Iran threatened the Internet giant with a lawsuit after the search engine dropped the name of the Persian Gulf on Google Maps. Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said that if Google does not restore the name of the Persian Gulf, it will face "serious damages."
The White House’s cybersecurity coordinator said that he is stepping down at the end of this month after a 2 1 / 2-year tenure in which the administration has increased its focus on cyber issues but struggled to reach agreement with lawmakers on the best way to protect the nation’s key computer networks from attack. Howard Schmidt, who oversaw the creation of the White House’s first legislative proposal on cybersecurity, said he is retiring to spend more time with his family and to pursue teaching in the cyber field.
Apple Inc. is defending its voice-recognition software Siri — she of the iPhone 4S — against claims that it doesn’t perform as advertised. A cluster of lawsuits seeking class action status in Oakland, Calif., allege that iPhone 4S commercials and company statements about the phone were false and misleading. Siri, they say, is brilliant on TV, but she’s dim in reality.
U.S. sales of two new smartphones from HTC will be delayed because of a patent dispute with Apple, a fresh blow to HTC, of Taiwan, as it seeks to turn around declining sales in what was once its largest market. Apple won a narrow victory against HTC in a patent lawsuit in December over the technology used in the devices, one of many such disputes in the fiercely competitive smartphone market.
Google will meet with France's data protection watchdog to answer questions about its new user privacy policy as part of a Europe-wide investigation being led by the French regulator. France's "Commission Nationale de l'Informatique" (CNIL) is examining Google's new approach to privacy on behalf of data protection regulators of the 27 European Union member states to determine if it conforms with European law.
In recent weeks, hackers have breached Web sites belonging to several foreign policy and human rights groups, including Amnesty International and the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism, a nonprofit organization based in Israel that researches terrorism issues. Hackers infiltrated the sites using two well-known security vulnerabilities, one in Adobe Flash and another in Java software, according to a blog post by security researchers at the Shadowserver Foundation, a nonprofit group that tracks cyber threats.
To his Facebook friends and Twitter followers, Gene Morphis was like the rest of the world, using social media to vent about day-to-day frustrations of his job. But Mr. Morphis wasn't like most employees. He happened to be an officer of a public company, and his musings cost him his job.
The Supreme Court has denied the appeal of Psystar, the company that tried, and failed, to sell Apple's Macintosh OS running on top of hardware it built itself. In April 2008 Psystar began selling the so-called Open Computer, leading virtually the entire tech world to predict a retaliatory Apple suit.
Apple and five big publishers are still on the hook to battle allegations of price fixing after a U.S. district court judge rejected their bid to dismiss a consumer lawsuit accusing them of colluding to maintain artificially high e-book prices. Last month, the U.S. Department of Justice announced settlements with three publishers: Simon & Schuster, Hachette Book Group, and Harper Collins. Apple, Macmillan, and Penguin intend to fight the allegations in court.
After blasting a controversial House cybersecurity information-sharing bill, then criticizing a White House-backed bill in the Senate, a group of nearly three dozen civil liberties and other advocacy groups is opposing proposals by Senate Republicans as well. After Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, ID-Conn., and a string of other committee leaders proposed the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 earlier this year, Senate Republicans balked at the bill's proposals to give Homeland Security officials more oversight of certain private networks.
A security lapse at the popular crowd-funding website Kickstarter.com exposed more than 70,000 project ideas that weren't ready to be viewed. The information that could be seen didn't include credit-card numbers or other sensitive personal details, but it could make users more wary of Kickstarter's data practices and lower their expectations of privacy on the site.
The closely watched crackdown on Iran's Internet access experienced another major development involving email access to the rest of the world. According to a new report from AFP, an order from the country's telecommunications minister dictates that all telephone companies, banks, and insurance firms are prohibited from using foreign email services such as Google's Gmail, Yahoo Mail, or Microsoft's Hotmail.
Nvidia Corp. and patent-portfolio incubator Intellectual Ventures jointly acquired about 500 wireless communication patents as Nvidia continues its push beyond personal computers and seeks to defend itself from possible litigation in the mobile sector. The patents, purchased from IPWireless, include technology for advanced wireless technology known as 4G Long Term Evolution, or LTE.
A U.S. appeals court ruled that Apple Inc could press its bid for an immediate block on the sale of some tablet computers made by Samsung Electronics Co Ltd based on allegations of infringement of one patent. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said the judge in a district court in California had erred in deciding that Apple failed to show that it was likely to succeed on the merits.
Senate Judiciary Committee staffers plan to take a look at allegations that Microsoft has made it difficult for competing Web browsers to run on a certain version of Windows, an aide to Antitrust subcommittee Chairman Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) told The Hill. The Mozilla Foundation, which makes the Firefox browser, and Google have accused Microsoft of hindering their browsers' ability to run on Windows devices with ARM processors, which are popular in mobile phones.
Facebook updated its privacy policy to provide more specific details about what the social network does and does not do with your personal information. The move comes after Irish data protection officials in December ordered Facebook to be more transparent about features like facial recognition.
Eduardo Saverin, the billionaire co- founder of Facebook Inc., renounced his U.S. citizenship before an initial public offering that values the social network at as much as $96 billion, a move that may reduce his tax bill. Saverin, 30, joins a growing number of people giving up U.S. citizenship, a move that can trim their tax liabilities in that country.
Online music storage firm MP3tunes Inc filed for bankruptcy in a U.S. court, following its prolonged run-in with music publishing giant EMI Group over copyright issues, court filings showed. MP3tunes is a so-called cloud music service that lets users store music in online "lockers." Amazon.com Inc, Apple Inc and Google Inc have similar cloud services.
Amid signs the Federal Trade Commission is ratcheting up its investigation of Google Inc., the search giant is returning fire by stepping up a public relations campaign to make the case that its activities don't violate antitrust law. The company provided financial backing for two papers in which third-party lawyers and economists laid out a legal defense of Google's business practices and blasted possible action by the FTC.
Mozilla accused Microsoft of withholding APIs necessary to build a competitive browser for Windows RT, and said the behavior "may have antitrust implications." Anderson warned that Microsoft's decision to allow only Internet Explorer 10 (IE10) in one mode of Windows RT "signal[s] an unwelcome return to the digital dark ages where users and developers didn't have browser choices."
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