Communications Technology

National Australia Bank became embroiled in two more technical bungles at the weekend and yesterday when thousands of customers received SMS messages and emails with old, irrelevant financial information about their accounts and when its website services crashed for several hours.

NAB spokesman George Wright said between 8000 and 10,000 UBank customers, a NAB brand, were resent old text messages and emails about their account information.

One customer received 21 text messages at the weekend informing him thousands of dollars were being moved from his account when, in fact, none had been moved.

”Over the weekend, thousands of customers from UBank incorrectly were resent text and email messages which were duplicates of messages they had previously received,” Mr Wright said. ”The messages were mostly related to transactional banking functions.”

The problems were technical and had been fixed.

Meanwhile, the NAB website crashed yesterday.

”There were issues for some customers logging on to our internet banking and our telephone banking services,” Mr Wright said.

Telephone banking services were restored by 11am, followed by the website at 4pm.

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Thousands of clubbers and pub patrons are being forced to submit to fingerprint and photographic scans to enter popular venues, seemingly unaware of the ramifications of handing over their identity.

Biometric scanners, once the domain of James Bond movies, are flooding the pub market as the fix-all solution to violence and antisocial behaviour. The pubs are exerting more power than the police or airport security by demanding photos, fingerprints and ID. Police can only do it if they suspect someone of committing a crime and they must destroy the data if the person is not charged or found not guilty.

Yet one company boasts that the sensitive information collected about patrons can be kept for years and shared with other venues in the country - in what appears to be a breach of privacy laws.

There are no official checks and balances on how the data is collected, stored, used or shared. Federal Privacy Commissioner Tim Pilgrim has warned he does not have the power to audit the systems and the lack of regulation has even industry players calling for tighter controls.

NSW premises using the systems include the Australian Brewery, Lone Pine Tavern, Phriction Night Club and the Mean Fiddler in Sydney’s west; Home Nightclub, the Coogee Bay Hotel; Woy Woy Leagues Club, Woodport Inn and Munmorah United Bowling Club on the central coast; Fotheringhams Hotel in Taree; and Wollongong’s Palm Court Hotel.

At the Coogee Bay Hotel, patrons not only queue for fingerprint scans, but may then be rejected on the grounds of a curious dress code, which includes a ban on stepped haircuts, a common style where there is a clearly visible line between layers of shaved and unshaved hair. However, complaints have been made that the hotel does not enforce the code unless it wants to refuse entry to groups of Lebanese males.

Despite the explosion in the use of biometric scanners, criminologists at Deakin University warn they have ‘’slipped” into use in Australia with ”little public awareness, no policy consideration and questionable claims concerning their effectiveness in enhancing safety and reducing crime”.

The Biometrics Institute of Australia, the main industry group, has already called for changes to the Privacy Act including mandatory privacy impact assessments and audits, no exemptions for any group and a unified national privacy system.

But one scanning company, ID Tect, advertises that the information is stored on a national database and can ‘’share a banned list of troublemakers - whether that listing is local, statewide or national”. Company director Peter Perrett did not return calls to The Sun-Herald.

The Privacy Commissioner warned that: ”Anyone using this technology should be aware that under the Privacy Act, organisations must provide individuals with notice of what will happen to the collected information. It cannot be automatically shared with other venues, even if the purpose for sharing it is the same across all the organisations.”

The Privacy Commissioner has drafted guidelines for ID scanning, which are available on its website.

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Sony finally unveiled the successor to the PlayStation Portable in Japan last night.

The powerful handheld, currently code-named NGP, will be released before the end of the year and features a five-inch organic light emitting display (OLED) touch-screen capable of displaying 16 million colours as well as a unique multi-touch pad on the rear.

More traditional 3D console games will be able to be controlled using the device’s twin analog sticks.

Sony says the handheld offers similar power to a PlayStation 3 console, and unveiled games including new instalments in the popular Call of Duty, Uncharted, Wipeout, Resistance, Everybody’s Golf, Monster Hunter, Dynasty Warriors and LittleBigPlanet franchises.

New titles include Gravity Daze, Reality Fighters, Smart As, Broken and Little Deviants, while Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima is also working on a new handheld game to be unveiled soon.

Epic Games, creators of the Unreal Engine, claim the new device is roughly four times as powerful as any portable previously seen.

Sources suggest the battery life will be between four and five hours, but Sony has made no official mention of the device’s battery.

All versions of the device will offer Wi-Fi, while the top-of-the-line model will also feature 3G network connectivity.

Every game will feature a space called LiveArena for facilitating multi-player action with other handheld owners, including an activity log constantly updated with achievements from users playing the same game.

Sony will also provide location-based services using a new application called Near. It will let users find out what their friends in the vicinity are playing now and meet new friends virtually.

The new handheld dispenses with the PSP’s proprietary Universal Media Disc format but avoids forcing users to download everything like the unpopular PSPgo. Games will be sold on small flash memory cards which can store games as well as add-on content and user data.

Sony says that by adopting a flash memory format, it will be able to provide game cards with higher capacity in the future, allowing developers to release larger games.

Games will also be downloadable from the online PlayStation Store.

The unit features two cameras on its front and rear, plus a microphone and stereo speakers. It also has three motion sensors: gyroscope, accelerometer and electronic compass, plus built-in GPS.

It measures 182mm by 18.6mm and has a depth of 83.5mm.

The price of the console has not yet been announced but Sony has promised it will be “affordable”.

Sony also announced a new service that will bring PlayStation games to Android-based smartphones. PlayStationSuite will feature newly developed “more casual” games in addition to PSone classics. All content will be playable on the Next Generation Portable as well as Android devices, and is an obvious play to combat the huge success of Apple’s App Store.

Sony released the first PlayStation Portable in Japan in December 2004. Over 64 million PSP consoles have since been sold, making the device the most successful gaming handheld ever released by a company other than Nintendo.

But throughout the PSP’s lifespan it has struggled to compete with the rampaging Nintendo DS, which has sold over 135 million units, including over three million in Australia. The DS is the biggest selling video game console ever released in this country, and has been Australia’s number one selling games machine for the past five years in a row.

Nintendo next month will launch the 3DS handheld in Japan, which can produce 3D effects without the need for the user to wear glasses. It will be released in Australia in March, and is expected to cost between $350 and $400.

Sony has been a very strong supporter of 3D technology with the PlayStation 3 and its Bravia television range, but the new NGP will not support 3D.

The device also will not make mobile phone calls, although Sony is heavily rumoured to be about to unveil a PlayStation Phone called Xperia Play.

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