President-elect Donald Trump is considering tapping Sean Reyes, the attorney general of Utah, as the next chairman of the FTC, according to two sources with knowledge of the matter. If selected, it would put Reyes, 45, — a rising Republican star — in charge of a Washington agency that has a role in reviewing major mergers and scrutinizing tech giants like Facebook and Google for their privacy and antitrust practices.
Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg testified in a Dallas federal courtroom to defend his company in a $2 billion case that accuses Facebook's virtual reality company of corporate theft, employee poaching and an attempted coverup. The case deals with Oculus's Rift headset, which was first introduced in a 2012 Kickstarter campaign. Facebook bought the company in 2014 for $2 billion; the headset continued in development before going on sale in 2016.
Qualcomm Inc. forced Apple Inc. to use its chips exclusively in return for lower licensing fees, unfairly cutting out competitors, the U.S. said in a lawsuit against the biggest maker of mobile phone chips. Qualcomm’s exclusive deal with Apple was detailed in a Federal Trade Commission lawsuit accusing the chipmaker of illegally maintaining a monopoly for semiconductors used in mobile phones and pocketing elevated royalties from customers.
In the clearest sign yet that China’s government has begun a new push to solidify control over mobile apps, a regulator has ordered the registration of app stores across the country. In a notice published on its website, the Cyberspace Administration of China said that its offices across China should ensure that records are kept on the country’s many app stores.
Facebook said it would update its social media platforms in Germany within weeks to reduce the dissemination of fake news. German Justice Minister Heiko Mass has repeatedly called on Facebook to respect laws against defamation in Germany that are stricter than those in the United States.
WhatsApp has a security bug that could allow encrypted messages to be intercepted from the popular messaging app that owner Facebook has said promises end-to-end encryption, security and privacy advocates say. Around the time that WhatsApp announced its end-to-end encryption, cryptography and security researcher Tobias Boelter at the University of California-Berkeley contacted WhatsApp about a flaw he found in the app.
The peace sign is many people's go-to picture pose, and it's particularly popular in East Asia, but according to researchers it's also the perfect way to expose your fingerprints online. In a study conducted at Japan's National Institute of Informatics (NII), investigators found that, if the focus and lighting was right, they could recreate fingerprints from images shot up to 3 meters (nearly 10 feet) from the subject.
Federal Trade Commission Chairwoman Edith Ramirez said that she will soon step down as head of the country's most powerful consumer watchdog, after serving more than three years in the role and another three years before that as a commissioner. Under Ramirez's leadership, the FTC gained a reputation in Washington as a key technology regulator.
A hacking group that claims to have obtained cyberweapons from the U.S. National Security Agency said it is ceasing operations but also released a fresh batch of files linked to online attacks. The moves by the group, which calls itself the Shadow Brokers, are the latest chapter in a bizarre story that has played out largely in the background of a battle between the U.S. and Russia over claims that state-sponsored Russian hackers attempted to influence the 2016 presidential election.
Information about the customers of Cellebrite, an Israeli firm that markets hacking tools, has been stolen in a cyber-attack. The breach was first reported by tech site Motherboard, which said it was sent 900 gigabytes of data by a hacker.
EBay Inc. will begin authenticating luxury handbags, footwear and other commonly counterfeited fashion items this year, looking to gain an edge as shoppers become more wary of the abundance of fake goods posted to online marketplaces. The company will use a network of brand experts to verify that a Chanel handbag listed on the marketplace, for instance, is real.
iPhone app purchasers may sue Apple Inc. over allegations that the company monopolized the market for iPhone apps by not allowing users to purchase them outside the App Store, leading to higher prices, a U.S. appeals court ruled. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling revives a long-simmering legal challenge originally filed in 2012 taking aim at Apple’s practice of only allowing iPhones to run apps purchased from its own App Store.
Donald Trump has found a slot for longtime supporter Rudy Giuliani, saying that the former New York City mayor will lead a task force on cybersecurity and serve as liaison to private industry on those issues. Giuliani "will be sharing his expertise and insight as a trusted friend concerning private sector cyber security problems and emerging solutions developing in the private sector," the Trump transition said in a statement.
A Canadian enforcement agency announced that Amazon Canada will pay a $1 million fine for what could be construed as misleading pricing practices. The investigation centered on the practice of Amazon displaying its prices compared to higher “list prices” — suggested manufacturer prices (MSRPs) designed as marketing gimmicks to make people think they are getting a deal, even though it’s often the case that no shopper ever pays that price.
The United States has not satisfied the European Union's concerns about Yahoo's scanning of all customers' incoming emails for U.S. intelligence purposes, the bloc's justice chief told Reuters in an interview. The European Commission, the EU executive, asked the United States in November for clarifications on the secret court order served to Yahoo as part of its monitoring of a new transatlantic pact facilitating the exchange of personal data by businesses.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) expressed concern about “zero-rating” services from AT&T and Verizon that “may harm consumers and competition.” In a report examining four different zero-rated services, the FCC’s Wireless Bureau found that AT&T’s Sponsored Data program and Verizon’s FreeBee Data 360 program may stifle competition by “potentially unreasonable discrimination in favor of their own affiliates.”
Amazon.com removed doormats resembling the Indian tri-color flag from its Canadian website on Wednesday, after an Indian government threat to rescind visas of the U.S. company's employees if they did not stop selling the product. Amazon's portal in Canada sells doormats fashioned around other national flags, but under Indian law any desecration of its flag is punishable with fines and imprisonment.
The FBI has released 100 pages of heavily censored documents related to its agreement with an unidentified vendor to hack into an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino, California, shooters, but it did not identify whom it paid to perform the work or how much it cost. The records were provided in response to a federal lawsuit filed against the FBI by The Associated Press, Vice Media and Gannett, the parent company of USA Today.
Nintendo's hit smartphone app, Pokemon Go, and other augmented reality games are unlikely to be rolled out in China any time soon, after the state censor said it would not license them until potential security risks had been evaluated. Although not yet available in China, the world's biggest smartphone and online gaming market, the location-based game developed by U.S-based Niantic took the world by storm when it was released last year.
The director of the FBI, James B. Comey, told lawmakers at a Senate hearing that Russian hackers had penetrated the Republican National Committee’s computer records, but he called it a “limited penetration of old R.N.C.” computer systems that were “no longer in use.” Mr. Comey’s statement was significant because the Republican National Committee has said it did not lose data to the Russians because of its strong cybersecurity.
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