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Iphone

iPhone 4, iPad 2 Get US Import Ban 213

Posted by Soulskill from the only-one-generation-after-it-matters dept.
Bent Spoke writes "The U.S. trade agency has banned the import of older Apple iPhone and iPad models due to the violation of a patent held by Samsung (PDF). 'The president can overturn the import ban on public-policy grounds, though that rarely happens. Apple can keep selling the devices during the 60-day review period. ... Apple pledged to appeal the ITC decision. The underlying findings will be reviewed by a U.S. appeals court specializing in patent cases. ... The decision could mean fewer choices for AT&T and T-Mobile customers who want to get an iPhone without paying the higher cost of the iPhone 5. Samsung told the commission that Cupertino, California-based Apple could drop the price of the iPhone 5 if it was worried about losing potential customers. All of the iPhones are made in Asia.' It's getting so complicated we need a scorecard to keep track of who's winning these offensive patent battles in the smartphone coliseum."
Electronic Frontier Foundation

U.N. Realizes Internet Surveillance Chills Free Speech 90

Posted by Soulskill from the last-horse-finally-crosses-the-finish-line dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports that the United Nations has finally come to the realization that there is a direct relationship between government surveillance online and citizens' freedom of expression. The report (PDF) says, 'The right to privacy is often understood as an essential requirement for the realization of the right to freedom of expression. Undue interference with individuals' privacy can both directly and indirectly limit the free development and exchange of ideas. An infringement upon one right can be both the cause and consequence of an infringement upon the other.' The EFF adds, 'La Rue's landmark report could not come at a better time. The explosion of online expression we've seen in the past decade is now being followed by an explosion of communications surveillance. For many, the Internet and mobile telephony are no longer platforms where private communication is shielded from governments knowing when, where, and with whom a communication has occurred.'"
Space

XCOR COO Warns That Proposed State Department Rule Could Cripple Space Tourism 105

Posted by Soulskill from the pie-in-the-sky dept.
MarkWhittington writes "Andrew Nelson, the chief operating officer of XCOR Aerospace, a company that proposes to take paying customers on suborbital jaunts on its Lynx rocketplane, posted some good news/bad news concerning some proposed rule changes from the State Department on June 3, 2013. On the good news side, the Department of State has proposed changes (PDF) that would move satellites from the Department of Defense's Munitions list, where they have been since 1999, to the Department of Commerce's commerce control list. 'This is a great step for the industry. Since the time commercial satellites were placed on the munitions list in 1999, the commercial satellite industry was almost wiped out.' On the bad news side, the State Department proposes to place commercial manned spacecraft on the DOD munitions list, making it very difficult if not impossible to fly them outside the United States. 'This is the same backward path provided to the US satellite manufacturing and launch community two decades ago that almost decimated that industry.'"
Crime

Watching the Police: Will Two-Way Surveillance Reduce Crime? 309

Posted by Soulskill from the Quis-custodiet-ipsos-coppers? dept.
An anonymous reader writes "As surveillance technologies have matured in both their sophistication and usage, some are starting to ask the question: is it time we start using them to watch the watchers? The proliferation of dashboard cameras has reduced liability costs, provided valuable evidence, and made police officers safer. The next progression would naturally be for the camera to move out of the car and onto the officer's uniform itself. In The Verge appears a fascinating report about the company behind the non-lethal stun guns that have become commonplace around the world, Taser International, which has set out to transform policing once again – this time, with Axon Flex, a head-mounted camera with a twelve-hour battery life that officers can use to record interactions. The device is constantly on, but it only captures video of the thirty seconds before its wearer begins using it, and then both video and audio while police are speaking to a citizen. Footage is then uploaded to a cloud-based service where it can be accessed by the police department. It includes an audit trail to reveal who has accessed the information and when."
The Media

Researchers Pull Out of Talks With Publishers On Text-Mining 67

Posted by timothy from the scanning-scanning-scanning dept.
ananyo writes "Disagreement between scientists and publishers has grown on a thorny issue: how to make it easier for computer programs to extract facts and data from online research papers. On 22 May, researchers, librarians and others pulled out of European Commission talks on how to encourage the techniques, known as text mining and data mining. The withdrawal has effectively ended the contentious discussions, although a formal abandonment can be decided only after a commission review in July. Scientists have chafed for years at limitations on computer-aided research. They would like to use computer programs to crawl over thousands or millions of articles and other online research content, extracting data to build up databases or to pick out patterns such as associations between genes and diseases. But in many parts of the world, including Europe (though perhaps not in the U.S. — the situation is unclear), this sort of use currently requires permission from the content's copyright owner. Even if an institution has paid to access a journal, its academics do not necessarily have permission to mine the text."
Communications

Labor Dept. Wanted $1M For E-mail Addresses of Political Appointees 154

Posted by timothy from the put-a-price-on-their-heads dept.
Virtucon writes with this snippet from an Associated Press story as carried by TwinCities.com: "'The AP asked for the addresses following last year's disclosures that the former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency had used separate email accounts at work. The practice is separate from officials who use personal, non-government email accounts for work, which generally is discouraged—but often happens anyway—due to laws requiring that most federal records be preserved. The scope of using the secret accounts across government remains a mystery: Most U.S. agencies have failed to turn over lists of political appointees' email addresses, which the AP sought under the Freedom of Information Act more than three months ago. The Labor Department initially asked the AP to pay more than $1 million for its email addresses.' The reason for the $1 million dollar request was to do research including going to backup tapes. Some of the information has been turned over to AP but it still seems that the government just can't get their hands on e-mail addresses for their own people."
Patents

White House Announces Reforms Targeting Patent Trolls 124

Posted by timothy from the setting-the-tone dept.
andy1307 writes "According to Politico (and, paywalled, at The Wall Street Journal), the White House on Tuesday [released] plans to announce a set of executive actions President Barack Obama will take that are aimed at reining in certain patent-holding firms, known as 'patent trolls' to their detractors, amid concerns that the firms are abusing the patent system and disrupting competition. The plan includes five executive actions and seven legislative recommendations. They include requiring patent holders and applicants to disclose who really owns and controls the patent, changing how fees are awarded to the prevailing parties in patent litigation, and protecting consumers with better protections against being sued for patent infringement."
Canada

CRTC Unveils New Wireless Code To Protect Canadian Customers 230

Posted by samzenpus from the great-white-phone-plan dept.
FuzzNugget writes "The CRTC has unveiled a code of conduct that brings many positive changes for Canadian wireless customers, most notably:
1.) Carriers must provide the option to unlock a cell phone after 3 months for subsidized phones within the contract period, or immediately if the device was purchased outright.
2.) Contracts are now capped at two years, and cancellation fees are limited to the amount of the subsidy.
3.) Carriers can no longer charge outrageous data overage and international roaming charges. Without explicit consent from the a customer, such charges are capped at $50 and $100 per month, respectively."
Businesses

Will Users Get a Slice of the "Big Data" Pie? 123

Posted by samzenpus from the pay-up dept.
curtwoodward writes "Better healthcare, more efficient government, cheaper goods and services — it's all possible in the age of 'big data.' According to the big companies hoping to make a killing off all that information, anyway. But will the people generating that valuable data — Joe and Jane Consumer — ever get a piece of the action? A few startups are trying to establish first-party marketplaces for personal data, compensating users directly for contributing high-quality information about themselves. The World Economic Forum is also involved, hoping that one day, 'a person's data would be equivalent to their money ... controlled, managed, exchanged and accounted for just like personal banking services operate today.' But some entrepreneurs think it might be too late in the developed world, where a consumer's data fingerprint is already very well documented."
Government

SCOTUS Says DNA Collection Permissible After Arrest 643

Posted by samzenpus from the welcome-to-the-machine dept.
schwit1 writes in with news about a ruling on the legality of the police collecting your DNA after an arrest. "A sharply divided Supreme Court on Monday said police can routinely take DNA from people they arrest, equating a DNA cheek swab to other common jailhouse procedures like fingerprinting. 'Taking and analyzing a cheek swab of the arrestee DNA is, like fingerprinting and photographing, a legitimate police booking procedure that is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment,' Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the court's five-justice majority. But the four dissenting justices said that the court was allowing a major change in police powers. 'Make no mistake about it: because of today's decision, your DNA can be taken and entered into a national database if you are ever arrested, rightly or wrongly, and for whatever reason,' conservative Justice Antonin Scalia said in a sharp dissent which he read aloud in the courtroom. Details of ruling available here.
Google

Julian Assange Says Google's Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen Are "Witch Doctors" 253

Posted by samzenpus from the oo-ee-oo-ah-ah-ting-tang-walla-walla-bing-bang dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Times publishes Assange's takedown of Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen. From the article: 'New Digital Age is a startlingly clear and provocative blueprint for technocratic imperialism, from two of its leading witch doctors, Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen, who construct a new idiom for United States global power in the 21st century. This idiom reflects the ever closer union between the State Department and Silicon Valley, as personified by Mr. Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google, and Mr. Cohen, a former adviser to Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton who is now director of Google Ideas.'"
Books

Apple E-book Price-Fixing Trial Begins 213

Posted by timothy from the arrogance-of-power dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Technology giant Apple is to begin its defence against charges by the US government that it tried to fix the prices of e-books. The iPad-maker is accused of working with publishers in 2009 to set prices in an effort to compete in the e-book market dominated by Amazon. Quotes from Steve Jobs' official biography have been cited as evidence in the case."
Censorship

Disposable VPN: Tor Gateways With EC2 Free Tiers 78

Posted by timothy from the getting-the-message-across dept.
The established regime in Turkey (not to mention many other countries: take your pick) may not like any-to-many communications, but luckily established regimes don't always get the final word. An anonymous reader writes "Lahana is my little side project to help people access the Internet and Tor via Amazon EC2 free tier-based VPNs. It's a couple of scripts that set up a new VPN in a couple of minutes that automatically tunnels everything through Tor. It's easy to share credentials with groups of people and for most people is free to set up and use. I built it with Turkey in mind, but it no doubt has other uses."
Censorship

Turkish PM: "To Me, Social Media Is the Worst Menace To Society." 418

Posted by timothy from the with-enemies-like-that dept.
PolygamousRanchKid writes "Turkey's prime minister on Sunday rejected claims that he is a 'dictator,' dismissing protesters as an extremist fringe even as thousands returned to the landmark Istanbul square that has become the site of the fiercest anti-government outburst in years. With Turkish media otherwise giving scant reports about the protests, many turned to social media outlets for information on the unrest. 'There is now a menace which is called Twitter,' Erdogan said. 'The best examples of lies can be found there. To me, social media is the worst menace to society.' 'The people are finally standing up, speaking up and fighting for their rights,' said Hakan Tas, a deputy for the Left Party in Berlin's local assembly, who took part in the protest."
Democrats

Activist Admits To Bugging US Senate Minority Leader 247

Posted by timothy from the figured-it-was-cool-with-mitch dept.
cold fjord writes "Curtis Morrison, co-founder of the Progress Kentucky PAC, which had previous issued an apology over a racially charged tweet about Senator McConnell's wife (former Secretary of Labor, Elaine Chao), has admitted to bugging Senator McConnell. Morrison admitted he was behind the recording and said a grand jury is investigating the situation. "[Assistant] U.S. attorney, Bryan Calhoun, telephoned my attorney yesterday, asking to meet with him next Friday as charges against me are being presented to a grand jury," Morrison wrote on Salon. Morrison writes that after releasing the recording, his personal life took a negative turn. 'I've never doubted that making the recording was ethical.' He also says that he doesn't believe his actions were illegal, but admits he could be prosecuted for them."' Morrison has said that one of his inspirations was Julian Assange. Given the current direction of government activity, he may simply have been trying to build a suitable resume for future federal employment."
Canada

Montreal Union Wants a Camera On Every Policeman's Uniform 320

Posted by timothy from the undercover-eh dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Montreal Policemen's Brotherhood is proposing that officers be equipped with uniform-mounted cameras that can be used to record various interactions. The union says in other jurisdictions where police officers are equipped with point-of-view cameras, the use of force by officers and assaults on officers drops by as much as 60%. One system is currently being tested in Edmonton, Alberta."
Censorship

Taiwan's IP Office Proposes Blocking Foreign Sites Infringing Copyright 39

Posted by timothy from the state-vs-man dept.
New submitter thomas8166 writes "The Taiwanese Intellectual Property Office (TIPO) recently proposed draft legislation that would empower it to block foreign websites that it deems infringing. The proposal has been likened to SOPA, and has drawn heavy criticism from website operators such as Wikimedia Taiwan. The TIPO stresses that it will only target well-known infringing sites, but Taiwanese netizens are concerned that this power can potentially be abused for political purposes."
The Courts

Opposition Mounts To Oracle's Attempt To Copyright Java APIs 187

Posted by timothy from the but-larry-wants-it dept.
An anonymous reader writes with a bit from Groklaw: "The remarkable outpouring of support for Google in the Oracle v. Google appeal continues, with a group of well-known innovators, start-ups, and those who fund them — innovators like Ray Ozzie, Tim O'Reilly, Mitch Kapor, Dan Bricklin, and Esther Dyson — standing with [Thursday's] group of leading computer scientists in telling the court that Oracle's attempt to copyright its Java APIs would be damaging to innovation." As usual, Groklaw gives a cogent, readable introduction to the issue.
Biotech

Never Mind the Epidemic, Who Gets Patent Rights For the Cure? 135

Posted by timothy from the pretty-sure-robin-cook-splits-it-with-michael-crichton dept.
A virus that has so far killed nearly thirty people in seven countries faces a non-medical obstacle to treatment: Patents. Reader Presto Vivace writes with this excerpt from the Council on Foreign Relations: "At the center of the dispute is a Dutch laboratory that claims all rights to the genetic sequence of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus [MERS-CoV]. Saudi Arabia's deputy health minister, Ziad Memish, told the WHO meeting that "someone"--a reference to Egyptian virologist Ali Zaki--mailed a sample of the new SARS-like virus out of his country without government consent in June 2012, giving it to Dutch virologist Ron Fouchier of Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam."
Censorship

In UK, Search Engines Urged To Block More Online Porn Sites 186

Posted by timothy from the they'll-know-it-when-they-see-it dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Search engines such as Google should do more to restrict access to online pornography, a government adviser on child internet safety has said. John Carr said increasing the number of sites automatically blocked by search engines would make it more difficult for paedophiles to get images of abuse. It comes after Mark Bridger was found guilty of the abduction and murder of five-year-old April Jones in Powys." It sounds like a continuation of the blocked-by-default porn white-listing plan that's been going around in the UK for a few years now.

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