Advanced technological tools are beginning to make it possible to measure and monitor employees as never before, with the promise of fundamentally changing how we work -- along with raising concerns about privacy and the specter of unchecked surveillance in the workplace. Yet the prospect of fine-grained, digital monitoring of workers’ behavior worries privacy advocates.
Intellectual property experts are a little put out by the Supreme Court's decision in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank. Here's why: While the court struck down what was universally said to be a bad patent, it didn't do much to say what kinds of software should be patentable. In other words, the court decided the most basic conflict in the case, but more or less declined to offer guidance for other, future cases.
As the four-star general in charge of U.S. digital defenses, Keith Alexander warned repeatedly that the financial industry was among the likely targets of a major attack. Now he’s selling the message directly to the banks.
The website of a poll gauging Hong Kong residents' opinions on elections was repeatedly hit by severe cyberattacks on its opening day, according to organizers and a firm seeking to protect the poll from such attacks. CloudFlare, which provides performance and security services for more than a million websites, termed the online assault one of the largest and most sophisticated denial-of-service attacks in the Internet's history.
An Apple Inc. "kill switch" to disable stolen iPhones appears to be reducing thefts, law-enforcement officials in New York and California said. Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. are following Apple's lead, planning to put similar technology into devices using their software.
The European Commission has told Ireland it may investigate more companies as part of a probe into the country's tax practices, after announcing a formal probe into Apple Inc.'s Irish subsidiaries, a person familiar with the matter said. The EU is investigating whether Ireland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands have attracted investment and jobs by helping big companies avoid tax in other countries, including EU members.
Medtronic Inc., the world's largest stand-alone medical device maker, was the victim of a cyber attack and lost some patient records in separate incidents last year, it said in a regulatory filing. "Medtronic, along with two other large medical device manufacturers, discovered an unauthorized intrusion to our systems that was believed to originate from hackers in Asia," the company said in a 10-K filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Gemalto NV, the French digital security company, said that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit rejected its patent claim relating to the Android smart phone operating platform. Gemalto, which makes smart cards, filed a suit in the United States in October 2010 against Google, Motorola, Samsung and HTC, alleging that their Android applications infringed on its patents.
Google will appeal a decision by a court in British Columbia that requires the company to remove specific search results worldwide. While the case stems from an intellectual property dispute between two small industrial equipment companies, some legal experts say that if the decision is upheld it could have far-reaching consequences for the Internet.
A U.S. judge said she had concerns about approving a $324.5 million settlement involving Apple, Google and two other tech companies where they were accused of conspiring to avoid poaching each other's workers. Tech workers filed a class action lawsuit against Apple Inc., Google Inc., Intel Inc. and Adobe Systems Inc. in 2011, alleging they conspired to refrain from soliciting one another's employees in order to avert a salary war.
DSL companies are lagging behind cable and fiber broadband providers when it comes to download speeds, according to a new report from the Federal Communications Commission. The agency released its fourth annual report on broadband speeds, which showed once again that broadband providers are gradually increasing performance while delivering close to advertised speeds most of the time.
The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that basic business methods may not be patented, even if computers are used to apply them. Writing for the court, Justice Clarence Thomas said that was “a patent-ineligible abstract idea.”
The U.S. Department of Justice announced that it has charged a man it believes to have been involved in a coordinated series of cyberattacks against corporations, universities, and government agencies. Timothy French, 20, was arrested by the FBI in Tennessee last week.
The genealogy website Ancestry.com said its websites were recovering after hackers temporarily shut them down this week in a distributed denial of service attack, but it said no consumer data was compromised. The Provo, Utah-based company said Ancestry.com and its sister site, Findagrave.com, were targeted on in the attack that flooded servers with traffic and caused them to crash.
Ireland's High Court asked the European Court of Justice to review a European Union-U.S. data protection agreement in light of allegations that Facebook shared data from EU users with the U.S. National Security Agency. It asked the European Court to clarify whether a Safe Harbour deal, which allows the transfer of data from EU consumers to the United States, was compatible with the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.
Apple Daily, a popular pro-democracy Hong Kong tabloid, said that its website had been hit by a massive cyberattack, following a series of similar attacks on an online, citywide referendum on electoral reform. The attacks raised particular concerns given that they followed closely on the heels of a June 14 attack on the website of “Occupy Central,” a pro-democracy movement that advocates for universal suffrage in the upcoming elections for the city’s chief executive.
A House panel approved a measure to make permanent a long-standing federal moratorium on Internet-access taxes, setting up a possible clash with the Senate. The 15-year-old moratorium on Internet access taxes prevents most states and local governments from applying access taxes on Internet connections, of which there are about 262 million in the U.S. It is set to expire later this year.
A bill to force government agencies to get warrants before they access the email of people under investigation advanced in the U.S. House of Representatives after a majority of lawmakers signed on as co-sponsors. Advocates of the reform, which have included large tech companies such as Google, welcomed the news of 218 lawmakers signing on to the bill in the Republican-controlled House.
A review of content on Google Inc.’s YouTube service turned up dozens of videos selling stolen credit card data, according to an Internet-safety research group trying to shed more light on an $18 billion illicit industry. The group, called the Digital Citizens Alliance, accused YouTube of failing to block the videos while profiting from legitimate advertisements that run next to them.
Google will start to remove links to online content in Europe by the end of the month to comply with a recent landmark European court ruling intended to protect individuals’ privacy, according to sources with direct knowledge of the issue, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the matter. This step follows a monthlong effort by Google to comply with the European Court of Justice’s decision, which requires all search providers operating in Europe to consider people’s requests to remove links that they say violate their online privacy.
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