Politics and Law

The Attorney General's office of California today announced a new Privacy Enforcement and Protection Unit in the state's Department of Justice that will hold companies accountable for safeguarding consumer data.

The newly created unit will reside within the eCrime Unit established last year to prosecute identity theft, data intrusions and crimes involving the use of technology. The office will enforce privacy protections using existing state and federal laws that regulate how companies can collect, store, use and destroy personal data, as well as educate consumers on their rights and help industry develop best practices, said Travis LeBlanc, Special … Read more

EU antitrust regulators are looking into complaints by rival software makers that Microsoft is preventing them from installing their browsers on one version of Windows 8, Reuters reports.

Microsoft is accused of shutting out browser makers in favor of its own Internet Explorer on Windows RT, a tablet-centric version of the Windows 8 operating system designed for devices running ARM chips.

The EU watchdog is also investigating allegations that Microsoft does not provide rival browsers with access to complete APIs (application programming interfaces, which allow the OS and other programs to talk to each other) in Windows 8, according to … Read more

Microsoft is back under the European Union antitrust spotlight after it was accused of failing to give its European customers a choice of Web browsers, following the terms of a 2009 settlement.

The European Commission said it had received complaints that Microsoft misled EU authorities over its "browser ballot" screen, which was first rolled out to Windows users in February 2010. The software giant may not have provided all customers with a screen where a choice of browser could be selected, the EU's antitrust chief said today.

The browser ballot was a mandatory update issued as part … Read more

Despite court cases in the Netherlands and the U.K. forcing ISPs to place blocks on their systems to prevent customer access to The Pirate Bay, the blocks may ultimately prove futile, according to data seen by the BBC and others.

One major U.K. broadband provider said peer-to-peer traffic on its network returned to "just below normal" only a week after it was forced to block customers' access.

But in the days following the court decision in late April, traffic had reached record levels as a result of the increased media coverage. This backs up earlier claims … Read more

The International Olympic Committee has always been a highly progressive organization.

Why, it allowed women into its bosom as early as 1981.

So who can be surprised that the Olympic movement has continued along its headlong path toward untrammeled world freedom?

I am grateful to the Index on Censorship, which has quickly discovered something higher and stronger in the area of joyous freedom than many might have imagined possible.

For, in the Terms of Use of the London 2012 Olympics Web site, there exists a clause that truly has fearsome claws.

For it reads:

The U.S. Justice Department is holding up Verizon Wireless's $3.9 billion bid to buy wireless spectrum from a consortium of cable operators, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

The Federal Communications Commission, which also has to sign off on the deal, is ready to approve the deal, sources have said. Verizon announced in December that it planned to buy about 20 MHz of Advanced Wireless Services wireless spectrum from a group of cable companies that includes Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications and Bright House.

The deal is the largest spectrum transfer the FCC has ever considered … Read more

Next time you decide to share a link, a post, or a photo on Facebook, take a breath and reflect before hitting the publish button -- and read this doozy of a post by ZDNet's Ed Bott concerning a new feature on the social network that could unexpectedly affect your reputation.

Bott notes that Facebook automatically publishes posts from organizations you've "liked" under your name and puts them at the top of the News feed for friends. That's already sort of strange, even given how sharing is the lifeblood of the social network.

But as … Read more

The mobile version of Google's Chrome browser is the latest target of EMG Technology, a patent firm that says the tech giant is infringing on its navigation technology.

The suit (PDF), which was filed earlier this week in District Court for the Eastern District of Texas in the Tyler Division, seeks damages as well as an injunction to keep Google from offering Chrome for mobile devices in the U.S.

In a statement, Elliot Gottfurcht, EMG's managing member and lead inventor restated claims made in the suit, alleging that Google's browser steps on one of its patents : … Read more

The Russian parliament has voted to approve a controversial bill that would see "illegal" websites blacklisted from the Web.

The bill proposed that websites that incited suicide or drug use, or offered 'extremist' material -- or any content deemed 'illegal' under Russian law -- could be added to a government-operated blacklist that would see the sites blocked to Russia's 145 million citizens.

Websites found breaching the law would have 24 hours to remove offending material, after which they would face blacklisting.

The bill was amended before today's parliamentary hearing to limit the threat of immediate blacklisting … Read more