Ireland’s High Court has refused a request by Facebook to delay referral to Europe’s top court of a landmark privacy case that could strike down legal instruments used by U.S. tech companies to transfer EU users’ data to the United States. The case is the latest to question whether methods used by technology firms such as Google and Apple to transfer data outside the 28-nation European Union give EU consumers sufficient protection from U.S. surveillance.
Cambridge Analytica , a data firm that worked for President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, is shutting down following disclosures about its use of Facebook data and the campaign tactics it pitched to clients.In March, the company suspended its chief executive, Alexander Nix, and said it was launching an independent investigation to determine if the company engaged in any wrongdoing in its work on political campaigns.
Twitter Inc. said it sold data to the Cambridge University academic who had separately shared user data he gleaned from Facebook Inc. with third parties including the controversial research firm Cambridge Analytica. The disclosure adds more detail about the activities of Cambridge University psychology professor Aleksandr Kogan, though in this instance there are no allegations that user privacy was compromised.
Instagram unveiled an update aimed at filtering out bullying comments on its platform. The new feature is an expansion of Instagram's offensive comment filter, which automatically parses out and removes abusive and toxic speech.
The U.S. International Trade Commission said it will investigate certain gaming console systems from Nintendo Co. Ltd. after California-based Gamevice Inc filed a complaint alleging that their importation infringed on its patents.
A U.S. judge rejected Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd’s bid for a preliminary injunction to block the Dubai cryptocurrency firm Alibabacoin Foundation from using the Alibaba name. U.S. District Judge Paul Oetken in Manhattan said Alibaba did not show he had jurisdiction, having failed to establish a “reasonable probability” that Alibabacoin’s interactive websites were used to transact business with customers in New York.
Iran moved to shut down the messaging app Telegram, highlighting the regime’s concern over the popular platform’s role in organizing widespread unrest that has rippled through the country in recent months. Using the app was prohibited under a ruling by a Tehran-based court, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency.
One of the Internet's most notorious revenge porn websites has been shut down after a year-long investigation by Dutch police Politie. Police in the Netherlands announced that they seized Anon-IB's server and discovered that hundreds of women were targeted by hackers on the website.
A Malaysian court has convicted a Danish citizen over inaccurate criticism of police on social media, the first person to be prosecuted under a new law against fake news. Salah Salem Saleh Sulaiman, 46, was charged with spreading false news after he posted a video on YouTube accusing police of taking 50 minutes to respond to distress calls after the shooting of a Palestinian lecturer on 21 April.
Read the article: The Guardian
The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Google’s appeal of a lower court’s ruling that narrowed the scope of patents that can be challenged before a federal tribunal whose proceedings have led to the cancellation of many patents. The justices let stand a 2016 federal appeals court ruling against Google, a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc, which had successfully challenged at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office a patent it was accused of violating.
The U.S. Supreme Court will use a privacy case involving Google to consider making it harder for companies to settle class-action lawsuits without providing direct compensation to those affected. The justices agreed to hear arguments from two people who object to the Alphabet Inc. unit’s $8.5 million settlement of claims that it improperly disclosed users’ internet search terms to the owners of outside websites.
A French-born American has now sued his home country because, he claims, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has illegally seized a domain that he’s owned since 1994: France.com. In the mid-1990s, Jean-Noël Frydman bought France.com from Web.com and set up a website to serve as a "digital kiosk" for Francophiles and Francophones in the United States.
Amid rising threats, including a recent attack on several U.S. power and natural gas suppliers, energy companies are now spending less than 0.2 percent of their revenue on cybersecurity, at least a third less than financial institutions, according to Precision Analytics LLC and The CAP Group LLC, security consultants that work within the industry. “It’s scary," said Brian Walker, a former head of Marathon Oil Corp.’s global IT and now an independent consultant.
Alphabet Inc. President Sergey Brin said that technology companies must take greater responsibility for the social impact of their work, his first comments following a year of heightened global awareness about misuse of digital services. “We’re in an era of great inspiration and possibility, but with this opportunity comes the need for tremendous thoughtfulness and responsibility as technology is deeply and irrevocably interwoven into our societies,” Brin wrote after quoting from Charles Dickens’ novel “A Tale of Two Cities” about the “the best of times” and “the worst of times.”
A European Commission plan to tax the digital turnover of large companies drew scepticism from the global rule-setting body on tax matters and some EU states, which called instead for an international solution. The criticism came at the first meeting of EU ministers to discuss the plan, which was presented by the Commission last month and entails a 3 percent levy on the digital revenues of large multinational corporations such as Google, Facebook and Amazon.
EU lawmakers and member states struck a preliminary deal that will allow countries to force online streaming services including Netflix and Amazon’s video service to help fund European films and TV shows. The new law extends the European Union’s broadcasting rules to online video services and includes a quota of 30 percent for European works on video-on-demand platforms, the European Parliament said.
A top Facebook executive apologized for errors made by the firm and vowed to do more to improve transparency during a four-hour grilling from British lawmakers who insisted the company’s response to a data scandal had been inadequate. Facebook Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer said the mistakes made by the firm hurt, and that it was cooperating with investigations by British regulators.
In what is being hailed as a historic day for music creators, the Music Modernization Act passed the House, paving the way for improved royalty payments to songwriters, artists and creatives in the digital era. Speaking from the House floor today, Robert Goodlatte (R-VA) said the bill “brings early 20th century music laws for the analog era into the 21st century digital era,” adding, “music is no longer written on piano rolls, and our laws shouldn’t be based on that technology either.”
The Justice Department is investigating whether Huawei Technologies Co. violated U.S. sanctions related to Iran, according to people familiar with the matter, a move that opens a new avenue of scrutiny of the Chinese cellular-electronics giant on national security grounds. It’s unclear how far the Justice Department probe has advanced and what specific allegation federal agents are probing.
At a time when the real Mark Zuckerberg has vowed to clean up Facebook, the Silicon Valley company has failed to eliminate impostor accounts masquerading as him and his chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, to swindle Facebook users out of thousands of dollars. An examination by The New York Times found 205 accounts impersonating Mr. Zuckerberg and Ms. Sandberg on Facebook and its photo-sharing site Instagram, not including fan pages or satire accounts, which are permitted under the company’s rules.
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