WhatsApp and similar services must hand over encrypted messages to the security services after terror attacks, the Home Secretary says. Amber Rudd said it was “completely unacceptable” that terrorists had a “place to hide”, in the wake of the murders at Westminster.
The U.S. Supreme Court struggled over whether to upend nearly 30 years of law governing patent lawsuits that critics say allows often-baseless litigants to sue in friendly courts, giving them the upper hand over high-technology companies such as Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.'s Google. The justices heard an hour of arguments in an appeal by beverage flavoring company TC Heartland LLC to have a patent infringement suit brought against it by food and beverage company Kraft Heinz Co. moved from federal court in Delaware, where it was filed, to Heartland's home base in Indiana.
Google wants to reassure users about the warnings it issues about government-backed hackers. The company hasn’t changed anything about its policies or its practices, but Google wanted to remind its users in a blog post how the warnings work.
Fitbit Inc. is headed toward a trial over claims it stole rival Jawbone Inc.’s trade secrets, after failing to persuade a judge to throw the case out. A California state judge rejected Fitbit’s argument that the lawsuit is merely an attempt to rehash claims that were already analyzed and rejected by the U.S. International Trade Commission in Washington in October.
A Washington Post examination of dozens of sites with politically extreme and derogatory content found that many were customers of leading ad networks, which share a portion of revenue gleaned from advertisers with the site’s operators. The Post’s examination found that the networks had displayed ads for Allstate, IBM, DirectTV and dozens of other household brand names on websites with content containing racial and ethnic slurs, Holocaust denial and disparaging comments about African Americans, Jews, women and gay people.
Amazon, the online merchandise juggernaut, will collect sales taxes from all states with a sales tax starting April 1. Tax-free shopping will be over as of next month in Hawaii, Idaho, Maine and New Mexico, the four remaining holdouts.
A Chinese court has ruled in favor of Apple in design patent disputes between the Cupertino, California company and a domestic phone-maker, overturning a ban on selling iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus phones in China, Xinhua news agency reported. Last May, a Beijing patent regulator ordered Apple's Chinese subsidiary and a local retailer Zoomflight to stop selling the iPhones after Shenzhen Baili Marketing Services lodged a complaint, claiming that the patent for the design of its mobile phone 100c was being infringed by the iPhone sales.
Downing Street added to pressure on Google and Facebook, warning the internet giants that they “can and must do more” to stop hateful and violent material appearing on their platforms. Theresa May’s official spokesperson would not comment on whether there was specific evidence that the internet had played a role in the apparent radicalisation of the Westminster attacker, Khalid Masood.
China’s restrictions on cloud computing were the theme of a letter that more than 50 U.S. lawmakers signed and sent to Ambassador Cui Tiankai in Washington. Beijing has proposed requiring cloud-computing services providers to turn over essentially all ownership and operations to Chinese partners and could result in the transfer of valuable U.S. intellectual property, according to the letter, viewed by The Wall Street Journal.
The European Union is seeking to draft “future-proof” solutions for how Google might change its shopping search service according to people familiar with the probe into the search-engine giant. The EU case centers on Google Product Search and Google Shopping and whether the company unfairly promotes those services when users search for a product and whether it pushes competitors’ comparison-shopping sites lower.
Amazon.com won a more than $1.5 billion tax dispute with the Internal Revenue Service over transactions involving a Luxembourg unit more than a decade ago. Judge Albert Lauber of the U.S. Tax Court rejected a variety of IRS arguments, and found that on several occasions the agency abused its discretion, or acted arbitrarily or capriciously.
The Twitter accounts of ABC News and “Good Morning America” fell victim to a hack attack early Thursday morning, with the compromised accounts posting tweets praising President Trump and claiming rapper Tyler the Creator had died. The tweets included claims like “trump is our lord and savior #thankgodforTHEDONALD” and “we are totally russian hackers but we love @POTUS @realDonaldTrump ;).”
Apple said it had patched years ago any of the alleged CIA hacks to its iPhone and Mac released by WikiLeaks earlier in the day and that it has "not negotiated with Wikileaks for any information." "We have preliminarily assessed the Wikileaks disclosures from this morning. Based on our initial analysis, the alleged iPhone vulnerability affected iPhone 3G only and was fixed in 2009 when iPhone 3GS was released," the company said in a statement.
Microsoft Corp. agreed to license a batch of patents to Toyota Motor Corp. as part of the software giant’s effort to leverage its vast intellectual-property portfolio to become a key provider of connected-car technology. Microsoft has been racing to convince car makers to build connected-car services on top of its Azure cloud-computing service.
The U.S. Senate voted narrowly to repeal regulations requiring internet service providers to do more to protect customers' privacy than websites like Alphabet Inc's Google or Facebook Inc. According to the rules approved by the Federal Communications Commission in October under then-President Barack Obama, internet providers would need to obtain consumer consent before using precise geolocation, financial information, health information, children's information and web browsing history for advertising and internal marketing.
A group of hackers is reportedly trying to put the squeeze on Apple over a large trove of credentials to iCloud and other Apple email accounts. The hackers, who call themselves the "Turkish Crime Family," say they have access to more than 300 million breached accounts, according to a report by Motherboard.
EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager said she was reviewing Facebook's response to charges the U.S. social network provided misleading information during its bid for messaging service WhatsApp which may result in a hefty fine for the company. The European Commission in December last year said Facebook's statements during the regulator's scrutiny of the $22 billion deal in 2014 were incorrect when it said that it was unable reliably to match the two companies' user accounts.
Nest's Dropcam and Dropcam Pro security cameras can be wirelessly attacked via Bluetooth to crash and stop recording footage. This is perfect for burglars and other crooks who want to knock out the cams moments before robbing a joint.
AT&T, Verizon, Johnson & Johnson and other major U.S. advertisers are pulling hundreds of millions of dollars in business from Google and its video service YouTube despite the Internet giant's pledge to keep offensive and extremist content away from ads. AT&T said that it is halting all ad spending on Google except for search ads.
Chinese firms have become significant investors in American start-ups working on cutting-edge technologies with potential military applications. The deals are ringing alarm bells in Washington.
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