Microsoft is proposing a $10 billion effort to bring broadband internet to the rural U.S., an economic-development program aimed at a core constituency of the Trump administration.The plan, which calls for corporate and government cash, relies on nascent television “white-space” technology, which sends internet data over unused broadcast frequencies set aside for television channels.
Roughly four-in-ten Americans have personally experienced online harassment, most commonly on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, according to a Pew Research Center survey. The survey shows 41 percent of 4,248 respondents have been subjected to online harassing behavior such as offensive name-calling and embarrassment, up from 35 percent in 2014 when the think tank last conducted a similar survey.
A free-speech group said it sued U.S. President Donald Trump for blocking Twitter users from his @realDonaldTrump account, arguing the practice violates the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The lawsuit, brought by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University in New York and joined by seven individual Twitter users, claims Trump blocked a number of accounts whose owners replied to his tweets with comments that criticized, mocked or disagreed with the president.
On the heels of reports of foreign hackers trying to access computer networks at U.S. nuclear power plants, Massachusetts Sen. Edward Markey wrote a letter to five federal agencies demanding more information about the attacks. Specifically, the top Democrat on the International Cybersecurity Police subcommittee raised concerns with the heads of the Department of Defense, Department of Energy, Department of Homeland Security, Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission about how the US is defending its nuclear power plants from foreign attacks and threats.
Major technology companies are pooling together to launch a new alliance in the hopes of spurring patent reform.The group, called the High Tech Inventors Alliance (HTIA), is composed of eight high-profile tech companies: Adobe, Amazon, Cisco, Dell, Google, Intel, Oracle and Salesforce, who collectively hold 115,000 patents.
China’s government has told telecommunications carriers to block individuals’ access to virtual private networks by Feb. 1, people familiar with the matter said, thereby shutting a major window to the global internet. Beijing has ordered state-run telecommunications firms, which include China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom, to bar people from using VPNs, services that skirt censorship restrictions by routing web traffic abroad, the people said, asking not to be identified talking about private government directives.
The Trump administration is delaying a rule that would have made it easier for foreign investors and entrepreneurs to enter the U.S. The International Entrepreneur Rule, which was scheduled to go into effect on July 17, has been delayed until March 14, 2018, according to a notice from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) posted to Federal Register’s website.
Read the article: The Hill
U.S. President Donald Trump backtracked on his push for a cyber security unit with Russia, tweeting that he did not think it could happen, hours after his proposal was harshly criticized by Republicans who said Moscow could not be trusted. The idea appeared to be a political non-starter. It was immediately scorned by several of Trump's fellow Republicans, who questioned why the United States would work with Russia after Moscow's alleged meddling in the 2016 U.S. election.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Twitter that he discussed forming a cyber security unit to guard against election hacking with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Tweeting after his first meeting with Putin, Trump said now was the time to work constructively with Moscow, pointing to a ceasefire deal in southwest Syria.
The fight over net neutrality just got more interesting as two tech giants said they will step off the sidelines and join a so-called "day of action" on July 12, which aims to preserve rules that forbid Internet providers from favoring some websites over others. The participation of Google and Facebook in the day-of-action campaign could be a game-changer because their sites are visited by hundreds of millions of Americans, and a message from them could rally new opposition to the FCC plan.
Waymo, Alphabet Inc.’s self-driving car division, dropped three of four patent-infringement claims in its lawsuit against Uber Technologies Inc. over the startup’s autonomous vehicle program.Waymo’s decision to include patent claims in its complaint against Uber was a surprise move for Google parent Alphabet, which normally prides itself on limiting patent fights.
Germany's BSI federal cyber agency said that the threat posed to German firms by recent cyber attacks launched via a Ukrainian auditing software was greater than expected, and some German firms had seen production halted for over a week. Analyses by computer experts showed that waves of attacks had been launched via software updates of the M.E.Doc accounting software since April, the BSI said in a statement.
Since May, hackers have been penetrating the computer networks of companies that operate nuclear power stations and other energy facilities, as well as manufacturing plants in the United States and other countries.Among the companies targeted was the Wolf Creek Nuclear Operating Corporation, which runs a nuclear power plant near Burlington, Kan., according to security consultants and an urgent joint report issued by the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
A U.S. judge ruled on that Twitter Inc. could move forward with a lawsuit that aims to free technology companies to speak more openly about surveillance requests they receive from the U.S. government. The U.S. government had failed to show the kind of "clear and present danger" that could possibly justify restraints Twitter's constitutional right to talk about surveillance requests, U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland, California, said in a written order.
Chipmaker Qualcomm is asking U.S. trade regulators to ban iPhone imports, according to a new lawsuit. Apple has allegedly infringed on six of Qualcomm's patents that improve iPhone battery life, according to Qualcomm.
McDonald’s had decided it doesn’t want to run new top level domain names after all. The restaurant chain applied to run the .McDonalds and .MCD top level domain names, but it recently sent termination notices to domain name overseer ICANN voluntarily relinquishing the two domains.
A Russian court sentenced a prominent hacker to two years in jail after a secret trial which heard how he had accessed and leaked the email accounts of top government officials, Russian news agencies reported. The court found Vladimir Anikeyev, named as head of a famous hacking collective called Shaltai Boltai (Humpty Dumpty), guilty of illegally accessing computer data in collusion with a criminal group.
Similar to a “phishing” scam — where computer users receive an authentic-looking email that appears to be from their bank, Internet Service Provider (ISP), favorite store, or other organization – “smishing” messages are sent via SMS (text message) on a mobile. “Criminals like smishing because users tend to trust text messages, as opposed to email, of which many people are more suspicious, due to phishing attacks,” says Stephen Cobb, a security researcher at ESET, a global cybersecurity company.
The group responsible for last week’s globe-spanning ransomware attack has made their first public statement. In the message, the Petya authors offer the private encryption key used in the attack in exchange for 100 bitcoin, the equivalent of over $250,000 at current rates.
EU antitrust regulators are weighing another record fine against Google over its Android mobile operating system and have set up a panel of experts to give a second opinion on the case, two people familiar with the matter said. Assuming the panel agrees with the initial case team's conclusions, it could pave the way for the European Commission to issue a decision against Alphabet's Google by the end of the year.
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