Through two executive orders, President Obama put in place a structure to fortify the government's defenses against cyber attacks and protect the personal information the government keeps about its citizens. Obama created two new entities as part of a $19 billion budget proposal to Congress on cybersecurity.
Twitter’s latest step in the tricky balancing act of championing free speech without also handing a free pass to orchestrated harassment via its platform is the announcement that it’s formed a “Trust & Safety Council” comprised of multiple external organizations with various interests in the two issues. The company said that the Twitter Trust & Safety Council will provide “input on our safety products, policies, and programs”.
France’s data-protection regulator threatened to fine Facebook Inc. if the social-media site doesn’t change how it handles data about its users and others on the Internet, escalating a series of coordinated privacy probes into the social-network across five countries in Europe. In a 17-page order, France’s Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés, or CNIL, said Facebook must within three months change a host of ways it collects and uses information about Internet users or face a sanctions proceeding that could lead to fines of up to 150,000 euros ($168,000).
A hacker published information that exposes the names, titles, phone numbers and email addresses for thousands of FBI employees, after leaking similar data about 9,000 Department of Homeland Security employees. A Twitter account used by the hacker linked to the DHS and FBI personnel data along with messages suggesting support for a free Palestine and promising to leak data about thousands more workers unless the U.S. ends diplomatic relations with Israel.
Sweden's Goran Marby was named head of the body that manages Internet addresses, pledging to uphold checks and balances as it steps out from under U.S. government oversight. Marby, director-general of the Swedish Post and Telecom Authority, will take charge in May of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) as the nonprofit transitions to become an independent non-governmental body.
Rapes related to online dating increased by nearly a factor of six -- from 33 in 2009 to 184 in 2014 -- according to a report released by the UK's National Crime Agency. That's a small fraction of the number of online encounters, to be sure. Seven million UK residents are currently registered with online dating sites, according to the report. But the increased number of rapes indicates that you need to keep your wits about you when meeting strangers.
India introduced rules to prevent Internet service providers from having different pricing policies for accessing different parts of the Web, in a setback to Facebook Inc's plan to roll out a pared-back free Internet service to the masses. The new rules came after a two-month long consultation process that saw Facebook launching a big advertisement campaign in support of its Free Basics program, which runs in more than 35 developing countries.
Russian authorities in November raided offices associated with a Moscow film distribution and production company as part of a crackdown on one of the world’s most notorious financial hacking operations, according to three sources with knowledge of the matter. Cybersecurity experts said a password-stealing software program known as Dyre -- believed to be responsible for at least tens of millions of dollars in losses at financial institutions including Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. -- has not been deployed since the time of the raid.
The death of Nicole Madison Lovell, a liver transplant and cancer survivor from Blacksburg, Va., has put Kik-- widely used by American teenagers but not as well known to adults as Snapchat or Instagram -- in the spotlight at a time when law enforcement officials say it has been linked to a growing number of abuse cases. Neighbors say that the day before she died, Nicole showed them Kik messages she had exchanged with an 18-year-old man she was to meet that night.
Twitter has significantly ramped up its anti-ISIS efforts by shutting down thousands of terrorists' accounts and adding staff to monitor terrorist activity on its network. The social media company said in a blog post that it has suspended 125,000 accounts over the past seven months for threatening or promoting terrorist acts.
Apple filed its arguments to the Supreme Court, not surprisingly telling the nation’s highest court that there is no reason for it to take up Samsung’s appeal in the long-running patent dispute. Samsung made its case in a December filing that the court could help settle a range of issues around design patents, particularly how damages are calculated. Google and Facebook also filed arguments encouraging the court to hear Samsung’s appeal.
Criminals may have stolen personal and tax-return information from about 8,800 customers of TaxSlayer LLC, a provider of software to individuals who prepare their own tax returns, according to the company. The data breach is the second reported by a major tax software firm this year.
The free flow of data across the Atlantic, the lifeblood of modern business dealings, faces an uncertain future, despite a belated, high-level deal between European and U.S. officials. Restive regulators in Europe are gearing up to enforce tough privacy laws and further court challenges await, activists say.
The House Judiciary Committee will vote next month on email privacy legislation that has failed to move despite widespread support in recent years. Committee Chairman Bob Goddlatte (R-Va.) said the legislation is necessary to update a 1986 law to explicitly require the government to obtain a warrant when it is seeking to access emails or other electronic communications.
U.S. Senator Ted Cruz has accused the head of domain name overseer ICANN of being complicit in Chinese online censorship. In a letter sent from the Republican presidential frontrunner to Fadi Chehade, Cruz and two other senators demanded that Chehade explain his decision to co-chair a Chinese Internet governance initiative.
Hackers in China attempted to access over 20 million active accounts on Alibaba Group Holding Ltd's Taobao e-commerce website using Alibaba's own cloud computing service, according to a state media report posted on the Internet regulator's website. An Alibaba spokesman said the company detected the attack in "the first instance", reminded users to change passwords, and worked closely with the police investigation.
Apple must pay VirnetX Holding Corp. more than $625 million for using the patent licensing company's Internet security technology without permission in its FaceTime and iMessage features, a federal jury in Texas decided. The award was more than the $532 million VirnetX had sought before the trial began on Jan. 25 in Tyler, Texas.
U.S. investigators have found evidence to confirm what is believed to be the first-of-its-kind cyberattack on a power grid that caused a blackout for hundreds of thousands of people in Ukraine in December. A U.S. official close to the investigation said the power outage was caused by a sophisticated attack using destructive malware that wrecked computers and wiped out sensitive control systems for parts of the Ukrainian power grid.
An EU watchdog said it needed time to study a new EU-U.S. agreement on data transfers to determine whether the United States was committed to limiting intelligence surveillance of Europeans. Negotiators from the European Union and the United States agreed the data pact that will replace the Safe Harbour framework, which a top EU court ruled illegal last year amid concerns over mass U.S. government snooping.
One of Marissa Mayer’s signature policies as chief executive of Yahoo has been the quarterly performance review, in which every employee at the company is ranked on a scale of 1 to 5. Now, as Ms. Mayer prepares to announce a streamlining plan on Tuesday that is likely to involve even more job cuts, one former manager who lost his job is challenging the entire system as discriminatory and a violation of federal and California laws governing mass layoffs.
About : Legal Services | Doug Isenberg | Cases & Clients | Firm News
Resources : YouTube Channel | Daily News | Blog | Masterclass | Domain Dispute Digest
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.