A multi-year legal battle over the ability to distribute computer models of gun parts and replicate them in 3D printers has ended in defeat for government authorities who sought to prevent the practice. Cody Wilson, the gunmaker and free speech advocate behind the lawsuit, now intends to expand his operations, providing printable gun blueprints to all who desire them.
The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission proposed an overhaul of the agency’s online comment system after millions of fake comments were posted about a recent FCC rule change. The FCC’s Ajit Pai said in a letter to two senators that he was proposing “to rebuild and re-engineer” the commission’s electronic comment system “to institute appropriate safeguards against abusive conduct.”
YouTube is releasing a tool for creators that checks to see if their videos are being stolen. The tool, which YouTube is calling the Copyright Match tool, will scan and check if the content already exists or is very similar to other videos on the site.
Facebook is staring down its first fine for allowing Cambridge Analytica to improperly access data about millions of people, potentially opening the door for governments around the world to slap the social media giant with other tougher penalties and stricter regulation. U.K. watchdogs announced a $664,000 preliminary fine -- the maximum amount allowed -- after finding Facebook lacked strong privacy protections and overlooked critical warning signs that might have prevented Cambridge Analytica from trying to manipulate public opinion on behalf of clients around the world, including those who sought to withdraw Britain from the European Union in 2016.
An engineer who worked for Apple Inc. on a top-secret autonomous vehicle project was charged with stealing trade secrets for a Chinese startup.Xiaolang Zhang was accused by U.S. prosecutors of downloading files containing proprietary information as he prepared to leave the iPhone maker in April and start work for XMotors in its Mountain View, California, office, according to a criminal complaint filed Monday in federal court in San Jose.
AT&T Inc. said that it has agreed to buy privately held Silicon Valley-based startup AlienVault, allowing the telecommunications giant to expand its line of cybersecurity products targeted at small and medium businesses. AT&T is buying AlienVault as large telecommunications and technology companies including Cisco Systems Inc, International Business Machines Corp and Verizon Communications Inc expand sales of cybersecurity products, among the fastest growing segments of the technology industry.
Apple released iOS 11.4.1, and with it came a new software mechanism that blocks passcode cracking tools favored by law enforcement. However, researchers at cybersecurity firm ElcomSoft have found a loophole that resets the one-hour counter so long as you plug a USB accessory into the iPhone’s Lightning port, regardless of whether the phone has ever connected to that accessory in the past.
Google could face a record penalty this month from European regulators for forcing its search and Web-browsing tools on the makers of Android-equipped smartphones and other devices, potentially resulting in major changes to the world’s most widely deployed mobile operating system. The punishment from Margrethe Vestager, the European Union’s competition chief, is expected to include a fine ranging into the billions of dollars, according to people familiar with her thinking, marking the second time in as many years that the region’s antitrust authorities have found that Google threatens corporate rivals and consumers.
House lawmakers are demanding information from Alphabet Inc. and Apple Inc. about how the companies handle users’ personal information, including spoken words, email content and location data. In letters to the companies’ CEOs, leaders of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee said recent media reports and related information obtained by the panel have raised questions about how the companies gather and use consumers’ information.
Apple released iOS 11.4.1, and while most of us are already looking ahead to all the new stuff coming in iOS 12, this small update contains an important new security feature: USB Restricted Mode. Apple has added protections against the USB devices being used by law enforcement and private companies that connect over Lightning to crack an iPhone’s passcode and evade Apple’s usual encryption safeguards.
Amazon has a stated ban against the sale of racially hateful products, but the online retailer as recently as last month offered dozens of products with hate symbols including kids' backpacks emblazoned with neo-Nazi symbols, a Swastika necklace, and baby onesies displaying a burning cross, according to a report out from two watchdog groups. Also available: more than 200 Kindle ebooks from publishers identified as hate organizations by the Southern Poverty Law Center, found the report, entitled "Delivering Hate," from The Action Center on Race & the Economy and the Partnership for Working Families.
Twitter has sharply escalated its battle against fake and suspicious accounts, suspending more than 1 million a day in recent months, a major shift to lessen the flow of disinformation on the platform, according to data obtained by The Washington Post. The rate of account suspensions, which Twitter confirmed to The Post, has more than doubled since October, when the company revealed under congressional pressure how Russia used fake accounts to interfere in the U.S. presidential election.
A federal jury in Brooklyn, New York, convicted two men for their roles in an international scheme to make millions of dollars by illegally trading on corporate press releases that were stolen by computer hackers before they became public. Vitaly Korchevsky, a Pennsylvania pastor and former Morgan Stanley (MS.N) vice president, and co-defendant Vladislav Khalupsky were each found guilty on two securities fraud and three conspiracy counts, a spokesman for U.S. Attorney Richard Donoghue in Brooklyn said.
The internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom lost another bid to avoid extradition to the United States on charges of copyright infringement and money laundering, after New Zealand’s Court of Appeal upheld rulings allowing for his deportation. Mr. Dotcom, an online renegade who along with three associates faces the charges relating to a defunct file-sharing website, Megaupload, plans to appeal the ruling.
California Democratic legislators ended a dispute over a proposed net neutrality bill, agreeing on a measure that would bar internet service providers from blocking, speeding up or slowing down websites and video, as well as charging websites fees for fast lanes. “Collectively this will be the most comprehensive and the strongest net neutrality protection in the United States,” State Sen. Scott Wiener of San Francisco said at a Capitol news conference.
The growing concern over online data and user privacy has been focused on tech giants like Facebook and devices like smartphones. But people’s data is also increasingly being vacuumed right out of their living rooms via their televisions, sometimes without their knowledge.
A senior programmer facing dismissal at Israeli spyware developer NSO Group Ltd. has been charged with stealing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of cyberarms technology and trying to sell it on the darknet. The accused’s actions posed a threat to state security, and could have led to NSO’s collapse, the Justice Ministry said.
Even before President Trump’s new Supreme Court nominee is announced, a fight over the choice is raging on social media. In the days since Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said he would retire, partisan groups have turned to Facebook, Twitter and other social networks with political ads.
A California law that went into effect July 1 is aimed at making it easier for customers to cancel their subscriptions online. The law states that customers who accept an automatic renewal or continuous service offer online must be able to cancel the service online.
European lawmakers have rejected the fast-tracking of a piece of legislation that critics say would significantly damage internet freedom. Parliamentarians in Strasbourg, France, cast their votes on the European Union’s new copyright directive that is an update to a 2001 directive on copyright, and is aimed at modernizing those rules for the digital age.
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