Passengers flying into the United States from airports in 10 Muslim-majority countries affected by the ban may now take their laptops and other large electronic devices into the cabin with them, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed. Security officials imposed the ban in March, warning then that the Islamic State was developing bombs that could be hidden in portable electronic devices.
A new offensive by Microsoft has been making inroads against the Russian government hackers behind last year’s election meddling, identifying over 120 new targets of the Kremlin’s cyber spying, and control-alt-deleting segments of Putin’s hacking apparatus. Last year attorneys for the software maker quietly sued the hacker group known as Fancy Bear in a federal court outside Washington DC, accusing it of computer intrusion, cybersquatting, and infringing on Microsoft’s trademarks.
As part of its review of Amazon's agreement to buy Whole Foods, the Federal Trade Commission is looking into allegations that Amazon misleads customers about its pricing discounts, according to a source close to the probe. The FTC is probing a complaint brought by the advocacy group Consumer Watchdog, which looked at some 1,000 products on Amazon's website in June and found that Amazon put reference prices, or list prices, on about 46 percent of them.
Twitter offered an update on how its improvements to user safety and its newer anti-abuse measures are having an impact. The company declined to share any hard numbers related to abuse on its network, including how many abuse reports have been filed, or the number of actions it’s taken, for example, noting instead across the board percentage increases on things like account suspensions, implementations to limit abusers’ account functionality, and the further results of those actions.
YouTube is taking its next step in countering extremism and terrorist content on its platform. The company announced that effective immediately, YouTube will respond to certain English-language keyword searches by displaying playlists of pre-existing videos on the site that debunk and discredit "violent extremist recruiting narratives" from the Islamic State and other groups.
Two so-called “dark Web” sites dedicated to illegal drug and arms sales have been seized in an audacious sting operation, and the suspected ringleader has committed suicide, U.S. Justice Department officials said. Canadian Alexandre Cazes, 25, who was suspected of creating an illegal online marketplace called AlphaBay, was arrested by Thai authorities earlier this month.
Moscow and Washington are in talks to create a joint cyber security working group, Russia's RIA news agency reported, citing Andrey Krutskikh, a special presidential envoy on cyber security. "The talks are underway ... different proposals are being exchanged, nobody denies the necessity of holding the talks and of having such contacts," Krutskikh said, according to RIA.
Two independent music publishers filed separate lawsuits in Nashville against streaming giant Spotify for failing to obtain the appropriate licenses to thousands of songs. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit are Bluewater Music Services, a Nashville-based publisher and music catalog administrator, and Bob Gaudio, a publisher and primary songwriter for the band Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons.
Facebook Ireland has rejected claims by Austrian lawyer Max Schrems that he is a private consumer and entitled to take a class action case against the social network. In parallel to the ongoing case in the High Court in Dublin, lawyers for Mr. Schrems and Facebook Ireland appeared at the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in Luxembourg, over the admissibility of a worldwide “privacy class action” against the social network by the Austrian.
EU judges will have to decide whether Alphabet's Google has to remove certain web search results globally to comply with a previous privacy ruling after France's supreme administrative court referred the issue to the top EU court.Google has gone head to head with CNIL, the French data protection authority, over the territorial scope of the so-called "right to be forgotten", which requires the world's biggest search engine to remove inadequate or irrelevant information from web results under searches for people's names.
Apple Inc. and its Asian contract manufacturers are hitting back at Qualcomm Inc. with legal claims that try to undermine the chipmaker’s attempt to force them to pay licensing fees. Qualcomm is asking for payments in excess of what it would normally receive, Apple, Compal Electronics Inc., Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. and others said in court filings.
The White House offered support for the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) proposal to roll back the Obama-era net neutrality internet rules. “We support the FCC chair’s efforts to review and consider rolling back these rules and believe that the best way to get fair rules for everyone is for Congress to take action and create regulatory and economic certainty,” deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said.
Facebook Inc., Alphabet Inc.'s Google, Apple Inc. and other major technology firms are largely absent from a debate over the renewal of a broad U.S. internet surveillance law, weakening prospects for privacy reforms that would further protect customer data, according to sources familiar with the matter. While tech companies often lobby Washington on privacy issues, the major firms have been hesitant to enter a fray over a controversial portion of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), industry lobbyists, congressional aides and civil liberties advocates said.
China’s already formidable internet censors have demonstrated a new strength -- the ability to delete images in one-on-one chats as they are being transmitted, making them disappear before receivers see them. The ability is part of a broader technology push by Beijing’s censors to step up surveillance and get ahead of activists and others communicating online in China.
Saudi Arabian Airlines, which is also known as Saudia, became the final of nine carriers to be removed from the March laptop ban for carry-on bags aboard flights heading to the U.S. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security adopted the ban because of intelligence about terrorists getting better at hiding explosives in electronics.
U.S. chipmaker Qualcomm faces the threat of a daily fine of 580,000 euros ($665,000) for failing to provide EU antitrust regulators with information after losing an appeal against the penalty in a European Union court. Qualcomm, which was charged by the European Commission for using anti-competitive methods to squeeze out British phone software maker Icera, last month asked the Luxembourg-based General Court to suspend the order.
People in the UK will have to prove they are 18 before being allowed to access pornography websites from next year, the government is to announce. Websites will be legally required to install age verification controls by April 2018 as part of a move to make the internet safer for children.
A group representing major technology firms including Alphabet Inc. and Facebook Inc. urged the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to abandon plans to reverse the landmark 2015 rules barring Internet service providers from blocking or slowing consumer access to web content. The Internet Association said in its filing with the FCC that dismantling the net neutrality rules "will create significant uncertainty in the market and upset the careful balance that has led to the current virtuous circle of innovation in the broadband ecosystem."
Encrypted messaging service Telegram will shut down "terrorist-related" public channels, its founder said, after Indonesia's government blocked access to the platform citing security concerns. Indonesia, home to the world's largest Muslim population, has seen a resurgence in home-grown radicalism, and has stepped up cooperation with its neighbors to stem a growing presence in Southeast Asia of extremist group Islamic State.
The owner of the Ashley Madison adultery website said it will pay $11.2 million to settle U.S. litigation brought on behalf of roughly 37 million users whose personal details were exposed in a July 2015 data breach. Ruby Corp, formerly known as Avid Life Media Inc, denied wrongdoing in agreeing to the preliminary class-action settlement, which requires approval by a federal judge in St. Louis.
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