The Federal Communications Commission filed motions to dismiss what it calls "premature" lawsuits from Verizon and, more recently, MetroPCS over net neutrality. The FCC's three filings in the D.C. Circuit note that its December Open Internet order has not yet been filed in the Federal Register, so the telecommunications companies' challenges are premature.
Web activist group Anonymous has criticized the arrest of its members claiming the web attacks they launched were a legitimate form of protest. Five men were arrested in connection with web attacks carried out in support of WikiLeaks.
Connecticut's attorney general says an agreement has been reached with Google allowing negotiations to begin over the company's collection of data from public Wi-Fi networks. Attorney General George Jepsen said it means Connecticut and a 40-state coalition can proceed to negotiate a settlement of privacy issues without a protracted court battle.
iPhone 4 owner Donald LeBuhn filed a class action lawsuit against Apple, claiming the company is misleading customers about the strength of the glass casing on the iPhone 4. LeBuhn is asking that Apple reimburse the plaintiffs in the case for the cost of the phone and any repairs.
Egypt has cut off nearly all Internet traffic into and out of the country in the largest blackout of its kind, according to firms that monitor international data flows. Renesys, a Vermont-based company that tracks Internet traffic, said that just after midnight Cairo time, or 5 p.m. New York time, Egyptian authorities had succeeded in shutting down the country’s international access points.
Government lawyers filed a motion asking a judge to dismiss a lawsuit seeking to overturn new rules designed to protect Internet freedom. In documents filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for Washington, D.C., lawyers for the Federal Communications Commission call the lawsuit by Verizon and MetroPCS "fatally premature" and argue that the court lacks jurisdiction to hear the case.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation said it had executed more than 40 search warrants in the United States as part of an investigation into an international group of computer hackers who attacked corporate Web sites last year in a show of support for WikiLeaks. The FBI investigation is part of a larger international inquiry into a loose confederation of hackers calling itself “Anonymous” that coordinated the cyberattacks against the Web sites of companies like PayPal, Visa and MasterCard late last year after they severed ties with WikiLeaks.
Two men who set up an alleged online scheme to scare more than a million people into buying bogus software have agreed to pay more than $8 million in "ill-gotten gains," the Federal Trade Commission announced. The men, a father and son, agreed to pay the money as part of a settlement after federal investigators accused them and five others of creating "scareware" to trick people into thinking their computers were infected.
It's the latest litigation tactic in the online age: U.S. lawyers are trying to mine the private zones of Facebook and other social-media sites for photos, comments, status updates and other tidbits that might contradict what their opponents are saying in court. And increasingly, judges in civil cases are granting access to online caches that had formerly been considered off-limits.
Amid increasing scrutiny of the Internet-data industry, a group of people who analyze such online information are trying to get their colleagues to commit to a code of ethics. Among other things, the new code asks workers to ensure that consumers have a means to opt out of tracking and that privacy policies provide a clear explanation of data collection and usage.
Netflix, the DVD mail-order-company-turned-online-video-giant, is firing back at cable and telecom firms as it weighs in on an increasingly thorny debate over net neutrality. In a blog, Netflix published a ranking of how Internet service providers perform in delivering Netflix's online streaming videos. Chartered gets highest marks for delivering videos at high speeds, therefore better resolution.
Police in England have arrested five young men on suspicion of taking part in distributed denial-of-service attacks launched by Anonymous, the group that has targeted corporate sites for attack in defense of WikiLeaks. The five, aged 15 to 26, were detained at addresses in the West Midlands, Northamptonshire, Hertfordshire, Surrey, and London, the Metropolitan Police Central eCrime Unit said in a statement.
House and Senate committee leaders backed dueling legislation to extend online surveillance provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act that are set to expire at the end of February. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., introduced the bipartisan 2011 USA PATRIOT Act Sunset Extension Act, which would continue to allow roving wiretaps of suspects who change computers or phone numbers to avoid monitoring; tracking of "lone wolves" -- people of interest with no known links to terrorist groups; and retrieval of records and other tangible evidence from organizations with a court order.
A Staten Island man is poking Facebook with a $500,000 lawsuit for disabling his account, the New York Post reported. Mustafa Fteja said his account was disabled without explanation in September, cutting off his access to friends and family around the world, as well as to personal memories and photos.
Apple removed a notorious anthem of the Nazi Party from the German version of its iTunes online music store, a German spokesman for the U.S. firm told Reuters. Named after a young party activist killed in 1930, the marching song "Horst Wessel Lied," was the unofficial anthem of the Nazis until it was banned in Germany at the end of World War II.
Intel's acquisition of data security firm McAfee cleared its last major hurdle after EU regulators approved the $7.68 billion deal on condition Intel grant rival firms access to its technology. Intel agreed to ensure that rival security firms have access to all necessary information that would allow their products to use Intel's chips and central processing units, the Commission said.
Egypt appears to be blocking Facebook, a day after the government may have done the same with Twitter, as protests and violence escalated against the rule of President Hosni Mubarak. "We are aware of reports of disruption to service but have not seen any major changes in traffic from Egypt," said Andrew Noyes, Facebook's manager of public policy communications.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg appears to be the second high-profile victim of a hacking attack on his own Facebook page, following a similar account takeover targeting French president Nicolas Sarkozy. The page sported an uncharacteristic message advocating that Facebook adopt a "social business" model, where profits are invested in areas such as health care for the poor and other charitable causes, according to a report on TechCrunch.
Google's roll-out of Keep My Opt-Outs, a new Chrome browser privacy feature, does not really enable you to universally "opt out permanently," as the search giant puts it, from being tracked online by all advertising networks. Neither does a similar privacy feature Microsoft is developing for Internet Explorer 9, the next version of the world's most widely used Web browser, due out later this year.
As fierce anti-government protests in the Egyptian capital of Cairo began to escalate, word broke out this morning that government forces had blocked access to Twitter's Web site. Twitter users throughout the country reported that they could not access the Twitter.com Web site, though third-party clients were still functioning.
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