In an op-ed in The New York Times, Alphabet executive chairman Eric Schmidt extolled the virtues of the Internet, saying it provides an opportunity for people around the globe to connect, and those in developing countries an opportunity to see all the world has to offer. But his piece quickly turned dark, saying the Internet has also become a place where oppression and harassment are all too common.
Markit Ltd.'s chief executive filed a lawsuit accusing unknown individuals of hacking into his computers, phone and emails to try to intimidate him and extort money. In the lawsuit filed in federal court in Manhattan, Lance Uggla, the CEO and founder of the financial information service provider, said hackers had been engaging in an "anonymous campaign of extortion."
Politicians and even some technologists say that 335 versions of a pro-Islamic State Twitter account, and hundreds just like it, show how Silicon Valley’s efforts to crack down on the use by terrorists of social media have been toothless.
The Senate Intelligence Committee's top Democrat could soon introduce legislation that would require social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, to alert federal officials about online terrorist activity, according to a spokesman. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has been pushing for language that would address the growing use by extremist groups of social media to both spread propaganda and plot attacks around the world.
Violent extremists’ use of encryption to evade law enforcement in communicating online will be examined by a task force proposed by a Republican lawmaker, adding to pressures on Silicon Valley to do more in fighting militant groups. Citing concerns about violent extremists communicating in potentially undetectable "dark space" online, Representative Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said he wants to set up a commission of members from the technology business, law enforcement and other experts.
A French appeals court ordered Uber Technologies Inc. to pay a €150,000 fine, the latest flare-up in an ongoing conflict between the car-hailing company and the French government. The Paris Court of Appeals rejected Uber’s challenge to a 2014 criminal-court decision that had found the company guilty of deceptive commercial practices in its advertising for a now-shuttered service that used drivers without professional licenses.
The French police are reportedly proposing that new laws ban the use of free WiFi services and anonymous browsers such as Tor. The proposals, which are part of an internal document seen by French national newspaper Le Monde, could be enacted in two proposed bills – one on the State of Emergency and the other on combating counter-terrorism in general.
Facebook, Google and Twitter are stepping up efforts to combat online propaganda and recruiting by Islamic militants, but the Internet companies are doing it quietly to avoid the perception that they are helping the authorities police the Web. Facebook Inc. said it took down a profile that the company believed belonged to San Bernardino shooter Tashfeen Malik, who with her husband is accused of killing 14 people in a mass shooting that the FBI is investigating as an "act of terrorism."
The FCC’s long effort to establish net neutrality rules came before a D.C. appeals court, as a three-judge panel raised questions over the agency’s robust regulatory move to reclassify the Internet as a common carrier. A collection of telecom and cable companies are challenging the rules, characterizing the FCC’s move last February as regulatory overreach.
More than two years after Ross Ulbricht was arrested in a San Francisco and accused of creating and running the Dark Web drug bazaar known as the Silk Road, a manhunt on the other side of the world has found the man believed to be Ulbricht’s closest adviser and mentor: Variety Jones. The Justice Department unsealed a criminal complaint against Roger Thomas Clark, a 54-year-old Canadian who has been arrested in Thailand through a joint operation of the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, the Drug Enforcement Administration and local Thai police.
Microsoft said it aided law enforcement agencies in several regions to disrupt a four-year-old botnet called Dorkbot, which has infected one million computers worldwide. The Dorkbot malware aims to steal login credentials from services such as Gmail, Facebook, PayPal, Steam, eBay, Twitter and Netflix.
A company that was formed nearly two months ago has sued multinational business Apple for allegedly infringing a patent covering mobile phones. In a lawsuit filed at the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Iris Connex claimed Apple’s iPhone 5 model and all models produced since then have infringed the patent.
Samsung fought until the bitter end to avoid paying Apple, but the company now says it will finally hand over the more than $548 million it owes for infringing the patents and designs of its biggest smartphone rival. In papers filed in federal court in San Jose, California, Samsung Electronics Co Ltd. said it will make the payment by Dec. 14 if Apple Inc. sends an invoice on Dec. 4.
Hunter Moore, operator of the now-defunct revenge porn website Is Anyone Up, has been sentenced to two and a half years in prison. At the completion of the sentence, Moore will be subject to three years supervised release, in which he will be required to log every "computer, computer-related device, screen name, password, e-mail account or ISP" with his probation officer, Motherboard reports.
European Union officials are pressing big U.S. tech companies to free up surveillance access to their user data in the wake of last month’s attacks in Paris, marking a continued shift in the debate over privacy and security within the bloc. Firms including Facebook Inc., Twitter Inc. Microsoft Corp., Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google were meeting with a raft of government and law-enforcement officials from the EU and member states including France to discuss deepening their cooperation in fighting terrorism, people familiar with the meetings said.
The United States and China have reached an agreement on guidelines for requesting assistance on cyber crime or other malicious cyber activities, the U.S. Justice Department said. The agreement was reached in talks in Washington among officials including U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and Chinese Public Security Minister Guo Shengkun.
Law enforcement agency Europol has shut down almost 1,000 websites selling counterfeit goods and distributing unauthorized copyright-protected material. The 999 websites were removed following the conclusion of Operation In Our Sites (IOS) VI.
China has acknowledged for the first time that the breach of the United States Office of Personnel Management’s computer systems, which the Obama administration said exposed the personal information of more than 21.5 million people, was the work of Chinese hackers. But China insisted that the breach was the result of criminal activity, not a state-sponsored cyberattack.
Google has been "deceptively" collecting and mining school children's personal information, including their Internet searches, according to The Electronic Frontier Foundation. In a complaint filed with the Federal Trade Commission, the EFF alleges that the "Sync" feature of Google's Chrome Web browser is enabled by default on Chromebooks sold to schools, allowing the Web giant to track and store on its servers "records of every Internet site students visit, every search term they use, the results they click on, videos they look for and watch on YouTube, and their saved passwords."
U.S. investigators are accusing a bitcoin entrepreneur of running a Ponzi scheme that brought in nearly $20 million. Josh Garza, former CEO of GAW Miners, allegedly defrauded customers by promising vastly larger returns than it was capable of providing in an attempt to trick them into signing up, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission says.
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