Published on: | by

China’s police are working with the country’s highest investigative organ and the Supreme People’s Court to release a judicial interpretation on hacking crimes, according to the People’s Daily, the official paper of the Communist Party, citing a Chinese police representative. The report gave no details, but such documents are used to direct lower-level Chinese courts on how to apply laws.

The move would be the latest of China’s efforts to strengthen laws against cybercrime, which have come alongside a growing number of reported arrests and court sentences for hacking in the country in the last year.

The report comes after Google last month drew global attention to hacking in China by saying it had been hit by cyberattacks from the country. Google cited the attacks, which resulted in the loss of intellectual property, as one reason it plans to stop censoring its China-based search engine, even if the move forces it to shut down its China offices.

Continue Reading ›

Published on: | by

Twitter reset passwords for an unknown number of users on Tuesday whose accounts appeared to have been compromised via phishing.

“As part of Twitter’s ongoing security efforts, we reset passwords for a small number of accounts that we believe may have been compromised offsite,” the company said in a statement.

Some Twitter users apparently “used their Twitter username and password to sign up for an untrusted third-party application which then posted Tweets to their account,” a spokeswoman said.

Continue Reading ›

Published on: | by

PITTSBURGH (AP) – A federal appeals court has revived part of a western Pennsylvania couple’s lawsuit against Internet search engine Google Inc.

But the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling says Aaron and Christine Boring will have to prove the pictures of their home on Google’s “Street View” actually hurt them to collect more than $1 from a federal court jury.

A federal magistrate last year threw out the lawsuit saying the Pittsburgh-area couple couldn’t prove the pictures actually harmed them.

Continue Reading ›

Published on: | by

On January 22, 2010, the Supreme Court of the United States granted unlimited corporate spending on elections. The justices overturn a century of U.S. electoral law by a 5-4 vote. Millions of extra dollars are expected to start flowing from big business to Republican candidates.

Overturning a century-old restriction, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday that corporations may spend as much as they want to sway voters in federal elections.

In a landmark 5-4 decision, the court’s conservative bloc said that corporations have the same right to free speech as individuals and, for that reason, the government may not stop corporations from spending to help their favored candidates.

Continue Reading ›

Published on: | by

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE

The Newseum, Washington, D.C.

SECRETARY CLINTON: Thank you very much, Alberto, for not only that kind introduction but you and your colleagues’ leadership of this important institution. It’s a pleasure to be here at the Newseum. The Newseum is a monument to some of our most precious freedoms, and I’m grateful for this opportunity to discuss how those freedoms apply to the challenges of the 21st century.

Continue Reading ›

Published on: | by

Redmond’s top legal mouthpiece Brad Smith is calling on US lawmakers to overhaul rules on cloud computing, just as the company ramps up its efforts to belatedly step on other vendors’ toes in that marketplace.

He asked Congress yesterday to legislate cloud computing, in a move to protect business and consumer information.

Smith’s comments came on the same day that Microsoft inked a deal with cloud rival Intuit, and spun out a survey about the relevance of small businesses climbing on board the hosted services wagon.

Continue Reading ›

Published on: | by

Internet pirates are moving away from safe havens such as Sweden to new territories that include China and Ukraine, as they try to avoid prosecution for illegal file sharing, according to experts.

For several years, piracy groups that run services allowing music, video and software to be illegally shared online have been using legal loopholes across a wide range of countries as a way of escaping prosecution for copyright infringement.

In the last year there has been a significant shift, say piracy experts, as the groups have worked to stay beyond the reach of western law enforcement.

Continue Reading ›

Published on: | by

PHILADELPHIA (AP) – A federal appeals court must decide whether “sexting” by three Pennsylvania teens amounts to child pornography or is a free-speech right.

A three-judge panel in Philadelphia is hearing arguments Friday in a case between a county prosecutor and the American Civil Liberties Union.

The prosecutor is threatening to file child-pornography charges against three girls after racy cell-phone images of them circulated through their high school. The photos show one girl topless and the others in bras.

Continue Reading ›

Published on: | by

Internet users face regular “brownouts” that will freeze their computers as capacity runs out in cyberspace, according to research to be published later this year.

Experts predict that consumer demand, already growing at 60 per cent a year, will start to exceed supply from as early as next year because of more people working online and the soaring popularity of bandwidth-hungry websites such as YouTube and services such as the BBC’s iPlayer.

It will initially lead to computers being disrupted and going offline for several minutes at a time. From 2012, however, PCs and laptops are likely to operate at a much reduced speed, rendering the internet an “unreliable toy”.

Continue Reading ›

Published on: | by

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – Google Inc. will stop censoring its search results in China and may pull out of the country completely after discovering that computer hackers had tricked human-rights activists into exposing their e-mail accounts to outsiders.

The change of heart announced Tuesday heralds a major shift for the Internet’s search leader, which has repeatedly said it will obey Chinese laws requiring some politically and socially sensitive issues to be blocked from search results available in other countries. The acquiescence had outraged free-speech advocates and even some shareholders, who argued Google’s cooperation with China violated the company’s “don’t be evil” motto.

The criticism had started to sway Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who openly expressed his misgivings about the company’s presence in China.

Continue Reading ›