Texas Attorney General Defends Use of Google Foes in Antitrust Probe

Texas investigators are defending their decision to employ some of Google’s longtime foes as part of an antitrust probe into the search giant, saying in a court filing that the recent legal objections raised by the company threaten to “severely compromise” states’ scrutiny. At issue are a number of consultants retained by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is leading an inquiry into Google’s ad business that’s backed by 50 other attorneys general.

EU Court Adviser to Offer Opinion on Facebook's Use of Data Protection Safeguards

Facebook’s clash with Austrian privacy activist Max Schrems reaches a critical point when an adviser to Europe’s top court will offer his view on whether tools used by companies to transfer data abroad protect European citizens’ data. The U.S. social media giant and companies ranging from banks to industrial giants use standard contractual clauses to transfer personal data to the United States and other parts of the world.

Facebook Discloses More Information to Senators About Location Tracking

Facebook told senators that it continues to track the location of its users even after they've said they don't want the social media giant to know where they are — and it makes money off of that information. Facebook's letter to Sens. Christopher Coons (D-Del.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) comes in response to the senators' questions about the company's location-tracking policies.

Reuters Releases Online Course for Journalists to Identify Deepfakes

Reuters has released a new 45-minute online course designed to help give journalists the tools they need to spot and avoid sharing manipulated pictures, videos and audio clips. While deepfakes are obviously a major component of the material, there's also advice on how to approach real media that's been co-opted so that it presents an entirely different story than it did originally.

Canadian Lab Testing Company Pays Hackers to Retrieve Stolen Data

LifeLabs, Canada's leading provider of laboratory diagnostics and testing services, admitted today to paying hackers to retrieve data stolen during a security breach last month. "We did this [paying the hackers] in collaboration with experts familiar with cyber-attacks and negotiations with cyber criminals," the company said today in a press release.

Instagram to Notify Users of Offensive Captions Before Posting

A new Instagram feature notifies users when their captions on a photo or video may be considered offensive and gives them the chance to write something else before posting, parent company Facebook said in a blog post. Instagram added a similar feature on comments earlier this year. The additions are part of the platform's growing antibullying efforts.

  • Read the article: CNET

Cisco Wins Temporary Injunction Against Online Sales of Counterfeits

Cisco Systems Inc. has won a legal battle against counterfeit versions of key networking equipment, securing an injunction that requires big online marketplaces, including Amazon.com Inc. and Chinese rival Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. to halt the sale of some knockoffs. Cisco had argued that counterfeit items threatened U.S. national security and health systems, in part, because the items were more failure prone and the software would be hard to update and keep secure.

Google Says It Can't Work on New Android Phones in Turkey After Ruling

Google has told its Turkish business partners it will not be able to work with them on new Android phones to be released in Turkey, after the Turkish competition board ruled that changes Google made to its contracts were not acceptable. Turkey’s competition authority had fined Google 93 million lira ($17.4 million) in September 2018 for violating competition law with its mobile software sales. The company was given six months to make changes to restore competition.

ICANN Reviewing Sale of .org Domain Registry to Private Equity Firm

ICANN is reviewing the pending sale of the .org domain manager from a nonprofit to a private equity firm and says it could try to block the transfer. The .org domain is managed by the Public Internet Registry (PIR), which is a subsidiary of the Internet Society, a nonprofit that is trying to sell PIR to private equity firm Ethos Capital.

Two Programmers Plead Guilty to Operating Illegal Streaming Services

Two programmers in Las Vegas recently admitted to running two of the largest illegal television and movie streaming services in the country, according to federal officials. An FBI investigation led officials to Darryl Polo, 36, and Luis Villarino, 40, who have pleaded guilty to copyright infringement charges for operating iStreamItAll, a subscription-based streaming site, and Jetflix, a large illegal TV streaming service, federal officials said.

YouTube Automatically Recommends Channels Posing as News Outlets

YouTube channels posing as American news outlets racked up millions of views on false and inflammatory videos over several months this year, all with the help of YouTube's recommendation engine. Many of the accounts, which mostly used footage from CNN, but also employed some video from Fox News, exploited a YouTube feature that automatically creates channels on certain topics.

  • Read the article: CNN

Two Men Plead Guilty to Using Grindr to Lure Gay Men for Violent Crimes

Two Texas men pleaded guilty to federal hate crime and other charges for using the dating app Grindr to target gay men for violent crimes. According to court documents filed in connection with the two men’s guilty pleas, Daryl Henry and Pablo Ceniceros-Deleon admitted they used Grindr to target and lure gay men to a vacant apartment and other locations around Dallas to commit hate crimes, including robbing, carjacking or kidnapping their victims.

Mozilla Joins Other Tech Firms Asking Judges to Rehear Net Neutrality Case

The maker of the Firefox Web browser joined other tech firms and public-interest advocates to fire their latest salvo: They asked a panel of judges to rehear a case that upheld a Federal Communications Commission decision to repeal the government’s open-Internet rules. In October, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit determined that the FCC acted lawfully when it voted in 2017 to unwind the protections that had required AT&T, Comcast, Verizon and other telecom giants to treat all Web traffic equally.

Lawmaker Asks Google, Apple About Disclosing Apps Created Overseas

The chair of a U.S. congressional panel wrote to Alphabet’s Google and to Apple to ask what if any disclosures mobile apps are required to make regarding overseas ties, a concern that follows reports of Chinese investment in popular apps such as TikTok and Grindr. Rep. Stephen Lynch, chairman of a subcommittee of the House of Representatives Oversight Committee, said in a statement that he had asked both Google and Apple to tell Congress whether they required app developers to disclose any non-U.S. ties.

New Orleans Officials Shut Down Government Computers to Thwart Cyber Attack

Computers were offline, offices were closed and city government's website was down as New Orleans officials sought to contain a cyber attack against its network that started in the early morning. By late afternoon, the city had found no sign that any passwords were compromised or data lost in the attack, though an influx of suspicious emails meant city systems would be kept offline temporarily out of what Chief Information Officer Kim LaGrue described as an abundance of caution.

Facebook to Spend $130 Million on Independent Oversight Board

Facebook said it will commit $130 million to support the efforts of its independent oversight board, but that the board itself will not start its work until sometime in 2020. In a company blog post, Brent Harris, Facebook’s director of governance and global affairs, said the company has been going through the process of creating “a new organization with independent oversight over how Facebook makes decisions on content” since Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg outlined his vision for the board in November 2018.

Twitter to Start Verifying Accounts for Top Congressional Candidates

Twitter announced it will begin verifying congressional candidates who qualify for primaries, a reversal from its previous policy that only offered the coveted "blue check" to candidates who qualified in general elections. The company said it will now verify all candidates running for the House, Senate or governor's mansion across the country in an effort to level the playing field between incumbents and little-known challengers.

FTC Considers Injunction Over How Facebook's Products Interact

Federal officials are considering seeking a preliminary injunction against Facebook Inc. over antitrust concerns related to how its products interact, according to people familiar with the matter. If it materializes, the action by the Federal Trade Commission would focus on Facebook’s policies concerning it how it integrates its apps or allows them to work with potential rivals, these people said.

The GigaLaw Firm helps companies of all sizes protect their brands online, using domain name dispute policies – such as the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) – and other legal tools available to copyright and trademark owners on the Internet.