The setting up of a national facial recognition database is likely to cost Australia at least hundreds of millions of dollars, but could go into the billions, an expert in the field has told iTWire.

Major privacy organisations in Australia have condemned the decision by the Council of Australian Governments to agree to hand over drivers' licence photos for the creation of a national facial recognition database.

Russian government hackers are claimed to have obtained details of how the US breaks into networks of other countries and also how it defends itself, through the theft of material that was moved by an NSA contractor from his office machine to his home computer, unnamed sources say.

After slipping 20 places on a global branding ladder in the past year, Vodafone has announced an upcoming change to the Vodafone brand positioning globally and in Australia, the first such change the company says since 2009.

Artificial Intelligence heads the list of the world’s top 10 strategic technology trends for 2018, with analyst firm Gartner predicting that creating systems that learn, adapt and potentially act autonomously will be a major battleground for technology vendors until at least 2020.

Every year, consumer advocate CHOICE unveils the list of products, services and companies it has deemed as being worthy of a "Shonky Award", and this year's no different!

And of course, there's plenty more so for all the news visit www.itwire.com.

Have a great day!

Stan Beer, Editor in Chief, iTWire

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