Security Bullet In

One of the UK's leading climate change research centres has had a security breach.

The Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (UEA) suffered a compromise of information, a UEA spokesperson said on Friday.

"We are aware that information from a server used for research information in one area of the university has been made available on public websites," said the spokesperson in a statement. "Because of the volume of this information we cannot currently confirm that all of this material is genuine."

"This information has been obtained and published without our permission and we took immediate action to remove the server in question from operation," the spokesperson continued.

"We are undertaking a thorough internal investigation and we have involved the police in this enquiry."

At the time of writing, the UAE spokesperson declined to comment further. It was unclear whether the breach was internal or external.

Professor Phil Jones, who is involved with climate research at the facility, was not available for comment at the time of writing.

Sophos senior technology consultant Graham Cluley blogged on Friday that details of over 1000 emails and 3800 documents were leaked onto a Russian FTP server:

"A 61MB zip file containing information stolen from one of the world's leading climate research centres, was posted onto an anonymous FTP server in Russia, accompanied by a note saying:

'We feel that climate science is, in the current situation, too important to be kept under wraps'," wrote Cluley.

Government plans to compel ISPs to process and store details of all web communications have been put on hold until after the next election.

The Home Office told ZDNet UK on Wednesday that the plans, called both the Interception Modernisation Programme [IMP] and Mastering the Internet, would very likely not be put into law until after the next general election in May 2010.

"It would be fair to say that [IMP] is not in the legislative programme for this session," said a Home Office spokesperson.

ZDNet UK approached the Home Office following the Queen's Speech at the official opening of parliament on Wednesday.

The speech, which is written by the incumbent government, made no mention of plans to bring forward IMP provisions in legslation.

The plans would see Facebook, IM and gaming communications monitored, and the information made available to public authorities. Email and telephone records would also be made more available to public authorities, including local government. This data sharing would be enabled by amendments to the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act.

The Conservatives may win the next election. The Conservative Party was unable to respond to a request for comment on whether it planned to continue with IMP at the time of writing.

The government has announced that it plans to keep innocent people's DNA details for up to six years.

In response to a consultation it launched last December, the government said in a statement on Wednesday that it would "remove the DNA profiles of all adults arrested but not charged or convicted of any recordable offence after six years".

However, the Times reported on Wednesday that terrorism suspects could still have their DNA retained indefinitely.

A Home Office spokesperson told ZDNet UK on Wednesday that people's DNA deemed to be of "national interest" will be stored for longer than six years. That retention will be reviewed every two years by a senior police officer.

The government was forced to rethink its policy on DNA retention following the outcome of a test case last year. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled in December that two people, Michael Marper, and a person identified as 'S', had their rights infringed by the UK government indefinitely storing their DNA.

At the time, legal site Out-Law.com reported that ECHR had not offered guidance as to how the UK government could comply with human rights law with respect to DNA.

The South Korean authorities could fingerprint and photograph foreign visitors from 2012, the Korea Times reported on Tuesday.

Barring diplomats and government operatives, all visitors over the age of 17 could have their fingerprints scanned and photo taken, said the article.

The Korean Cabinet has approved the Bill, which will be voted on by the National Assembly this month.

Should the plans go ahead, Korea will discuss sharing the data with the US, which operates a similar system. Japan also collects visitors' biometrics.

Natwest's computer systems experienced problems that lead to service outages, according to reports by bloggers and Twitter users.

Dan Stuchbury, a developer who lives in Wiltshire, blogged on Friday that he had been told at his local Natwest branch that their computer systems had crashed.

Twitter user Gavin Quayle said that Natwest ATMs across London were also not working. Other Twitter users reported that RBS machines were also down (Natwest is owned by RBS).

A Natwest spokesperson told ZDNet UK on Friday that there had been an internal technical problem with Natwest's systems, and that no outside hack had caused the outage.

"There was a technical issue impacting some of our systems for a short period of time this morning," said Natwest in a statement. "We quickly identified and resolved the issue and we apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused our customers."

The outages lasted for approximately an hour, said the spokesperson.

While the issue affected all Natwest branches in the UK, no RBS bank machines had been affected, the spokesperson added.