The Australian government proposed a new cybersecurity law to force global technology companies such as Facebook and Google to help police by unscrambling encrypted messages sent by suspected extremists and other criminals. But some experts, as well as Facebook, warned that weakening end-to-end encryption services so that police could eavesdrop would leave communications vulnerable to hackers.
Noted legal aid chatbot DoNotPay announced a massive expansion, which will help users tackle issues in 1,000 legal areas entirely for free. While the bot will still help drivers contest parking tickets and refugees apply for asylum, the service will now also help those who want to report harassment in the workplace or who simply want a refund on a busted toaster.
U.S. border officers aren't allowed to look at any data stored only in the "cloud" — including social media data — when they search U.S. travelers' phones, Customs and Border Protection acknowledged in a letter obtained Wednesday by NBC News. The letter, sent in response to inquiries by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and verified by Wyden's office, not only states that CBP doesn't search data stored only with remote cloud services, but also — apparently for the first time — declares that it doesn't have that authority in the first place.
Read the article: NBC News
An online marketplace that sold illegal goods on the so-called Dark Web was shut following action by international authorities, according to people familiar with the matter. The closing of AlphaBay, an anonymous marketplace that listed for sale drugs, counterfeit credit cards and other illegal goods, came after coordinated action by the U.S., Canada and Thailand, the people said.
The French government said it would appeal against a court ruling in Google's favour with regard to 1.1 billion euros ($1.25 billion) in tax.
FanDuel and DraftKings have decided to scrap their merger rather than fight the U.S. government, which had sought to block the combination of the country’s two top daily fantasy sports sites on grounds that it threatened competition and consumers. In a statement, FanDuel CEO Nigel Eccles said the companies believed — even until the end — that the merger would have aided both companies’ growth.
Guests at 14 Trump properties, including hotels in Washington, D.C., New York and Las Vegas, have had their credit card information exposed, marking the third time in as many years that a months-long security breach has affected customers of the chain of luxury hotels. The latest instance occurred between August 2016 and March 2017, according to a notice on the company's website, and included guest names, addresses and phone numbers, as well as credit card numbers and expiration dates.
Read the article: Los Angeles Times
Google won its fight against a 1.12 billion-euro ($1.3 billion) French tax bill after a court rejected claims the search-engine giant abused loopholes to avoid paying its fair share. Google didn’t illegally dodge French taxes by routing sales in the country out of Ireland, the Paris administrative court decided.
Apple has set up its first data center in China, setting the tone for how foreign companies will handle a strict new law requiring them to store Chinese users’ information in the country. Apple said in a statement that the new center would keep “strong data privacy and security protections in place,” adding that no back doors would be created in its systems.
The Trump administration removed Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab from two lists of approved vendors used by government agencies to purchase technology equipment, amid concerns the cyber security firm's products could be used by the Kremlin to gain entry into U.S. networks. The delisting represents the most concrete action taken against Kaspersky following months of mounting suspicion among intelligence officials and lawmakers that the company may be too closely connected to hostile Russian intelligence agencies accused of cyber attacks on the United States.
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.
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