The departing Privacy Commissioner has issued a stern warning over the growing threat posed by big data entities, and underlined the need for her office to have more power to keep them in check.

I'd wager that the PR hacks of the established political parties are looking at the media scrum surrounding Kim Dotcom's political party with envy, writes Pat Pilcher.

Who's taking the brunt of the Hollande affair? In a very French twist, it looks like it's the jilted first lady - who's been hospitalised since she found out.

Julie Gayet, the actress thought to be having an affair with French President Francois Hollande, is reported to be pregnant.

How many more email outages, hacks and other screw ups need to happen before Telecom finally brings Xtra email back in-house?

As we become more and more reliant on cloud based services, privacy breaches could become increasingly commonplace, writes Pat Pilcher.

A news reporter dressed up as a priest to attempt to gain access to Michael Schumacher’s hospital room where he is battling for his life after a skiing accident, the Formula One champion’s manager Sabine Kehm revealed.

Solid Energy's random drug and alcohol tests nabbed 28 offenders in the year to July, more than a third less than the previous year.

Privacy watchdogs are worried about intrusive new 'reverse search' websites that allow users to type in a street address and discover who lives there.

Editorial: If the IRD is known for unilateral and unexplained actions against its targets, Customs inhabits a peculiar twilight zone at the border.

A detailed account of the evidence against Kim Dotcom has been released by the FBI to allow so-called victims of alleged piracy to claim against his seized fortune.

Customs has refused to answer questions about an email asking staff to send information on Kim Dotcom to the FBI in exchange for "brownie points".

The "secrets-for-brownie points" case has been escalated to Customs Minister Maurice Williamson - but he says it has nothing to do with him.

A senior Customs official told colleagues in charge of highly personal information they could earn "brownie points"if they passed secrets to the FBI.

Customs has returned all the electronic gear stripped from a backpacker at the border, saying it found nothing on his computer.

A backpacker coming home for Christmas had every bit of electronic equipment stripped from him at the airport.

Wellington lawyer John Edwards will replace Marie Shroff as the New Zealand's third Privacy Commissioner.

GCSB head Ian Fletcher yesterday acknowledged there was no protection of New Zealanders' data stored in servers overseas from spy agencies.

The head of the GCSB spy agency Ian Fletcher has given a public assurance there was no large scale collection of New Zealanders' data by the US National Security Agency..

Prime Minister John Key sought an assurance from the GCSB director that the spy agency hadn't been involved in collecting metadata from Kiwis - and was given it.

Australia's eavesdropping agency was prepared to share information on individual citizens to intelligence partners.