Alphabet Inc.’s Google has won a U.K. court case filed by online mapping company Streetmap. EU Ltd, which alleged the U.S. technology company was skewing search results in favor of its own mapping product, the companies said. The U.K. High Court ruled against Streetmap, saying Google didn’t abuse its dominant position and that its mapping product doesn’t harm competition.
Haptic technology company Immersion has filed suit against Apple, claiming that the newest iPhones and Apple Watches infringe on its patents. The suit, filed in federal district court in Delaware, alleges that Apple’s “3D touch” and “force touch” features infringe on Immersion’s patents for providing feedback when the screen of an electronic device is touched.
French prosecutors asked a court to penalize two executives of Uber Technologies Inc. with fines and a ban on running companies, but declined to ask for prison time during the second day of a high-profile trial against the car-hailing company. In a criminal court in Paris’s Palais de Justice, Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty, head of Uber’s operations in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and Thibaud Simphal, its chief in France, face six charges on counts including illicit storage of personal data and operating a service that connects passengers with car-service drivers who have no professional licenses.
A French court ruled that a case against social networking company Facebook over a painting of a nude woman can be tried in France, rejecting Facebook's argument that it is governed by Californian law. Facebook blocked the account of a French professor and art lover after he uploaded a picture of Gustave Courbet’s 1866 canvas 'The Origin of the World', which shows a close-up view of female genitals.
GCHQ is operating within the law when it hacks into computers and smart phones, a security tribunal has ruled. Campaigners Privacy International have lost a legal challenge claiming the spying post's hacking operations are too intrusive and break European law.
Broadband industry lobby groups urged the Federal Communications Commission not to impose privacy rules that dictate "specific methods" of protecting customer data, since that would prevent "rapid innovation." ISPs should have "flexibility" in how they protect customers' privacy and security, said the letter from the American Cable Association, Competitive Carriers Association, Consumer Technology Association, CTIA, the Internet Commerce Coalition, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, and USTelecom.
Congress voted to permanently bar state and local governments from taxing access to the Internet, as lawmakers leapt at an election-year chance to demonstrate their opposition to imposing levies on online service. On a vote of 75-20, the Senate gave final congressional approval to the wide-ranging bill, which would also revamp trade laws. President Barack Obama is expected to sign it.
Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said that improving the nation’s cybersecurity and protecting against terrorism remain two of the department’s “cornerstones” in the final year of the Obama administration. “In the time left to me in office, I pledge all my energy to continue to protect the homeland and leave the Department of Homeland Security a better place than I found it,” Johnson said in a speech at the Woodrow Wilson Center.
Uber has agreed to pay $28.5 million to settle litigation brought by customers who alleged the ride hailing service misrepresented the quality of its safety practices and the fees it charged passengers, the company said. The two proposed class action lawsuits said Uber charged passengers a "Safe Rides Fee" of as much as $2.30 per trip to support its "industry leading background check process."
Executives for Alphabet Inc.’s Google business defended their settlement with the U.K.’s tax authority before a panel of British lawmakers, attempting to stanch criticism of a deal that detractors say let the search giant off too lightly. In testy exchanges with lawmakers, Tom Hutchinson, Google’s vice president of finance, said the deal reached with the U.K.’s tax authority was the largest settlement the Internet giant has paid outside the U.S.
Google will start scrubbing search results across all its websites when accessed from a European country to soothe the objections of Europe's privacy regulators to its implementation of a landmark EU ruling, a person close to the company said. The U.S. company has been at loggerheads with several European Union data protection authorities since the European Court of Justice ruled in May 2014 that people could ask search engines such as Google and Microsoft's Bing to remove inadequate or irrelevant information that appears under searches for their name -- dubbed the "right to be forgotten."
The Encrypt Act of 2016, short for Ensuring National Constitutional Rights of Your Private Telecommunications Act, would ensure that states do not have the power to block the sale of encrypted smartphones or require manufacturers to equip their phones with a back door to access private data.
The Internal Revenue Service was the target of an attack that used stolen social security numbers and other taxpayer data to obtain PINs that can be used to file tax returns electronically. The attack occurred in January and targeted an IRS Web application that taxpayers use to obtain their so-called Electronic Filing (E-file) PINs.
In an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, President Obama writes: "[T]oday, I’m announcing our new Cybersecurity National Action Plan, backed by my proposal to increase federal cybersecurity funding by more than a third, to over $19 billion. This plan will address both short-term and long-term threats, with the goal of providing every American a basic level of online security."
Attacks by "homegrown" terrorists are among the most imminent security threats facing the United States in 2016, along with dangers posed overseas by Islamic State and cyber security concerns, the top U.S. intelligence official said. In his annual assessment of threats to the United States, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper warned that fast-moving cyber and technological advances "could lead to widespread vulnerabilities in civilian infrastructures and U.S. government systems."
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.
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