The United States today filed a lawsuit against Edward Snowden, a former employee of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and contractor for the National Security Agency (NSA), who published a book entitled Permanent Record in violation of the non-disclosure agreements he signed with both CIA and NSA. From a report: The lawsuit alleges that Snowden published his book without submitting it…
Tag: Supreme Court
The Fashion Line Designed To Trick Surveillance Cameras
Freshly Exhumed shares a report from The Guardian: Automatic license plate readers, which use networked surveillance cameras and simple image recognition to track the movements of cars around a city, may have met their match, in the form of a T-shirt. Or a dress. Or a hoodie. The anti-surveillance garments were revealed at the DefCon cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas on…
Websites Can Discriminate Against You Even If You Don’t Use Them, California Supreme Court Rules
Nearly four years ago, a lone bankruptcy lawyer sued Square, the payment processor run by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, challenging the app’s terms of use — despite never signing up. As of yesterday, the case will proceed, thanks to an opinion issued by the California Supreme Court that could have wide-reaching implications for online businesses. Gizmodo reports: The first thing you…
A California Bill Could Destroy Uber’s Unsustainable Business Model
Last week, the California Senate’s Labor, Public Employment and Retirement Committee held a hearing and passed Assembly Bill 5 (AB5), which promises to make it harder for companies to claim workers are independent contractors and increase the operating expenses of Uber, Lyft, and other on-demand companies that already find themselves unable to turn a profit. Motherboard reports: Written by Assemblywoman Lorena…
In ‘Bold Experiment’, Facebook Creates Independent ‘Oversight Board” For Content Decisions
Facebook is being applauded for a new “bold experiment” in content decision-making by tech journalist Larry Magid, a founding member (for the last 10 years) of what he describes as “the less powerful Facebook Safety Advisory Board, which is composed of safety experts mostly representing nonprofit organizations in several countries…. “We are not empowered to overrule Facebook’s management.”
Facebook is a company,…
Texas Appeals Court Says Government Can’t Be Sued For Copyright Piracy
sandbagger writes: Photographer Jim Olive’s helicopter shot of Houston was used by the University of Houston on their website after they removed his watermark, a definite no-no particularly since the image was used for their school of business. The photographer then sent the university a bill for $41,000 — $16,000 for the usage and $25,000 for removing his copyright credit. After…
Kim Dotcom In Final Bid To Halt Extradition
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Controversial internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom has begun a final appeal to halt his extradition from New Zealand to the U.S. on copyright-related charges. The FBI claims Mr Dotcom’s Megaupload site earned millions of dollars by facilitating illegal file-sharing. But his lawyers told New Zealand’s Supreme Court on Monday it was never meant…
Supreme Court To Consider Racial Discrimination Case Against Comcast
The Supreme Court will consider whether a black television producer can pursue racial discrimination claims against Comcast for declining to carry his programming channels on its cable system (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source). The Wall Street Journal reports: The Comcast case stems from the cable operator’s decision not to carry Pets.TV, Recipes.TV and other channels from Entertainment Studios Networks Inc. The…
A German Minister Wants To Ban End-to-End Chat Encryption
An anonymous reader quotes the Next Web:
According to Spiegel Online, the country’s Federal Interior Minister, Horst Seehofer, wants encrypted messaging services like WhatsApp and Telegram to provide chat logs in plain text to the authorities. Since these services come with end-to-end encryption, the companies will have to break the encryption and provide a backdoor to give access to the texts. Wired…
UK Hacking Powers Can Be Challenged in Court, Judge Rules
A five-year court battle in the United Kingdom has come to an end with the UK Supreme Court ruling that the UK’s spy agencies and their hacking activities can be made subject to court challenges. From a report: On Wednesday, the court ruled that the GCHQ’s Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) is subject to judicial review in the High Court, which in…