute resolution system. Although MyPolice.org does not own the .uk version it may be able to take it over as HMIC's action could be rule as "unfair".
However, he warned, each case was judged on its merits and the dispute resolution might mean HMIC keeps its claim to the .uk domain.

Lip reading mobile promises end to noisy phone calls

Technology that could see an end to the bane of many commuters - people talking loudly on their mobile phones - has been shown off by researchers.

The prototype device could allow people to conduct silent phone conversations.

The technology measures the tiny electrical signals produced by muscles used when someone speaks.

The device can record these pulses even when a person does not audibly utter any words and use them to generate synthesised speech in another handset.

"I was taking the train and the person sitting next to me was constantly chatting and I thought 'I need to change this'," Professor Tanja Shultz of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology told.

"We call it silent communication."

Translation system

The device, on show at the Cebit electronics fair in Germany, relies on a technique called electromyography which detects the electrical signals from muscles. It is commonly used to diagnose certain diseases, including those that involve nerve damage.

The prototype that is on display in Germany uses nine electrodes that are stuck to a user's face."These capture the electrical potentials that result from you moving your articulatory muscles," explained Professor Shultz. "Those are the muscles that you need in order to produce speech."

The electrical pulses are then passed to a device which records and amplifies them before transmitting the signal via Bluetooth to a laptop.

There, software translates the signals into text, which can then be spoken by a synthesiser.

In the future, said Professor Shultz, the technology could be packed in a mobile phone for instantaneous communication.

"We know this is not appealing for mass market use at the moment."

However, she added, it could be initially used to help people who have lost their voice due to illness or accident.

It could also form the basis of an instant translation system, she said.

"You could speak in your mother tongue and the text could be translated into another language," she said.

"The person that you are communicating with would then hear the synthesised voice in the other language."

It is not the first time that electromyography has been explored for silent communication.

The US space agency Nasa has investigated the technique for communicating in noisy environments such as the Space Station. It has also used the technique to explore advanced flight control systems that do away with joysticks and other interfaces.

Nasa, she said, explored the technique to understand simple commands.

"The difference with our system is that we can record and recognise continually spoken sentences," said Professor Shultz.

Browser makers demand screen time

Makers of small web browsers want their programs to be given more prominence on Microsoft's browser choice screen.

Six software firms have complained to the EU saying many do not realise their programs were on offer.

To see all 12 web browsers, users must scroll to the right when viewing Microsoft's ballot screen.

The choice is being offered as part of a settlement of an anti-trust case brought against Microsoft by the European Commission.

Global choice

"The final choice screen design leaves the vast majority of users unaware that there are more than five browsers to choose from," the six firms said in their petition.The petition is signed by the makers of the Avant, Flock, Maxthon, Slim, Sleipnir and Green browsers. The makers of the other browser on offer, K-Meleon, did not sign it.

From 1 March, the browser choice have been popping up on the screens of millions of Europeans who have Internet Explorer as their default web browser.

The browser choice screen is designed as a single panel. Scrolling to the right reveals all twelve browsers on offer.

"We are only requesting the simple addition of any text or design element, that would indicate to an average user that there are choices 'to the right of the visible screen'," said the petition.

Microsoft said that the browser choice screen was drawn up to be compliant with the deal agreed with the European Commission.

Early reports suggest the browser choice screen is leading to a rise in the numbers of people trying browsers other than Internet Explorer.

In a statement, Opera said it had seen downloads of its browser increase threefold since the choice screen system started rolling out.

At the same time, the European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS) has asked for the browser choice system to be repeated around the world.

In a statement it called on "competition agencies around the world to give their consumers the benefit of browser choice, which will spur competition and improve the Web experience for all".

So far, the ECIS campaign has got no further than an open letter on the organisation's site. However, it did not rule out a more active campaign on the issue of browser choice.

ECIS members include long-time Microsoft rivals Oracle, IBM, Red Hat, Opera and Adobe.

Climate change human link evidence 'stronger'

A review from the UK Met Office says it is becoming clearer that human activities are causing climate change.

It says the evidence is stronger now than when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change carried out its last assessment in 2007.

The analysis, published in the Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews Climate Change Journal, has assessed 110 research papers on the subject.

It says the Earth is changing rapidly, probably because of greenhouse gases.

In 2007 the IPCC's report concluded that there was "unequivocal" evidence that the Earth was warming and it was likely that it was due to burning of fossil fuels.

Since then the evidence that human activities are responsible for a rise in temperatures has increased, according to this new assessment by Dr Peter Stott and colleagues at the UK Met Office.

The Met Office study comes at a time when some have questioned the entire basis of climate science following recent controversies over the handling of research findings by the IPCC and the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.

Dr Stott denies that the study has been published as part of a fight back by the climate research community.

"We started writing this paper a year ago. I think it's important to communicate to people what the science is showing and that's why I'm talking about this paper."

'Consistent picture'

The study, which looks at research published since the IPCC's report, has found that changes in Arctic sea ice, atmospheric moisture, saltiness of parts of the Atlantic Ocean and temperature changes in the Antarctic are consistent with human influence on our climate.

"What this study shows is that the evidence has strengthened for human influence on climate and we know that because we've looked at evidence across the climate system and what this shows very clearly is a consistent picture of a warming world," said Dr Stott.

The study brings together other research from a range of disciplines."We hadn't [until now] looked in detail at how the climate system was changing," says Dr Stott.

"[Our paper looks at] not just the temperatures but also the reducing Arctic sea ice and it includes changing rainfall patterns and it includes the fact that the atmosphere is getting more humid.

"And all these different aspects of the climate system are adding up to a picture of the effects of a human influence on our climate."

The Met Office study said that it was harder to find a firm link between climate change and individual extreme weather conditions - even though models predicted that extreme events were more likely.

According to the report: "Extremes pose a particular challenge, since rare events are by definition, poorly sampled in the historical record and many challenges remain for robustly attributing regional changes in extreme events such as droughts, floods and hurricanes."

Dinosaur extinction link to crater confirmed

An international panel of experts has strongly endorsed evidence that a space impact was behind the mass extinction event that killed off the dinosaurs.

They reached the consensus after conducting the most wide-ranging analysis yet of the evidence.

Writing in Science journal, they rule out alternative theories such as large-scale volcanism.

The analysis has been discussed at the 41st Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) in the US.

A panel of 41 international experts reviewed 20 years' worth of research to determine the cause of the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) mass extinction, around 65 million years ago.

The extinction wiped out more than half of all species on the planet, including the dinosaurs, bird-like pterosaurs and large marine reptiles, clearing the way for mammals to become the dominant species on Earth.Their review of the evidence shows that the extinction was caused by a massive asteroid or comet smashing into Earth at Chicxulub on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula.

When the 10km-15km space rock struck the Yucatan, the explosive energy released was equivalent to 100 trillion tonnes of TNT - over a billion times more explosive than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The huge crater that remains from the event is some 180km in diameter and surrounded by a circular fault about 240km in diameter.

"You can actually trace debris right up to the rim of the crater from across the world," Co-author Dr David Kring, from the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, told.

"You can start in Europe, cross the Atlantic and it just thickens as you approach the Chicxulub impact crater."In the new study, scientists examined the work of palaeontologists, geochemists, climate modellers, geophysicists and sedimentologists who have been gathering evidence about the K-T extinction.

They conclude that the Chicxulub space impact is the only plausible explanation for the devastation evident in geological records.

The initial impact would have triggered large-scale fires, huge earthquakes, and continental landslides which generated tsunamis.

Dr Gareth Collins, one of the review's co-authors from Imperial College London, said the asteroid hit Earth "20 times faster than a speeding bullet".

He added: "The explosion of hot rock and gas would have looked like a huge ball of fire on the horizon, grilling any living creature in the immediate vicinity that couldn't find shelter."

Dr Joanna Morgan, another co-author from Imperial, commented: "The final nail in the coffin for the dinosaurs happened when blasted material was ejected at high velocity into the atmosphere. This shrouded the planet in darkness and caused a global winter, killing off many species that couldn't adapt to this hellish environment."The review confirms that a unique layer of debris ejected from a crater is compositionally linked to the Mexican crater and is also coincident with rocks associated at the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) boundary.

The team also says that an abundance of shocked quartz in rock layers across the world at the K-T boundary lends further weight to conclusions that a massive meteorite impact happened at the time of the mass extinction. This form of the mineral occurs when rocks have been hit very quickly by a massive force. It is only found at nuclear explosion sites and at asteroid impact sites.

"Combining all available data from different science disciplines led us to conclude that a large asteroid impact 65 million years ago in modern day Mexico was the major cause of the mass extinctions," said author Dr Peter Schulte, assistant professor at the University of Erlangen in Germany.

David Kring explained: "I have been invited to give colloquia at a number of universities across North America and I had always been surprised by the number of people who didn't think the connection was as firm as it was.

"I think it was very important for this distinguished panel of experts from around the world who have seen the evidence from their own geographic quarter to debate the issue and come to a final resolution. I think it is that international consensus that is so important in this case."Scientists have previously argued about whether the extinction was caused by a space impact or by volcanic activity in the Deccan Traps in India, where there were a series of super-volcanic eruptions that lasted approximately 1.5 million years.

These eruptions spewed more than 1,000,000 cu km of basaltic lava across the Deccan Traps - enough to fill the Black Sea twice. These were thought to have caused a cooling of the atmosphere and acid rain on a global scale.

Despite evidence for relatively active volcanism in the Deccan Traps at the time, marine and land ecosystems showed only minor changes within the 500,000 years before the time of the K-T mass extinction.

Furthermore, computer models and observational data suggest the release of gases such as sulphur into the atmosphere after each volcanic eruption in the Deccan Traps would have had a short-lived effect on the planet.

The panel also discounted previous studies that suggested the Chicxulub impact occurred 300,000 years prior to the mass extinction event.

Scientists estimate that this type of impact occurs on average about once every 100 million years; about five have occurred during the evolution of complex life on Earth.

The importance of Chicxulub was cemented by the announcement in 1991 of the discovery of shocked quartz in a 1.6km-deep drill hole from the crater.

David Kring, Alan Hildebrand and William Boynton presented their results at that year's LPSC, then held at Nasa's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Dr Kring explained that he was "elated" with the consensus about the link between Chicxulub and the K-T mass extinction.

Probe may have found cosmic dust

Scientists may have identified the first specks of interstellar dust in material collected by the US space agency's Stardust spacecraft.

A stream of this dust flows through space; the tiny particles are building blocks that go into making stars and planets.

The Nasa spacecraft was primarily sent to catch dust streaming from Comet Wild 2 and return it to Earth for analysis.

But scientists also set out to capture particles of interstellar dust.

The material was gathered by the Stardust probe in a seven-year, 4.8-billion-km (2.9 billion miles) interplanetary voyage.It extended a retractable device containing cells filled with a material called aerogel, a porous substance designed to trap dust molecules.

A capsule containing the precious samples was then returned to Earth in January 2006.

Team members have now reported the possible discovery of two contemporary interstellar dust grains in the Stardust Interstellar Dust Collector (SIDC) deployed during the mission.

Dr Andrew Westphal, from the University of California, Berkeley, announced the find at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) in The Woodlands, Texas.

'Cautiously excited'

The discovery was made by a member of the public, using the Stardust@Home internet application, which invited participants to search the aerogel collection medium for tiny particles of the dust.

"There are two particles, but they are in the same track. So when they hit the aerogel, they were together - they are two components of the same particle," Dr Westphal told.

"But they are very different from each other. That in itself is interesting, because if this does turn out to be interstellar dust, then it is a bit more heterogeneous than people thought."The initial speck, known as particle 30, was spotted by Bruce Hudson, from Ontario in Canada. Under the agreement made between the science team and participants in Stardust@Home, Mr Hudson was allowed to choose a name for the particle; he called it Orion.

After preliminary analyses, the scientists found another grain upstream, which Bruce Hudson named Sirius.

But Dr Westphal stressed that the find "could be a false alarm".

"The right way to say it is we're cautiously excited," he told me.

"We have very limited data on it so far and the reason is deliberate. The analyses we are doing have the potential to do some minor damage to the particles. We don't think it will and we'll be careful to limit our analyses.

"So far this particle is unique... if we drop it on the floor, it will cost $300m to get another one."

Heavy atoms

Scientists have identified 28 definite impact "tracks" in the interstellar dust collector. But most of these come from angles indicating they are little particles of debris from impacts with the spacecraft's solar panels. However, particle 30 is one of seven with ambiguous trajectories.

Interstellar dust is formed when gas is ejected from stars and condenses to form grains. This dust then has to survive in the interstellar medium - the matter which exists between stars - where it is battered by cosmic radiation and shock processes.

It carries with it the heavy atoms that go into making the stars and planets. Our own Solar System was also constructed with these building blocks.The possible dust grains were collected as Stardust travelled with the interstellar dust stream which passes through our Solar System.

The spacecraft's chief scientist, Dr Don Brownlee from the University of Washington in Seattle, told: "All the heavy atoms in this room were in interstellar dust... so we want to know what this stuff is."

He added: "This dust, once it's formed, and once it's heated or changed [initially] it is set for billions of years.

Dr Westphal told: "It is very fine-grained material, which is what you'd expect for interstellar dust. It has an elemental composition which is consistent with what you would expect for interstellar dust. And it has a composition for other elements which are not inconsistent, but a bit surprising."

The researchers have so far analysed magnesium, aluminium, iron, chromium, manganese, nickel, copper and gallium from the particles.

A new mineral found in a type of particle known as interplanetary dust has recently been named Brownleeite after Dr Brownlee, who is regarded as a founder of the field of cosmic dust research. The discovery has been published in the journal American Mineralogist.

Though highly prized by Stardust's team, interstellar dust can be a nuisance in optical astronomy, because it can obscure objects in regions of the sky targeted for observation.

Money sharing comes to Facebook

Friends on social networking site Facebook can now send small payments directly to each other via an application called Buxter.

Buxter handles transactions in Euros or US dollars, with plans to launch in Sterling in the next four weeks.

Other currencies are subject to a 5% conversion fee at the point of upload to a Buxter account.

The company behind the application is ClickandBuy which operates an online payment service across the web.

More than 13 million people across the world already have accounts with it, and a ClickandBuy account is required in order to use Buxter.

Transactions between Buxter accounts are free to make and receive but a 1.9% commission fee, minimum 2 euros or $3 (£2), is charged to move the money to another source such as a bank account.

"People share their statuses, their information and their pictures on Facebook so the question is why not share money there too?" Christian von Hammel-Bonten, senior vice president at ClickandBuy told.

The application is designed for fairly small payments (a maximum of 50 euros (£45) can be held in any one account) and transactions can only be made among people who are friends on Facebook.

Mr von Hammel-Bonten said he hoped people would use the service to pay each other for shared expenses such as cinema tickets and restaurant bills initially.

"We're not trying to compete with national banking systems. This is not somewhere to pay your gas or rent," he said.