France appealed on for U.N. member states to work together on an international legal framework that would make social network providers share responsibility for the use of their platforms to spread messages promoting violence.
Executives from Target and Home Depot were not present at the World Economic Forum, where world leaders and corporate titans are rubbing shoulders and debating weighty issues. Yet the names of those two companies are being invoked several times a day here, held up as examples of early victims in the growing battle against cybercrime.
After already having served 28 months in detention, U.S. District Judge Sam Lindsay has sentenced journalist and supposed Anonymous spokesperson Barrett Brown to five years behind bars for acting as an accessory after the fact to an unauthorized access to a protected computer. That was the only one of three remaining charges against Brown that actually stuck, stemming from an offer Brown made in hopes of helping Jeremy Hammond, an imprisoned hacktivist who made public millions of emails from the servers of security firm Stratfor.
European Union member states are unlikely to support an EU-wide ban on telecoms companies offering online services such as Facebook and Spotify for free, according to a proposal by EU presidency Latvia. EU member states are discussing net neutrality -- the principle that all traffic should be treated equally -- as part of efforts to agree on reform of the European telecoms sector.
Turkish officials tried desperately to identify the owner of Twitter account @fuatavnifuat, who bedeviled authorities over the past year by leaking state secrets and operations. An Ankara court granted the prosecution’s request to block Fuat Avni’s social-media accounts in Turkey, citing a judiciary probe.
The European Union should consider forcing Internet firms to help security services tap into coded emails and calls as part of a new strategy to combat militant attacks, the EU counter-terrorism coordinator says. The controversial proposal appears in a briefing paper from Gilles de Kerchove for EU interior ministers meeting which was reviewed by Reuters.
Google Inc. and Viacom Inc. won the dismissal of a nationwide privacy lawsuit accusing them of illegally tracking the Internet activity of boys and girls who visited Nickelodeon's website, in order to send targeted advertising. The lawsuit claimed that Viacom secretly kept track of children under the age of 13 who streamed videos and played video games on its Nick.com website, and shared what it learned with Google.
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has filed civil actions against the popular Google-backed Chinese-language video and music file-sharing firm Xunlei, alleging multiple acts of copyright infringement. The MPAA said in a statement it had filed the actions on Jan. 19 in the Nanshan District Court in the southern city of Shenzhen, seeking damages, claims for orders to stop the infringing activity, a public apology, and requesting that the Chinese video and music sharing company bear the studios’ litigation costs, the MPAA said in a statement.
U.S. tech companies weathered a regulatory backlash in Europe last year that brought to a head a cultural divide over privacy rights and the free market. Those frictions show no sign of easing in 2015, with key regulatory decisions that could deter Google Inc., Facebook Inc. and others from aggressively releasing new products and deprive them of access to data they have spent years trying to monetize.
Apple, which has come under increasing scrutiny as the world’s most valuable company, is becoming more of a regular around Washington. While co-founder Steve Jobs shunned the nation’s capital, Apple lobbied the White House, Congress and 13 departments and agencies from the Food and Drug Administration to the Federal Trade Commission in 2014 through the third quarter, according to OpenSecrets.org.
Canada's Competition Bureau said it is investigating Indigo Books and Music Inc., the country's biggest bookstore chain, as part of a probe into alleged anti-competitive practices in the e-book market. The competition watchdog said it sought a court order to compel Indigo and Japanese e-reader maker Kobo Inc. to turn over records relating to the investigation.
Chinese users of Microsoft Corp's Outlook email service were subject to a hacking attack at the weekend, just weeks after Google Inc's Gmail system was blocked in China, an online censorship watchdog said. People using email clients like Outlook, Mozilla's Thunderbird and apps on their phone with the SMTP and IMAP email protocols, which are used to send and receive messages, were subject to a "man-in-the-middle" attack, said China-based GreatFire.org.
Bangladeshi telecoms authorities shut down smartphone messaging and voice services Viber and Tango, which have become a popular communication medium for supporters of the anti-government protests now in their third week. The Bangladesh Telecommunications and Regulatory Commission closed down the apps "for the time being" on orders from law enforcement and security agencies, a commission spokesman told AFP.
Turkey-based Twitter users could soon be staring at blank screens again after the government threatened to block the social media service for the second time in less than a year. The threat came after a Turkish court banned media coverage of a police raid on Turkish Intelligence Agency trucks, citing national security concerns.
The trail that led American officials to blame North Korea for the destructive cyberattack on Sony Pictures Entertainment in November winds back to 2010, when the National Security Agency scrambled to break into the computer systems of a country considered one of the most impenetrable targets on earth. Spurred by growing concern about North Korea’s maturing capabilities, the American spy agency drilled into the Chinese networks that connect North Korea to the outside world, picked through connections in Malaysia favored by North Korean hackers and penetrated directly into the North with the help of South Korea and other American allies, according to former United States and foreign officials, computer experts later briefed on the operations and a newly disclosed N.S.A. document.
Advocates for congressional action planned to debut a massive lobbying coalition known as United for Patent Reform drawing together some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley, such as Google, Facebook and Adobe -- but also relative newcomers to the patent debate, including Macy's, JCPenney and the National Association of Realtors. The new coalition kicks off a wider lobbying effort that will include an advertising blitz, events in lawmakers' home districts and meetings with them on Capitol Hill.
The New York Post said some of its Twitter accounts were hacked, in the wake of a series of inaccurate posts on the social network relating to the Federal Reserve, Bank of America and U.S. military engagement with China. Similarly peculiar messages appeared on a Twitter account controlled by United Press International.
The European Union’s antitrust office released a preliminary finding that a tax deal between Amazon and the Luxembourg government appears to amount to unfair state aid that may have enabled the company to underpay its taxes for a decade or more. The inquiry is part of a wider investigation into whether a string of multinational companies, including Apple and Starbucks, drastically cut their tax bills and broke the competition rules of the European Union.
A U.K. man has been arrested as part of an investigation into denial-of-service attacks on Sony Playstation and Xbox systems over Christmas. He is accused of unauthorised access to computer material and knowingly providing false information to law enforcement agencies in the U.S.
A former North Springs High School student in Atlanta is accused of hacking the school’s computer system, accessing personal email and changing grades, the Fulton County school system said. The student, whose name was not released, confessed to gaining access to the system between March and December and is cooperating with investigators, Principal Eddie Ruiz said in a letter to parents.
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