China pushes Chinese domain names

In today's podcast: China pushes Chinese domain names; ACLU wants details on laptop searches by US Customs; and Nokia to launch Money financial services.

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China has pushed ahead with deploying Internet domain names written in Chinese as it urges action to standardize their use globally. China has solved most of the technical problems raised by Chinese-language domain names and is in the process of deploying them, said Zhang Jian, director of the international business department at the country's domain registration agency, the China Internet Network Information Center, in an interview Wednesday. Within two years, the agency expects all mainstream Web sites in the country will have domain names that end in the two Chinese characters for "China," rather than the .cn top-level domain. It also expects those domain names to become the most widely visited by Chinese Internet users.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed a lawsuit demanding that U.S. Customs and Border Protection release details of its policy that allows the agency to search travelers' laptops at U.S. borders without suspicion of wrongdoing. The ACLU's lawsuit is an effort to get Customs to respond to a Freedom of Information Act request that the civil liberties group filed in June about the laptop-search policy. The agency has not supplied any information, although the law requires it to give a response within 30 days. The FOIA request and the lawsuit seek details about the laptop search policy, including how many laptops have been searched since Customs instituted its search policy last year.

Nokia is getting ready to launch Nokia Money, which will offer basic financial services on mobile phones, it said on Wednesday. It will enable consumers to send money, pay for goods, services and bills, and recharge their prepaid SIM cards. Some Nokia phones will have the necessary client pre-installed, but users will also be able download and install the client on Nokia phones and devices from other vendors. The company is also building a network of agents, where consumers will be able to deposit or withdraw cash from their accounts. The first Money services -- which will be operated in cooperation with mobile payment company Obopay, whose platform will be used -- are planned to be rolled out in selected markets in the beginning of 2010.

A sixth person who has worked for the U.S. Department of State has pleaded guilty to a charge related to illegally accessing electronic passport application files, the U.S. Department of Justice said. Karal Busch, 28, of District Heights, Maryland, pleaded guilty Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to one count of unauthorized computer access. She is scheduled to be sentenced on Dec. 15. Busch was among a group of State Department employees or contractors who were targeted for prosecution after March 2008 news reports of employees there accessing the electronic passport files of three presidential candidates: Senator John McCain, now President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, now the secretary of state. The inspector general's office at the State Department later found that there had been widespread breaches of the agency's Passport Information Electronic Records System, or PIERS.

...And those are the top stories from the IDG Global IT News Update, brought to you by the IDG News Service. I'm Sumner Lemon in Singapore. Join us again later for more news from the world of technology.