Two British travelers were barred from entering the U.S. after posts on Twitter indicated they had plans to 'destroy America' and 'dig up Marilyn Monroe,' The Sun reports. Leigh Van Bryan, 26, and Emily Bunting 24, were detained upon arrival to Los Angeles after Homeland Security discovered the tweets.
The European Commission opened a new front in the global patent war between Samsung Electronics and rivals including Apple Inc. with a formal investigation into whether the South Korean technology giant's use of patents is breaking EU antitrust rules. The investigation is based on concerns that Samsung is using special patents, known as "standards-essential," to distort the market for mobile devices such as phones and tablets in Europe.
Samsung Electronics lost a bid to overturn a ruling barring its local unit from selling its Galaxy 10.1 tablets in Germany, handing a symbolic legal victory to Apple Inc. in efforts to keep its lead spot in the tablet computer market. A higher regional court in Duesseldorf, Germany, said that Samsung may not sell the older version of its Galaxy tablet in Europe's biggest economy.
Planned changes to Google Inc.'s privacy policies that have caught the attention of U.S. lawmakers would not take away the control its customers have over how data is collected and used, the company said in a blog post. Google, whose offerings include its flagship search engine, Gmail, YouTube and Google+ products, announced last week that it was unifying 60 of its privacy policies.
In response to a question during his first Google+ hangout with a handful of voters about whether the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act would levy "too much censorship on the Internet," President Obama stopped short of saying he opposes the legislation. "I think that it's going to be possible for us" to find a workable approach, Obama said during the event broadcast on YouTube, predicting that it's possible to protect Hollywood's interests without "affecting the fundamental integrity of the Internet as an open, transparent system."
Reps. Mary Bono Mack (R-Calif.) and G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.) wrote to Google CEO Larry Page and requested a briefing on the company's recent changes to its privacy policy. "As Google's announcement also states, 'this stuff matters,' and we agree: it matters deeply to both policymakers and consumers," the lawmakers wrote.
In a case that shines light on the world of professional cybersquatters, Verizon is suing a website and a domain name registrar that placed ads on hundreds of sites with Verizon-like names. In a complaint filed in Los Angeles federal court, Verizon accuses “serial cybersquatters” Parked.com and registrar DNLtd of controlling more than 660 websites.
The Food and Drug Administration secretly monitored the personal e-mail of a group of its own scientists and doctors after they warned Congress that the agency was approving medical devices that they believed posed unacceptable risks to patients, government documents show. The surveillance -- detailed in e-mails and memos unearthed by six of the scientists and doctors, who filed a lawsuit against the FDA in U.S. District Court in Washington -- took place over two years as the plaintiffs accessed their personal Gmail accounts from government computers.
Major tech firms including Google, Facebook and Microsoft have teamed together to fight email phishing scams. Members say the partnership will lead to better email security and protect users and tech brands from fraudulent messages. The group, which calls itself DMARC -- for Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance -- says it wants to help reduce email abuse by standardizing how email receivers perform authentication.
The federal government's plan to expand computer security protections into critical parts of private industry is raising concerns that the move will threaten Americans' civil liberties. In a report, The Constitution Project warns that as the Obama administration partners more with the energy, financial, communications and health care industries to monitor and protect networks, sensitive personal information of people who work for or communicate with those companies could be improperly or inadvertently disclosed.
Federal law-enforcement officials say they are concerned about cyber-retaliation against agents and prosecutors, in light of suspicions that people linked to the hacker collective Anonymous targeted the private life of a government official investigating WikiLeaks. The concern prompted the government to take the rare step of keeping officials' names out of news releases and public statements when the government shut down the website Megaupload.com, charging company officials with violations of copyright law.
Former Groupon Inc. sales representatives sued by that company after leaving for Google Inc. have filed a countersuit, claiming their former employer is pursuing "sham" litigation to keep them from joining rivals. Groupon, which runs the world's largest online coupon website, had accused Nikki Dorough, Brian Hanna and Michael Nolan of taking confidential trade secrets when they moved to the world's largest Internet search company.
When Twitter announced that upon request, it would block certain messages in countries where they were deemed illegal, the move immediately prompted outcry, argument and even calls for a boycott from some users. Twitter in turn sought to explain that this was the best way to comply with the laws of different countries.
A leading lawmaker on privacy issues said he would ask for a probe into whether recently announced changes in how Google handles consumer data violated an agreement it made with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. Representative Edward Markey was also one of eight U.S. lawmakers who sent a letter to Google expressing concern that a planned consolidation of user information may make it more difficult for consumers to protect their privacy.
Twitter said that it will withhold tweets from a country when there are local restrictions rather than having to block them globally. "As we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression," the company wrote on its blog.
Federal regulators announced settlements with six online marketers who were accused of using fake news sites on the Internet to entice customers to buy acai berry weight-loss products. They promised rapid and substantial weight loss, sometimes claiming people could lose 25 pounds in four weeks without changing their diets or exercising.
The British judge presiding over a wide-ranging inquiry into media ethics and practices has suggested that social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter should be seen differently than traditional publishers. Lord Justice Brian Leveson said that there was a distinction between what he described as "pub chatter" between friends on such sites and organizations which publish material for public consumption.
The FBI is looking to develop a web application that can monitor social networks, including Facebook and Twitter, in order to gain better real-time intelligence about current or potential future security threats or situations. This plan was inadvertently revealed by the FBI’s Strategic Information and Operations Center (SOIC) in a market research request for a "Social Media Application."
Software company RealNetworks Inc. said it agreed to sell a significant number of its patents and its next generation video software to Intel Corp. for $120 million. RealNetworks Chief Executive Thomas Nielsen said the patent sale helps his company unlock some of the substantial and unrealized value of its assets and gives it an opportunity to generate additional capital to boost investments in new businesses and markets.
Facebook Inc. and the state of Washington sued spammers who target social media users with videos and reap millions of dollars from advertising commissions.
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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.