Alexander Macgillivray, Twitter’s general counsel and chief navigator of its thorny digital First Amendment issues, is departing the company. The move now is unusual, because it comes just before Twitter is moving closer to preparing for and filing its initial public offering.
U.S. intelligence services carried out 231 offensive cyber-operations in 2011, the leading edge of a clandestine campaign that embraces the Internet as a theater of spying, sabotage and war, according to top-secret documents obtained by The Washington Post. That disclosure, in a classified intelligence budget provided by NSA leaker Edward Snowden, provides new evidence that the Obama administration’s growing ranks of cyberwarriors infiltrate and disrupt foreign computer networks.
The U.S. Department of Justice's talks with Microsoft Corp and Google Inc have hit a wall as the government pushes back at the tech companies' demand for the ability to disclose the now-secret data requests they receive.Microsoft's general counsel, Brad Smith, described as a failure the outcome of the companies' recent negotiations with the government over the disclosure of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court orders the companies receive.
Can law enforcement obtain a search warrant to dig through a vast trove of e-mails, instant messages and chat logs because they have reasonable suspicion that the owners of those accounts robbed computer equipment from a private company? No, according to a ruling by a federal judge in Kansas.
A shell company in Texas is invoking a 1996 patent to claim a monopoly over remote location services like Apple’s “Find my Friends” and Google’s defunct “Latitude,” filing lawsuits against the two tech companies and against major phone carries like Verizon. The lawsuits, which also refer to Apple’s “Find my iPhone” service, could spell trouble not just for the corporate giants but for the many small players in the burgeoning industry for location-based smartphone apps.
A hacking attack on websites run by New York Times Co., Twitter Inc. and other companies highlights a longstanding soft spot in Internet security: The Web's version of a phone directory is controlled by outside companies. Although large firms often spend millions to combat a growing list of cyberthreats, the keys to their Web addresses -- the names that usually end in .com -- often are held by one of hundreds of so-called domain-name server registration companies.
Facebook wants to be clear: It can use the names, profile pictures and other data of its members to deliver ads on the site. The site announced a wide range of proposed updates to its Data Use Policy and Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, two key documents that explain how the social network collects and uses people's data.
Twitter introduced a “report abuse” button for individual tweets after a U.K. woman was harassed on the social network last month.When Caroline Criado-Perez started receiving rape threats and other abusive tweets for her stance on women being printed on currency, digital bystander Kim Graham started a petition.
More than a year after Amazon began collecting sales tax on sales in states like Texas and California, it’s mounting a legal offensive against a requirement to do the same thing in New York, taking its argument to the U.S. Supreme Court. The company filed a petition asking the court to rule on the New York tax department’s requirement that Amazon collect tax from its customers in the state.
New Zealand has finally passed a new Patents Bill that will effectively outlaw software patents after five years of debate, delay and intense lobbying from multinational software vendors. Aptly-named Commerce Minister Craig Foss welcomed the modernisation of patents law, saying it marked a "significant step towards driving innovation in New Zealand."
A 24-year-old Pennsylvania hacker pleaded guilty to accusations he tried to sell access to Energy Department supercomputers he unlawfully accessed. The defendant, who remains free pending a November sentencing date, faces as much as 18 months behind bars under a plea deal with Massachusetts federal authorities.
Delaware's three casinos launched the first phase of the state's online gambling operation, opening Web portals for free slots, poker, blackjack and roulette games. The no-money games are precursor to the state's coming full-service, real-cash online gambling operation, now planned to launch at the end of October.
Google Inc's Android, the dominant mobile operating system, is by far the primary target for malware attacks, mostly because many users are still using older versions of the software, according to a study by the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Android was a target for 79 percent of all malware threats to mobile operating systems in 2012 with text messages representing about half of the malicious applications, according to the study from the government agencies, which was published by Public Intelligence website.
A U.S. judge weighing remedies to assure that Apple Inc does not fix prices again in the e-books market said that she plans to require it to hire an external monitor, something the company considers unnecessary. But U.S. District Judge Denise Cote in Manhattan suggested a final injunction would be narrower than what the U.S. Department of Justice has been seeking, and would not restrict Apple's agreements with suppliers of other types of content such as movies, music and TV shows.
The Syrian Electronic Army apparently took control over the Twitter.com Web site address record, the hacker group's latest attack on high-profile Internet sites. The New York Times' Web site went down, and the SEA is a suspect there, too.
Governments sought information on over 38,000 Facebook users in the first half of 2013 and the No.1 social network complied with most requests, the firm said in its first report on the scale of data inquiries it gets from countries around the world. The report follows allegations by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden that practically every major Internet company -- including Facebook, Google Inc and Microsoft Corp -- routinely hands over troves of data on potentially millions of users to national intelligence agencies.
A piece of malicious software masquerading as a Facebook video is hijacking users’ Facebook accounts and Web browsers, according to independent Italian security researchers who have been investigating the situation. The malware appears as a link in an e-mail or Facebook message telling people that they have been tagged in a Facebook post.
A U.S. judge granted final approval to Facebook's $20 million settlement of a lawsuit over targeted advertising despite objections that the deal did not go far enough to protect children's privacy. Five plaintiffs filed a class action against Facebook in 2011, saying the social networking giant's "Sponsored Stories" program shared users' "likes" of certain advertisers with friends without paying them or allowing them to opt out.
Hackers have successfully attacked Google.ps, the Palestinian version of the Google search page. The page describes how the hackers are protesting the legitimacy of terms used in Google Maps, which does not formally display the term "Palestine" on its imagery.
U.S. regulators and law enforcement agencies are expected to meet with an advocacy group for Bitcoin, a digital currency that has been under fire for its purported role in facilitating anonymous money transfers and supporting online purchases of illegal street drugs. The meeting in Washington was arranged by the Treasury Department's anti-money laundering unit at the request of the Bitcoin Foundation, an advocacy group of Bitcoin-related businesses.
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The GigaLaw Firm helps companies of all sizes protect their brands online, using domain name dispute policies – such as the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) – and other legal tools available to copyright and trademark owners on the Internet.
