For years, China has exerted digital control with a system of internet filters known as the Great Firewall, which allows authorities to limit what people see online. To broaden its censorship efforts, Beijing is venturing outside the Great Firewall and paying more attention to what its citizens are saying on non-Chinese apps and services.
Facebook’s leaders for months appeared oblivious to deepening public concern about its social impact and Washington’s increasing agitation about Russia's role in influencing the 2016 election, especially from the left, a problem that has worsened a public backlash against it and other Silicon Valley behemoths. That misjudgment appears to have contributed to its halting response to the Russian manipulation.
Tech giants, under more pressure than ever to police content on their platforms, are facing sweeping guidelines announced by European regulators. Most notably, the European Commission is asking Facebook, Google and Twitter to remove illegal or terrorist content within an hour of being notified about its presence.
Lieutenant General Paul Nakasone, President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the U.S. Cyber Command, said on he did not think Russia, China and other countries expected much of a response from the United States to cyber attacks. “We seem to be the cyber punching bag of the world,” Sullivan said during the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.
President Donald Trump will meet with executives from the video game industry to talk about gun violence, the White House announced. Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said at the press briefing that the meeting will be in the context of issues of violence and school safety, and the executives will offer their input “to see what they can do on that front.”
WhatsApp has still not brought forward proposals to address EU regulators’ concerns over the messaging service’s sharing of user data with parent company Facebook, Facebook’s European regulator said. The popular messaging service changed its privacy policy over a year ago to start sharing users’ phone numbers and other information with Facebook.
Google should be hit with further sanctions because last year’s £2.1bn EU fine has done nothing to improve competition, the search giant’s opponents have claimed. Nineteen companies and organisations, several of which launched the complaints that led to last year’s record antitrust penalty, have signed an open letter to Europe’s competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager.
The Securities and Exchange Commission has issued dozens of subpoenas and information requests to technology companies and advisers involved in the red-hot market for cryptocurrencies, according to people familiar with the matter. The sweeping probe significantly ratchets up the regulatory pressure on the multibillion-dollar U.S. market for raising funds in cryptocurrencies.
Discord has recently shut down several notable alt-right, white nationalist servers as it attempts to purge toxic content, as reported by Polygon. The affected servers include the neo-Nazi terrorist group Atomwaffen Division, Nordic Resistance Movement, Iron March, and European Domas.
The Federal Trade Commission has announced a settlement with Venmo, after allegations that the app misled customers and enabled fraud through lax security practices. Charges were first brought against Venmo in 2016 after reports of account hacks and other transaction fraud.
Supreme Court justices sounded skeptical about Microsoft's refusal to turn over emails sought by U.S. law enforcement agents with a criminal search warrant but stored by the software giant in overseas servers. The case of the United States vs. Microsoft has been hailed by some as a major test of privacy in a world where electronic traffic is stored in a digital cloud.
A group of right-leaning organizations are urging members of Congress to reject bipartisan legislation that would require out-of-state online retailers to collect sales taxes. The groups — including the National Taxpayers Union, Americans for Tax Reform and Heritage Action for America — are speaking out against a House bill called the Remote Transactions Parity Act, as well as similar measures.
Google is not obligated to ensure websites are free from defamatory content before displaying links to them in search results, Germany’s highest court ruled. The case, which comes in the context of debate about the so-called “right to be forgotten”, had been brought by two individuals seeking Google to prevent its search engine from displaying links to websites on which they were verbally attacked by other internet users.
Coinbase told its customers that it plans to comply with a court order and hand over about 13,000 customers’ data to the IRS within 21 days. The IRS made the request back in November 2016, asking for the Coinbase records of all the people who bought bitcoin from 2013 to 2015 to seek out those who were evading cryptocurrency taxes.
A full panel of a California appeals court ruled that the Federal Trade Commission may push forward with a lawsuit alleging that AT&T Inc. was deceptive in slowing internet speeds to customers with unlimited plans. The FTC sued AT&T in 2014 on the grounds that the No. 2 U.S. wireless carrier failed to inform consumers it would slow, or “throttle,” the speeds of heavy data users on unlimited plans.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai defended his agency's repeal of net neutrality regulations at the mobile industry's annual conference in Barcelona, saying the lighter rules set to replace them will amount to "targeted enforcement." "Our order restoring Internet freedom merely restored the same basic framework that governed the Internet for most of its existence," said Pai, who had skipped an appearance at the large tech gathering CES in January, reportedly due to death threats.
Facebook Inc. and Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg have reached a $35 million settlement of class-action litigation accusing them of hiding worries about the social media company’s growth prior to its May 2012 initial public offering. Shareholders led by the Arkansas Teacher Retirement System and Fresno County Employees’ Retirement Association in California accused Facebook of concealing internal concerns about how growth in mobile devices might reduce revenue, even as it quietly warned its banks to cut their forecasts.
Russian military spies hacked several hundred computers used by authorities at the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in South Korea, according to U.S. intelligence.They did so while trying to make it appear as though the intrusion was conducted by North Korea, what is known as a “false-flag” operation, said two U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.
When Apple Inc. begins hosting Chinese users’ iCloud accounts in a new Chinese data center at the end of this month to comply with new laws there, Chinese authorities will have far easier access to text messages, email and other data stored in the cloud. That’s because of a change to how the company handles the cryptographic keys needed to unlock an iCloud account.
A major privacy rights fight between Microsoft Corp. and the Justice Department reaches the Supreme Court this week, with the justices considering whether U.S. law allows prosecutors to compel technology companies to hand over data stored overseas. The nine justices will hear arguments on Tuesday in a case that pits the interests of tech companies and privacy advocates in safeguarding customer data against the demands of law enforcement in obtaining information crucial to criminal and counterterrorism investigations.
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