Politics and Law

Pirate Bay founder gets two-year sentence in hacking case

One of the founders of file-sharing site Pirate Bay will apparently spend a couple more years in jail.

Gottfrid Svartholm Warg was arrested last September on charges that he was part of a cyberattack against Logica, an IT outfit that manages tax documents and services for Swedish companies. Warg was accused of hacking into Logica, accessing records of thousands of people, and illegally transferring money, Reuters reported Thursday.

Prosecutors say he was able to grab 24,200 Danish crowns (almost $4,300) online and tried to transfer a total of 683,000 euros (almost $902,000) in a series of … Read more

FTC reportedly planning sweeping probe of patent trolls

The chairwoman of the Federal Trade Commission is expected Thursday to propose a sweeping inquiry into companies created to extract licensing fees from other companies rather than make products based on their patents, according to The New York Times.

FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez will ask the full commission to support a proposal for an investigation that would include subpoenaing patent assertion entities (PAE), also known as patent trolls, the Times reports. The move comes after the Obama administration announced a set of executive actions earlier this month aimed at reining in certain PAEs amid concerns they are abusing the current … Read more

Intellectual Ventures sues Motorola Mobility, again

Intellectual Ventures is coming back for seconds in another lawsuit against Google-owned Motorola Mobility.

The controversial Bellevue, Wash.-based company that's made headlines for accumulating a massive trove of software and design patents, sued Motorola Mobility in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida on Wednesday.

The complaint targets several Motorola phones including the Atrix HD, Electrify M, and Photon Q 4G LTE, accusing those devices of infringing key parts of seven different patents. IV says the lawsuit comes after the company was "unable to reach an agreement with Motorola."

Motorola, not mincing … Read more

Google challenges DOJ's surveillance gag order

Google has asked the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to lift a gag order, saying it has the constitutional right to clear its name by discussing government data requests.

The company filed a five-page motion before the court on Tuesday afternoon, arguing it has "a right under the First Amendment to publish" summary statistics about requests made under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer, sent an open letter last week to Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Director Robert Mueller asking for "transparency" -- but was unable to reach an … Read more

North Korea calls U.S 'kingpin of human rights abuses' following NSA leaks

North Korea has pounced on the recent revelations of NSA snooping to take a few digs at the United States.

Minju Joson, the country's state-run newspaper, lashed out at the U.S. in the wake of leaks from National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden that the NSA has been collecting data on U.S. citizens under a secret program known as PRISM. Snowden also said last week that the U.S. has been hacking into computers in China and Hong Kong for the past several years.

A commentary in Minju Joson called the U.S. "a kingpin of human rights abuses … Read more

Snowden: NSA snoops on U.S. phone calls without warrants

Edward Snowden, who became famous for leaking top-secret U.S. government documents, said today that the National Security Agency can get a look at information from Americans' domestic phone calls without a warrant.

In an online discussion organized by the Guardian newspaper this morning, the 29-year-old former intelligence analyst said, when it comes to the contents of e-mail and phone calls, "Americans' communications are collected and viewed on a daily basis on the certification of an analyst rather than a warrant."

Intelligence analysts at the NSA, CIA, FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and other similar arms of the … Read more

Body scanner ruling could squelch NSA domestic spying

A high-profile group of technologists and privacy advocates is attempting to halt domestic surveillance of Americans through a clever twist: using federal bureaucratic rules against federal bureaucrats.

In a request today to National Security Agency director Keith Alexander and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, the group argues that the NSA's recently revealed domestic surveillance program is "unlawful" because the agency neglected to request public comments first. A federal appeals court previously ruled that was necessary in a lawsuit involving airport body scanners.

"In simple terms, a line has been crossed," Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the … Read more

Snowden: Feds can't plug leaks by 'murdering me'

Edward Snowden, the one-time U.S. government analyst responsible for the most high-profile leaks from the National Security Agency in its history, is explaining his decision to disclose top-secret documents in a live chat hosted by the U.K.-based Guardian newspaper.

Snowden, 29, is reportedly still in Hong Kong after leaving his home and girlfriend in Hawaii. His disclosures about NSA surveillance, including acquiring logs of millions of Americans' domestic phone calls, have left the Washington establishment reeling. On Sunday, former Vice President Dick Cheney called him a "traitor."

In his responses to questions on Monday from … Read more

Kroes: Unify the mobile market or Europe will fall farther behind

Neelie Kroes, the European Commission vice president in charge of the digital agenda, sketched out several steps toward the unified mobile-network market she believes is necessary to keep Europe's economy from falling behind.

In a speech Tuesday, she called for several steps to lower barriers that today make it hard for carriers to expand from one country to another and for customers to use mobile devices outside their home countries. Among the steps she suggested:

A "passport" that let a carrier, once certified to operate a mobile network permission in one country, operate in other countries, too. … Read more