Culture secretary to insist on action at summit of ISPs as companies are accused of ignoring child abuse image problem

Internet providers are to face unrelenting pressure to restrict access to "horrific" and illegal images of child abuse, the culture secretary, Maria Miller, will say on Tuesday at a summit with the world's leading ISPs.

In a sign of the government's impatience with the likes of Google, Yahoo, Facebook and Twitter, sources say the firms must do more after acting as though "blind" to the problem of child abuse images.

Miller said: "Child abuse images are horrific and widespread public concern has made it clear that the industry must take action. Enough is enough.

"In recent days we have seen these companies rush to do more because of the pressure of an impending summit. Imagine how much more can be done if they seriously turn their minds to tackling the issue. Pressure will be unrelenting."

She will say that the companies summoned to the summit have a good record in removing illegal images when they are brought to their attention. But she will call on them to do more and use their technical expertise to ensure the images never appear online in the first place.

One source said: "These are huge global companies at the cutting edge of technology. They should direct their technical expertise – coding and algorithms – to preventing the problem at source.

"Companies have acted blind towards the systemic problem of child abuse images. If they are allowed to act as though they are blind, then they do not have to take responsibility. They must be made to acknowledge the extent of the problem and take responsibility."

Miller believes internet providers have shown there is room to act because they have made a series of commitments in the runup to the summit. Google has pledged £4m towards addressing the problem while TalkTalk and BT have promised splash pages which will pop up with a warning about pornographic content.

Google has said it will donate to the Cambridge-based Internet Watch Foundation, a charity which collates warnings about illegal sites and has a team of analysts who have been under increasing pressure as the number of reports they receive has risen.

One ISP, Virgin Media, will also call for rival companies to stop charging the police-run Child Exploitation and Online Protection centre (Ceop) for processing data requests about individuals believed to have accessed illegal abuse sites.

Web firms are privately sceptical that the 90-minute meeting will deliver a silver-bullet solution for the propagation of explicit content, but they are united in the belief that the charities responsible for policing such material should be better funded.

"There is no simple technical fix to this problem and money alone cannot solve it either. If it could, it would have been done years ago," said one internet executive.

The culture secretary also wants to do more to ensure parents can protect children by blocking access to legal pornography. Writing in the Mail on Sunday at the weekend, she said a code of practice on parental controls had been drawn up with the major internet providers.

Miller and ministerial colleague Ed Vaizey will meet Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Facebook, BT, Sky, Virgin Media, TalkTalk, Vodafone, O2, EE and Three at the summit.

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Business and energy minister plans to announce initiative for raising further funds for sector at Paris air show on Monday

The government will vow to help Britain capitalise on fast-growing global demand for new aerospace technologies when it unveils plans for up to £25m of research funding at the Paris air show on Monday.

The funds mark the latest move by ministers to try to maintain Britain's position as Europe's leading aerospace manufacturer. Business and energy minister Michael Fallon will use the biggest event in the industry calendar, where manufacturers hope to secure billions of pounds worth of orders, to outline how companies can compete for funds.

As the government struggles to rebalance Britain's economy away from a dependence on the services and public sectors towards manufacturing and exports, it sees the aerospace sector as a crucial driver for long-term growth. The £25m is part of a government commitment of some £1.6bn over the next 10 years to back its industrial strategy.

Announcing the initiative, which will require matching funds from winning businesses, Fallon will emphasise the government's commitment to funding innovation in the sector. "If we are to get ahead of the game we must create the right conditions now that incentivise businesses to invest in the UK and develop new, exciting products," he will say.

"This new funding will help to do just that and also ensure a high level of quality projects receive the support they need to get off the ground."

The Paris air show is the largest aerospace industry event in the world, according to the organisers. It launched in 1909, featured its first flying displays in 1946 and was the venue for the unveiling of Concorde and the Boeing 747 in 1969.

Held at Le Bourget airport, where Charles Lindbergh landed on the first nonstop flight between New York and Paris in 1927, this week's show is the 50th and will bring together 2,215 exhibitors and 351,000 visitors.

Fallon is targeting small and medium-sized aerospace suppliers who will be invited later in the year to submit bids for a share of the fund. It is the first such call on the £2bn of joint government and industry funding pledged over seven years to create a UK Aerospace Technology Institute.

Among the institute's aims are safeguarding 115,000 jobs and the development of aircraft that are quieter and more energy-efficient.

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Film watchdogs in three countries including UK are to pilot a program in which amateur video-makers can self-regulate

A simple plan to offer children protection from harmful and inappropriate internet footage by clearly rating it with traffic light symbols is to be tested this summer. The project, developed by the British Board of Film Classification in collaboration with partners in Italy and the Netherlands, could also allow powerful internet service providers and search engines a new path through the current controversy about their unregulated content.

Amateur film-makers will be able to rate the films they put online according to national ratings categories, and the whole process could then be further policed by users of the site.

Participating websites would have the option of letting viewers comment on the way that each film has been rated, alerting both users and the relevant national authorities to any serious transgressions.

The idea of offering a do-it-yourself rating service for user-generated content came out of international discussions with the parallel bodies in charge of film censorship and classification.

"This is a service we want to offer," said David Austin, assistant director of policy and public affairs at the BBFC. "We already classify some 10,000 videos and films that are submitted to us for release every year and we will be using much the same classification model in the pilot for user-generated content."

The sheer amount of private video footage uploaded on popular sites such as YouTube means there is no way any board could tackle it. "The volume is so great that it became clear the answer was to get those who are making and posting the films to rate them for users," said Austin.

Consultation with the Dutch film regulator led to the idea that an online questionnaire comprising simple questions about the nature of the content could be made to apply across international boundaries.

"What the questions will do is provide a way of giving content an age rating. This is something that could be done in other countries in the world because, while the questionnaire can remain the same, the results will mean different things in different countries, since they all have different standards and film categories. Results in the Netherlands, for example, will reflect Dutch standards."

Austin explained that each country has varying levels of sensitivity to key issues such as swearing or nudity. "In Britain people don't generally like bad language, whereas in the Netherlands they don't care as much.

"We will not be asking people to make value judgments about their films. They just have to answer simple questions about the content, such as 'Does this video contain X, Y or Z, and if so, how long is the scene?'"

In Britain the usual six ratings categories for films will be reduced to three for ease of use. "We felt that six would be too complicated," said Austin, "so we have conflated U, which means suitable for all, with PG, parental guidance, and then the age category 12 with 15, and finally 18, suitable only for adults, with R18, which covers those adult works intended for licensed premises only.

"We will represent these three categories with the traffic light symbols green, amber and red."

The scheme will be voluntary and service providers and search engines will be able to decide how their users want to see the ratings displayed.

"At this stage a lot of it depends on how much the search engines buy into the scheme. We want to help them look after their sites, and if some of the big ones get involved, then they can make the age-rating option available for everything."

The crowdsource monitoring option would then allow users to judge the chosen rating and to spot abuses of the system. If there is a serious problem, such as an example of hate speech or of child abuse, it can be reported. In Britain the default reporting link will take users through to the Internet Watch Foundation hotline. The traffic light innovation online reflects parallel concerns about what has become the most complex and perhaps most important area of the BBFC's work on films destined for general release. While public interest frequently focuses on the reclassification struggles surrounding controversial titles such as The Exorcist or A Clockwork Orange, the more delicate job is deciding whether to rate a film U or PG, 12 or 15.

BBFC president Patrick Swaffer said recently that in Britain certain key elements mark a film out for concern in respect of children. Aside from explicit or obscene material, the board is careful not to allow sequences showing children climbing into fridges or washing machines. The potential for these "imitative techniques" sets off alarm bells that would be reflected in the questionnaire for online user-generated content.

Last month the government allowed the BBFC to classify a whole new range of commercial DVDs that had been exempt. The decision will close a legal loophole that allowed young people to buy sexually explicit and ultra-violent material without restriction. Some pop videos, sports titles and religious and educational DVDs and Blu-Ray discs were classed as exempt. As a result, erotic scenes in videos by performers such as Robbie Williams and Beyoncé and topless scenes in supposed exercise DVDS were being sold without age restrictions. Violent footage of cage fighting was also exempt because it was classed as sport.

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As our campaign bites, Google at last takes action on US travel permits to enforce its own rules

Following Money's campaign to expose the copycat websites that trick the unwary into paying over the odds to access government services, Google has stopped advertising them to travellers applying for the "Esta" permit to enter the US.

Last week, anyone typing "Esta" (Electronic System for Travel Authorization) into Google, was presented with a host of sites offering to process clearances for travelling to the US for around £29. On the official site it costs less than £10.

By Thursday these sites had been removed from the advertising boxes that appear at the top of most search results. Google declined to comment on specific sites, but confirmed it had taken action this week. Our "Stop These Sites" campaign was launched to press for action after hundreds of readers complained they had been duped into paying over the odds for passports, health insurance cards, licence renewals and other government services. Complaints continue to pour in. Most initially focused on passport websites offering to "check" your application for £40. Attention then turned to Ehic health cards that are free from the official NHS site but cost up to £25 if "verified" by a copycat site.

This week, most complaints have come in from those flying to America and applying for Esta. Google's position is that websites breaking its rules will be disabled from advertising, and it appears to have started applying its own rules more rigorously.

"Our 'sale of free items and official services' policy makes it very clear that we do not allow the promotion of sites that charge for products or services that are otherwise free, unless they clearly state the original service is available for free elsewhere, provide a working link to the official source where they can get the free service, as well as accurately represent the added value they are charging for. If we discover sites are breaking this policy we will take appropriate action," it says.

Google has launched a page that allows consumers to report sites that break the rules. Also, keep letting us know about dodgy sites at money@guardian.co.uk

Victims of these sites report some success in getting their card provider to reimburse the fee, and if you have made a payment it is worth going down this route.

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Facebook says it received almost 10,000 US government requests for user data in the second half of 2012

Facebook and Microsoft have struck agreements with the US government to release limited information about the number of surveillance requests they receive, a modest victory for the companies as they struggle with the fallout from disclosures about a secret government data-collection program.

Facebook on Friday became the first to release aggregate numbers of requests, saying in a blog post it received between 9,000 and 10,000 US requests for user data in the second half of 2012, covering 18,000 to 19,000 of its users' accounts. Facebook has more than 1.1 billion users worldwide.

The majority of those requests are routine police inquiries, a person familiar with the company said, but under the terms of the deal with the justice department, Facebook is precluded from saying how many were secret orders issued under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Until now, all information about requests under Fisa, including their existence, were deemed secret.

Microsoft said it had received requests of all types for information on about 31,000 consumer accounts in the second half of 2012. In a "transparency report" Microsoft published earlier this year without including national security matters, it said it had received criminal requests involving 24,565 accounts for the whole of 2012.

If half of those requests came in the second part of the year, the intelligence requests constitute the bulk of government inquiries. Microsoft did not dispute that conclusion.

Google said late on Friday it was negotiating with the government and that the sticking point was whether it could only publish a combined figure for all requests. It said that would be "a step back for users", because it already breaks out criminal requests and national security letters, another type of intelligence inquiry.

Facebook, Google and Microsoft had all publicly urged the US authorities to allow them to reveal the number and scope of the surveillance requests after documents leaked to the Guardian suggested they had given the government "direct access" to their computers as part of the National Security Agency program called Prism.

The disclosures about Prism, and related revelations about broad-based collection of telephone records, have triggered widespread concern and congressional hearings about the scope and extent of the information-gathering.

"We hope this helps put into perspective the numbers involved and lays to rest some of the hyperbolic and false assertions in some recent press accounts about the frequency and scope of the data requests that we receive," Facebook wrote on its site.

Facebook said it would continue to press to divulge more information. The person familiar with the company said that it at least partially complied with US legal requests 79% of the time, and that it usually turned over just the user's email address and internet protocol address and name, rather than the content of the person's postings or messages.

It is believed that Fisa requests typically seek much more information. But it remains unclear how broad the Fisa orders might be.

Among the other remaining questions are the nature of court-approved "minimisation" procedures designed to limit use of information about US residents. The NSA is prohibited from specifically targeting them.

"If they are receiving large amounts of data that they are not actually authorised to look at, the question then becomes what are the procedures by which they determine what they can look at?" said Kevin Bankston, a lawyer at the Centre for Democracy & Technology. "Do they simply store that forever in case later they are authorised to look at it?"

In addition, some legal experts say recent US laws allow for intelligence-gathering simply for the pursuit of foreign policy objectives, not just in hunting terrorists and spies.

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Interactive database forming part of a cache of 2.5m leaked files has been launched by Washington-based ICIJ

An interactive database allowing users to search more than 100,000 secret companies, trusts and funds created in offshore tax havens including the British Virgin Islands has gone online.

The data, part of a cache of 2.5m leaked files that has already led to a series of exposes of the offshore financial sector by the Guardian and other global media organisations, has been launched by the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).

The ICIJ, a non-profit organisation that has analysed the files with more than 100 journalists in dozens of countries and is continuing to do so, hopes the Offshore Leaks web app will trigger further investigations and revelations by making the information more widely available.

The records have already laid bare a diverse collection of people using offshore hideaways, ranging from US dentists and middle-class Greek villagers to families of despots, Wall Street swindlers, Russian executives, international arms dealers and a company alleged to be a front for Iran's nuclear development programme.

Fallout from the revelations has led to high-profile political and business resignations, including those of the deputy speaker of the Mongolian parliament and the chief executive of one of Austria's biggest banks, and sparked official investigations in states including the Philippines, India, Greece and South Korea.

The disclosures have helped to push the issue of tax avoidance up the political agenda. Placing the issue at the centre of the forthcoming G8 summit in Northern Ireland, David Cameron has spoken of wanting the G8 to "knock down the walls of company secrecy" to reveal who really owns and controls firms.

French president François Hollande has also weighed in, calling for the "eradication" of tax havens, days after the ICIJ's release of dozens of stories based on the secret offshore files. Hollande suffered embarrassment when the records revealed that Jean-Jacques Augier, his election campaign co-treasurer and close friend, had invested in offshore businesses in the Cayman Islands.

The Offshore Leaks app, developed by La Nación newspaper in Costa Rica for the ICIJ, allows users to explore the relationships between clients, offshore entities and the lawyers, accountants, banks and other intermediaries who help keep these arrangements secret.

It displays graphic visualisations of offshore entities and the networks around them including, where possible, the company's true owners.

"After 17 months of reporting, ICIJ reporters and partners are still digging into this massive trove of financial information," the ICIJ said.

"The Offshore Leaks database gives ICIJ an opportunity to reach journalists and regular citizens in every corner of the world, particularly in countries most affected by corruption and backroom deals. ICIJ believes many of the best stories may come from crowdsourcing, when readers explore the database."

Founded in 1997, the ICIJ is a global network of 160 reporters in more than 60 countries. It was launched as a project of the Center for Public Integrity, a US-based nonprofit investigative journalism organization.

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Our thriving technology sector should be tapped in the fight against inequality, so we're launching Founders Forum for Good

Both here in the UK and internationally, governments and charities are facing increasing demand for their services at the exact moment austerity forces them to look for efficiencies. In Britain, public and social organisations from our health service to youth clubs deliver important, often market-leading work, day in day out, and are vital lifelines for people in often desperate need. We can only applaud their vital work.

However, we need to help accelerate the pace of solutions to challenges such as social care or the provision of high quality education to every single young person. How? There is one especially vigorous sector that is yet to be tapped in the fight against health, income or employment inequality: technology. Social organisations in the UK have a combined income of £35bn, and employ more than a million Britons: a sizeable sector, but one which, by its own admission, has often failed to make use of technology to make themselves more efficient and productive.

There are plenty of incredible examples that show what's possible, here and around the world: Kiva Microfunds has crowdsourced over $400m from nearly a million lenders for those in need. Ni Kadek Juli Asih is one recipient, a young woman from Indonesia who took out, and repaid, her loan as she expanded her farm. Another is Griselda from Bolivia, who used her loan to expand a small clothing business and is saving her profits for college. And through Samasource nearly $3m in wages has gone to poor women and young people, giving them a chance to train in the digital economy, impacting over 15,000 people.

In the UK, Pennies, which lets you make micro-donations of a few pennies when you're paying for goods or services by card, has raised £1.3m for charities since it launched in November 2010 and Big White Wall is pioneering a tech-enabled approach to mental health.

We need many thousands more like these. This is why we are launching an organisation and challenge fund to encourage more entrepreneurs to innovate in this area. We believe harnessing the extraordinary collective brainpower we have within our thriving technology community could lead to dramatic changes in how we confront inequalities in education, health, employment and income.

This body, Founders Forum for Good, will leverage the Founders Forum community, which since 2005 has hosted in London some of the world's most dynamic digital entrepreneurs. Founders Forum For Good will connect this pool of talent with people who need their help in enacting social change.

Together, we will work to tackle the three obstacles to greater progress. First, we know young technology entrepreneurs aren't connected as well with those leading social change as they could be, and vice versa – so neither knows who to speak to in each other's industries to develop appropriate technology ventures. That's something we have to change quickly.

Second, too few digital leaders know the profound impact their advice could have in helping their counterparts in the non-profit sector thrive. Today the leaders of organisations such as Médecins Sans Frontières, Save the Children International and Flora and Fauna International will come to the Founders Forum for Good to see what more technology could do to help them in their work.

Third, there is a big business opportunity here – the social care sector in the UK alone is worth £87bn. If technology could make a fraction of the difference to this market that it has made on the way we consume music, for example, then the financial returns are obvious. The digital transformation that has happened in every part of our economy can bring the same benefits to current social and environmental issues.

All this takes funding, of course, and there isn't yet enough to encourage the volume of projects we need. So the Founders Forum for Good and the Nominet Trust are launching a £1m fund to provide seed capital to entrepreneurs who want to take up this challenge. It's a start but we hope it will stimulate the next Kiva or Samasource.

Inspiring more entrepreneurs to develop new ventures to do social good at scale has never felt more timely or more needed. Supporting them with the tremendous human capital of our successful technology entrepreneurs will ensure they succeed.

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We test Killzone: Shadow Fall, Driveclub, Knack and InFamous: Second Son – and explore the Dual Shock 4 controller

Slick presentations are all very well, but can hide a multitude of sins – there's no substitute for getting your hands on a game in order to gauge its merits. Currently, exact details of precisely which games will be available when the PlayStation 4 goes on sale remain unknown, but at least we managed to get some hands-on time with several of Sony's key first-party titles for the new console.

Killzone: Shadow Fall

Killzone is a slightly odd franchise: Guerrilla's first-person shooter has never quite hit the heights necessary to inspire the devotion afforded to the likes of Halo, but it has always been a solid performer. But Killzone: Shadow Fall, we reckon, is going to be the key PS4 launch title – the one that everyone will buy (unless they have an inescapable aversion to first-person shooters). Luckily, it's also the most impressive of the handful of Sony's PS4 launch titles that were playable at E3.

For starters, it looks great, with incredible draw-distances and notably detailed (and therefore convincing) environments. And it doesn't look much like Killzones of yore – Guerrilla has finally ditched the gloomy black, brown and grey colour palette in favour of something rather more colourful, and lashings of lens-flare. Even though it is a PS4 launch title, it's sufficiently gorgeous to impress anyone who sees you playing it.

We played through a huge, sprawling open-world level, in which there were several specified objectives that you could take on however you preferred. We started behind Helghast lines, at the top of a cliff, looking down on a forest in which a pall of smoke indicated a downed aircraft which we had to reach; another objective involved disabling anti-aircraft turrets.

The game eschewed any form of being ushered down a specific path. Playing as a Shadow Marshal, we had a bunch of useful abilities, accessible by swiping the Dual Shock 4's touch-pad to the left or right, or up and down. One of which was a zip-line, which can attach to any surface (as long as it's below where you currently are). Other toys included the OWL drone, which can be sent to take on enemies – it will cope with one, but two or more will destroy it, but you can use it to engage enemies while you outflank them. And it can be sent to hack alarm pads, which Helghast would trigger when under attack, bringing in reinforcements by drop-ship.

In classic Killzone style, you can also generate a shield to stand behind (this time around, not tied to a particular gun). Our light machine-gun had an alternate sniper-fire mode, and in tricky situations (using the D-pad), we could launch an adrenaline burst, temporarily slowing down time. A sonar sensor could be employed to scope out concealed nearby enemies.

That bristling array of gadgetry was pretty much essential – Killzone: Shadow Fall is pretty hard, with rigorous enemy AI (if they get close, they shine lights in your eyes, more or less blinding you, so you can't remain static), and in the level we played, employing stealth (followed by a neck-snapping takedown) was essential, as was deploying the OWL drone to keep enemies occupied. The control system's feel was superb, with great precision and just the right amount of snap, and visually, we found ourselves taking things slowly just because the scenery was so sumptuous. We climbed what was definitely the most realistic-looking rock face in any game.

There's no doubt whatsoever that Shadow Fall will be, by some considerable distance, the best Killzone game ever —playing it induced far more frissons of excitement than any of its predecessors. Of course, at this stage we can't say whether its storyline will live up to the visuals and the gameplay, but if you buy a PS4, it should be the first Sony-published game you buy.

Dual Shock 4

The PlayStation 4's Dual Shock 4 controller may look like its similarly named predecessors, but it has received a major and very thoughtful overhaul. The first thing you notice about it is that the hand-grips are much longer than those of previous Dual Shocks – which is great, especially for those with larger hands. It instantly feels great to grip.

The analogue sticks are a tiny bit stiffer than previously, but still move slickly, and the two sets of triggers for each hand are far more naturally placed than previously. But the biggest change to the controller is the touch-pad, which can also tilt slightly in any direction. In effect – as seen in Killzone: Shadow Fall – it can operate like a sort of mouse, and it offers all sorts of possibilities for developers – it supports multi-touch, so can read specific gestures. One notable absence on the controller is the Start button, whose responsibilities have devolved to the touch-pad. Force-feedback is impressive, too, thanks to the presence of two motors, one in each grip. The Dual Shock 4 is by far the best controller Sony has ever designed.

Driveclub

Runcorn-based driving game developer Evolution Studios has a great track record – in recent years, it has been responsible for the Motor Storm games. But the demo of its PS4 launch title, Driveclub, which we played at E3 left us thinking that the jury will remain out until we can scrutinise a more complete version of the game.

It consisted of one track – a custom-designed effort in countryside surroundings – and four cars, including the Audi R8 V10, Pagani Huayra and McLaren MP4-12C. There was a glimpse of its social networking-style attributes on show, in the form of mini-challenges that you encountered at various parts of the track (average speed, cornering tidiness and drifting), in which you faced off against another car – the PS4 pods at the show were networked up to each other. You would either win or lose points for your Drive Club, and everything was totted up at the end of the race. The game also used the PS4 camera to take a snapshot of its participants before the race, and you could see thumbnails of your competitors' photos on the backs of their ghost-cars.

While Driveclub was tidy enough – handling seemed fairly realistic, although skewed more towards arcade-style than simulation – the E3 demo didn't inspire. Visually, it wasn't that impressive, and what was on offer didn't seem vastly different than anything we'd seen before. Evolution Studios has a lot of work to do between now and Christmas if Driveclub is to achieve must-have status.

Knack

Knack is that rarest of items at the launch of a new console – an all-new series that promises originality. It's a quirky third-person action-adventure game, clearly designed to appeal more to the young than to hardcore gamers. You play Knack, an odd-looking, vaguely robotic glass character with the ability to surround himself (using a force-field) with a cloud of detritus picked up from his surroundings, and thereby to grow in size and change shape.

The demo we played showed that Knack majors on simplicity as far as gameplay is concerned – Knack can attack, jump and dodge, and that's just about it. He progresses along a single path, taking out enemies and solving mainly environmental puzzles. For example, he can denude himself of his forcefield of junk-shards and walk unaffected through laser-fields (since he's made of glass).

There were hidden areas he could smash open, collecting components that could be made into helpful items – such as one that harvests energy from enemies that could be used for special attacks. While there were some cute touches – in an ice level, for example, Knack assembles a body made of ice – the gameplay on offer in the demo was a tad repetitive and not particularly challenging. Although difficulty levels did ramp up somewhat towards the end of the demo when, thanks to relics he discovered, Knack had grown to about 30 feet in height, acquiring the ability to pick up and throw cars at equally giant (and heavily armed) enemies.

Knack was certainly quirky. But graphically, it didn't give the impression of anything more than scratching the surface of the PS4's abilities. Whether its component-assembly engine will allow its gameplay to mutate and progress remains to be seen – a more extended play will be required before we decide whether or not it is likely to be an essential PS4 purchase.

InFamous: Second Son

Sony's InFamous third-person superpower-themed action-adventure franchise is reminiscent of Killzone, in that its following is more cult than mainstream. But from what we could see at E3, it looks set to acquire a PS4-powered makeover that could elevate it to new heights. But there's bad news – it won't be available until early 2014.

And we didn't actually get hands-on with it at E3 – frustratingly having to sit next to one of its developers, who was at least playing it live. It had loads more personality than its predecessors, however, and was very impressive visually.

Second Son puts you in control of Delsin Rowe, a 24-year-old slacker just discovering his superhero powers. It's set seven years after InFamous 2, in a world made nervous by the events chronicled in that game – the outbreak of a significant chunk of the population discovering their superpowers has wrecked part of America, and the Department of Unified Protection has been set up to rein in the superheroes and villains, and safeguard the ordinary folk. The action takes place in a meticulous rendering of Seattle – the demo we saw involved taking out a DUP outpost in the grounds of the Space Needle, and contained a good deal of virtual rain.

Delsin's superpower is that he can take powers from others, so he can support several sets of superpowers. But when we saw him, he was imbued with a smoke-based superpower, which gave him some incredible moves (and gave a good idea of how the PS4 will be at particle effects). He could fire charges from his hands, do jetpack-style mini-hovers and send out charged-up grenade-style attacks. Plus he can waft into vents and out of the other end of the pipes they lead into. He has a particularly handy-looking dash-attack, and the demo ended with a spectacular, environment-flattening attack in which he soared into the air, then dive-bombed down, causing a massive explosion.

InFamous: Second Son was perhaps the most compelling of Sony's PS4 launch-window games: it looked inventive and visually spectacular. It's exactly the sort of game that you need in order to justify the purchase of a newly launched console, in fact.

The Playroom

The final item of PS4 software that we played was an intriguing item called The Playroom – although Sony points out that it will probably come out under another name, if indeed it comes out. It was a collection of apps created by Sony's Japan Studio, designed expressly to show how the PS4's camera and the controller's Motion Bar interact. It may well end up being bundled with the PS4, although Sony hasn't yet decided whether or not to do that.

The first Playroom app was called Controller Checkup, and it was simply a tour around the Dual Shock 4, highlighting the double motors – which, Sony says, can create a sensation of weight by operating asymmetrically, the motion-sensing and the built-in speaker. Next up was Play With Asobi: rubbing the touchpad, as if it was a genie-producing lamp, caused a floating robot to appear, with whom you could interact against a backdrop of the PS4 camera shot of the player. You could bat him away, tickle him and so on. If you annoyed him, he would set your hair on fire or encase your head in virtual ice. Basic stuff, but cute, and it proved that the PS4 camera can do some pretty sophisticated body and facial recognition, plus precise motion-detection.

The next app was called AR Bots. It began by showing what purported to be the area in the controller beneath the touch-pad – full of tiny robots. You could make them fall over by tilting the conveyor, or open up chinks of light by pressing the buttons – to which they responded with little dance moves. Then you could zoom out to the camera shot of you sitting in front of the PS4, and flip them out of the controller by running your finger across the touch-pad. You could then interact with them by moving your body, or even throw them virtual toys which you could create using an Android app on a tablet. Cute again, but not the sort of thing you'd spend hours playing.

Finally, the Playroom package included a take on the classic game Air Hockey, with two players moving their puck-hitters up and down with their touch-pads, and warping the play area by tilting the controller.

The Playroom was quite rough and ready, and was little more than tech-demos, but it did show how developers can use the PS4 camera in tandem with the Dual Shock 4 – which, compared to its predecessors is a box of tricks – to generate some pretty unconventional gameplay, which even approaches the sort of things the Xbox One will be able to do via Kinect.

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Users will now be able to click on hashtagged words as a search term and view a feed of discussions relating to that topic

Facebook has announced plans to introduce clickable hashtags for users.

The tool is already widely used on other media, such as microblogging site Twitter, so users can find out what others are discussing.

Facebook users have long-adopted the hashtag, often using it as an addition to comments and status updates. But they will now be able to click on the hashtagged words as a search term and view a feed of discussions relating to that topic.

Under the plans, announced on Wednesday, users will be able to:

• Search for a specific hashtag from the search bar. For example, #fathersday.

• Click on hashtags that originate on other services, such as Instagram.

• Compose posts directly from the hashtag feed and search results.

In a post for the company, Facebook's Greg Lindley said: "To date, there has not been a simple way to see the larger view of what's happening or what people are talking about.

"To bring these conversations more to the forefront, we will be rolling out a series of features that surface some of the interesting discussions people are having about public events, people, and topics.

"As a first step, we are beginning to roll out hashtags on Facebook.

"Hashtags are just the first step to help people more easily discover what others are saying about a specific topic and participate in public conversations.

"We'll continue to roll out more features in the coming weeks and months, including trending hashtags and deeper insights, that help people discover more of the world's conversations."

Hashtags already feature prominently in popular music, with artists incorporating the punctuation into song and album titles, while the video for current No1 single Blurred Lines by US singer Robin Thicke features the artist's surname and a hashtag flashing on screen throughout.

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NSA whistleblower says he is not in Hong Kong to 'hide from justice' and alleges US hacked hundreds of targets in China

The NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden vowed yesterday to fight an expected move by the US to have him extradited from Hong Kong, saying he was not there to "hide from justice" and would put his trust in its legal system.

In his first comments since revealing his identity in the Guardian at the weekend, Snowden also claimed that the US had been hacking Hong Kong and China since 2009, and accused the US of bullying the territory to return him because it did not want local authorities to learn of its cyber activities.

As a debate raged over whether Snowden should be praised or prosecuted for his actions, he told the South China Morning Post: "I'm neither traitor nor hero. I'm an American."

Snowden claimed that the US had hacked hundreds of targets in Hong Kong – including public officials, a university, businesses and students in the city – and on the mainland. These were part of more than 61,000 NSA hacking operations globally, he alleged.

"We hack network backbones – like huge internet routers, basically – that give us access to the communications of hundreds of thousands of computers without having to hack every single one," he said.

The Post said it had seen a document that, Snowden alleged, supported his claims. The Post said it had not verified the document, and did not immediately publish it.

Snowden said he was releasing the information to demonstrate "the hypocrisy of the US government when it claims that it does not target civilian infrastructure, unlike its adversaries".

A senior Chinese official said last week he had "mountains of data" on cyber-attacks from the US, after Washington turned up the pressure over hacking by China.

Jen Psaki, a spokeswoman for the State Department in Washington, said it was not aware of the hacking claims and could not comment directly, but she rejected the idea that such an incident would represent double standards given recent US criticism of Chinese cyber attacks.

"There is a difference between going after economic data and the issues of surveillance that the president has addressed which are about trying to stop people doing us harm," she said.

Snowden, 29, was a computer technical assistant working for Booz Allen Hamilton, on contract to the National Security Agency (NSA). He left his job and home in Hawaii in May, set up camp in Hong Kong and provided the Guardian with top-secret documents that led to a series of revelations about the extent of US surveillance last week. For three weeks, he stayed in a hotel in the Kowloon district. But after identifying himself as the whistleblower in a video posted by the Guardian on Sunday, he felt he needed to move to a more secure location, and checked out on Monday.

Hong Kong appeared a strange choice for Snowdon, as it has a surrender treaty with the US and leans towards co-operating with US requests. But in his hour-long interview, Snowden told the South China Morning Post: "People who think I made a mistake in picking Hong Kong as a location misunderstand my intentions. I am not here to hide from justice. I am here to reveal criminality."

He added: "My intention is to ask the courts and people of Hong Kong to decide my fate. I have been given no reason to doubt your system."

Although China has had sovereignty over Hong Kong since 1997, the territory retains a separate legal system and tradition of free speech. Beijing normally does not become involved in surrender hearings – technically not extradition, as Hong Kong is not a sovereign state – but could make an exception given the high-profile nature of this case.

Even some human rights groups have questioned why he chose Hong Kong, given its control by China. But Snowden added: "I have had many opportunities to flee HK, but I would rather stay and fight the United States government in the courts, because I have faith in Hong Kong's rule of law."

The Hong Kong government has made no comment yet about the case. The chief executive of the Hong Kong government, Leung Chun-ying, on a visit to New York, repeatedly refused to comment on the case in a Bloomberg Television interview.

Snowden may have opted to give the interview to the Post to help build up a case for his being allowed to remain in Hong Kong, where opinion is divided between those expressing support and those who would like him to leave. He is turning into a cause célèbre, with a demonstration in support of him planned for Saturday.

It would be difficult for the Hong Kong police to arrest him until such time as the US makes a request for his return, since he has committed no crime in the city. In theory, he could attempt to fly out of the city, but it is likely he would be prevented from boarding the plane.

Similarly, if he were to attempt to move to mainland China, it is likely he would be stopped at the border. In any case, Snowden told the Post that he planned to stay in Hong Kong until he was asked to leave.

In Washington, an outspoken Republican congressman, Peter King, called for the arrest of the Guardian columnist who led the reporting on the NSA leaks, Glenn Greenwald. King told Fox News that Greenwald's stories were "putting American lives at risk and clearly done to hurt Americans". In a statement, the Guardian said it was "surprised and disappointed" by the comments.

In a separate development, the foreign secretary, William Hague rejected suggestions that US surveillance programs were being used by UK authorities to avoid local privacy laws and spy on British citizens. On a visit to Washington where he met the secretary of state, John Kerry, he said: "No two countries in the world work more closely to protect the privacy of their citizens than the United Kingdom and the United States."

Kerry said they both understood the "very delicate but vital balance between privacy and the protection of people in our country".

Additional reporting by Dan Roberts in Washington

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