Australian police have been asked to investigate internet giant Google over possible breaches of telecommunications privacy laws, Attorney General Robert McClelland said on Sunday.
Germany's consumer protection minister said on Thursday she would quit Facebook over what she called privacy law violations that she believed would lead to the company being fined by German data protection authorities.
Germany's national consumer-protection agency may take legal measures against Facebook if it finds that the social network's new privacy controls do not meet German data-protection standards.
Three U.S. lawmakers, concerned that Google Inc may have violated U.S. privacy laws, want to know how much personal data the company has gathered through its project to photograph streets across the country and how it plans to use that information.
Two lawmakers who co-chair the House Privacy Caucus asked the Federal Trade Commission if Google broke the law in collecting WiFi and other Internet data while taking photographs for its Street View product.
Private chats between some Facebook users were briefly viewable by other users on Wednesday, an embarrassing technical glitch for a company facing growing criticism over sloppy privacy protection.
U.S. lawmakers told Facebook on Tuesday they were concerned about changes in its privacy policy that would allow personal information to be viewed by more than friends, and options on other websites that would allow third parties to save information about Facebook users and friends.
Four U.S. lawmakers expressed concern to Facebook on Tuesday about changes in its privacy policy, while one asked federal regulators to draw up privacy guidelines for online social networking sites.
Over the past six years, social networking has been the Internet's stand-out phenomenon, linking up more than one billion people eager to exchange videos, pictures or last-minute birthday wishes.
Data protection and privacy chiefs from 10 countries issued a joint letter pushing search engine giant Google to improve respect for data privacy, Canada's Office of the Privacy Commissioner said on Tuesday.
The use of social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube by militant and hate groups grew by almost 20 percent in the past year, a report by the Simon Wiesenthal Center found on Monday.
Technology companies that fail to make reasonable steps to safeguard human rights in foreign countries could face civil or criminal liabilities, lawmakers said Tuesday.
European Union privacy regulators are urging Google to make changes in the way it executes goes about its controversial Street View program, adding to its legal worries in Europe.
EU data protection authorities have urged U.S. Internet search giant Google to shorten the period it stores images from its controversial Street View web service because of privacy concerns.
Iran rejected calls to release all political prisoners and accept an international inquiry into violence after last June's contested presidential elections, an official U.N. report said.
The use of full-body scanners at British airports may breach human rights laws, the country's equality commission said on Tuesday, potentially undermining the latest weapon against terrorism.
Canada's privacy czar, who got Facebook to agree last year to better protect users' personal information, will launch a new investigation over complaints that the changes sometimes make things worse.
Sri Lanka on Friday rejected the findings of a trio of United Nations-appointed investigators who said they doubted a video showing apparent executions by Sri Lankan soldiers was fake.
The number of Iraqi civilians killed in violence fell by half in 2009 to about 4,500 but improvements in security have slowed and large-scale attacks took a major toll last year, a study has found.
China's most prominent dissident, Liu Xiaobo, was jailed on Friday for 11 years for campaigning for political freedoms, with the stiff sentence on a subversion charge swiftly condemned by rights groups and Washington.
Mexico City became the first capital in Catholic, often macho Latin America to allow same-sex marriage on Monday when city legislators passed a law giving gay couples full marriage rights.
Two leading international human rights groups gave U.S. President Barack Obama mixed reviews on his human rights record on Wednesday, a day before he is slated to accept the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo.
