Law enforcement and counterterrorism officials, citing lapses in compliance with surveillance orders, are pushing to overhaul a federal law that requires phone and broadband carriers to ensure that their networks can be wiretapped, federal officials say. The officials say tougher legislation is needed because some telecommunications companies in recent years have begun new services and made system upgrades that caused technical problems for surveillance.
A class-action lawsuit accuses Zynga, a Facebook partner and social-games maker, of deliberately sharing personal data of Facebook users. The suit, filed in a San Francisco federal court Nancy Graf of St. Paul, Minn., accuses Zynga of sharing "Facebook data" of its 218 million users.
Students at California state universities are expressing frustration following news that the university system sent a cease-and-desist letter to a new Web site that lets pupils sell their class notes -- in violation of California law, the chancellor's office says. On NoteUtopia, students from about 100 colleges and universities around the country can buy, sell, or simply share their original class notes and reports, as well as handouts, exams released by the professor, and completed study guides.
Google has no plans to resume using its Street View cars to collect information about the location of Wi-Fi networks, a practice that led to a flurry of privacy probes after the company said it unintentionally captured fragments of unencrypted data. The disclosure appeared in a report on Street View released by Canadian privacy commissioner Jennifer Stoddart, who said that "collection is discontinued and Google has no plans to resume it."
A new study on parent-teen attitudes towards online privacy conducted by San Francisco-based privacy group Truste showed that 72 percent of the 1,037 parents with social-networking accounts monitored their teen's social-networking accounts regularly, with 35 percent checking every day. Another 10 percent of parents were even secretly logged into their teen's accounts.
The U.S. government is reviewing an Australian program that will allow Internet service providers to alert customers if their computers are taken over by hackers and could limit online access if people don't fix the problem. Obama administration officials have met with industry leaders and experts to find ways to increase online safety while trying to balance securing the Internet and guarding people's privacy and civil liberties.
Attacks on computer networks are among the biggest emerging threats to the UK, the government has said in its new national security strategy. The report highlights cyber crime, alongside terrorism and a flu pandemic, among the key dangers to UK security.
Two congressmen asked Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg for more details about the way applications on the social network handle user information, which has raised privacy concerns. U.S. Reps. Edward Markey (D., Mass.) and Joe Barton (R., Texas) sent Mr. Zuckerberg a letter expressing concerns that "third-party applications gathered and transmitted personally identifiable information about Facebook users and those users' friends."
Many of the most popular applications, or "apps," on the social-networking site Facebook Inc. have been transmitting identifying information -- in effect, providing access to people's names and, in some cases, their friends' names -- to dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies, a Wall Street Journal investigation has found. The issue affects tens of millions of Facebook app users, including people who set their profiles to Facebook's strictest privacy settings.
Microsoft is vastly expanding its efforts to prevent governments from using software piracy inquiries as a pretext to suppress dissent. It plans to provide free software licenses to more than 500,000 advocacy groups, independent media outlets and other nonprofit organizations in 12 countries with tightly controlled governments, including Russia and China.
Five of Russia's Internet giants have said they cannot be held responsible for copyright violations on their sites and urged rapid changes to outdated laws, in an unprecedented joint statement. The search engines and mail providers, including the Russian unit of Google, said that the legal framework had not kept up with the rapid expansion of the Internet in Russia over the last year.
Google said that it remained on course to begin its Street View mapping service in Germany this year despite the thousands of people who have asked the company to delete their properties. Germany's consumer protection minister, Ilse Aigner, has said "several hundred thousand" Germans have asked Google to remove their properties from Street View.
A Slovakian antivirus company with its American headquarters in San Diego is trying to make good cybersecurity just as much a part of the local fabric as good beaches and Chargers football. Eset launched the Securing Our eCity program with the San Diego Chamber of Commerce two years ago to offer free workshops to consumers and small businesses on how to stay safe online.
A Canadian federal court ruling allows Amazon.com Inc. to patent its "one-click" order process for online shopping, overturning an earlier decision by the federal patent commissioner. The ruling follows a decade-long legal battle by the search-engine giant, which has sought to patent single-click ordering as a proprietary invention.
Nations need to define the rules of engagement for acts of cyber terror. The call for clarity was issued by Michael Chertoff, former head of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, at the RSA security conference in London.
A new fund could help bring high speed Internet to unserved and remote areas of the United States, U.S. telecommunications regulators said. The Federal Communications Commission proposed allocating universal service funds -- fees consumers pay telephone companies to subsidize landline phone services for low-income and rural families -- to create a "mobility fund" to expand broadband Internet to areas without service.
North Carolina tax collectors say they want Amazon.com to turn over the names and addresses of customers in their state and a description of all purchases so they can get the sales-tax money they're owed. But the American Civil Liberties Union argues that if Amazon is forced to comply with North Carolina's data demands, Internet users would start to think twice about buying controversial books, music and movies, violating their constitutional rights to free speech.
The U.S. leads the world in numbers of Windows PCs that are part of botnets, reveals a report. More than 2.2 million U.S. PCs were found to be part of botnets, networks of hijacked home computers, in the first six months of 2010, it said.
President Barack Obama's administration announced steps to boost civil-military coordination against cyber threats said to be mounting against sensitive U.S. computer networks. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano spelled out fresh arrangements between their departments to synchronize their response to a wide range of threats.
When it comes to fighting online piracy, some music and film industry executives think Google could be doing more to help. At a time when Google is negotiating with television, movie, and music producers for the recently launched GoogleTV and an upcoming digital music service, the company has been sending mixed messages about how much help it will provide in removing links to pirated songs from its search index.
About : Legal Services | Doug Isenberg | Cases & Clients | Firm News
Resources : YouTube Channel | Daily News | Blog | Masterclass | Domain Dispute Digest
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.