An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: ACE, the world's leading anti-piracy coalition, is facing an unexpected setback after Google removed a page that advises 'pirates' where they can watch content legally. The removal is the result of an erroneous takedown notice from a competing anti-piracy organization and was likely triggered by an ACE domain name seizure. [...] After the "Watch Legally" page was removed from Google search, visitors see the following note [here] at the bottom of the results.

In response to a recent takedown notice, Google removed ACE's "Watch Legally" page for alleged copyright infringement. This action was taken at the behest of Indian anti-piracy outfit AiPlex. The ACE page was repeatedly flagged by AiPlex in recent weeks. In this notice, for example, it's accused of distributing a pirated copy of the film 'Virgin Bhanupriya,' together with sites such as foumovies.pw, afilmyhit.cafe, and yomovies.bid. Why AiPlex flagged a page that's designed to drive traffic to legal services is unclear.

AI technology should not be considered an "inventor" by U.S. patent law, Google argues in a new filing with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. From a report: USPTO is currently soliciting comments on AI technologies and inventorship -- asking people, among other things, how AI is being used in creating inventions and whether its contributions would qualify it for treatment as a joint inventor. Questions posed by USPTO include: "If an AI system contributes to an invention at the same level as a human who would be considered a joint inventor, is the invention patentable under current patent laws? Are there situations in which AI-generated contributions are not owned by any entity and therefore part of the public domain?"

An anonymous reader shares a report: A passenger walks up to an airport security checkpoint, slips an ID card into a slot and looks into a camera atop a small screen. The screen flashes "Photo Complete" and the person walks through -- all without having to hand over their identification to the TSA officer sitting behind the screen. It's all part of a pilot project by the Transportation Security Administration to assess the use of facial recognition technology at a number of airports across the country. "What we are trying to do with this is aid the officers to actually determine that you are who you say who you are," said Jason Lim, identity management capabilities manager, during a demonstration of the technology to reporters at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport.

The effort comes at a time when the use of various forms of technology to enhance security and streamline procedures is only increasing. TSA says the pilot is voluntary and accurate, but critics have raised concerns about questions of bias in facial recognition technology and possible repercussions for passengers who want to opt out. The technology is currently in 16 airports. In addition to Baltimore, it's being used at Reagan National near Washington, D.C., airports in Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Orlando, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, San Jose, and Gulfport-Biloxi and Jackson in Mississippi. However, it's not at every TSA checkpoint so not every traveler going through those airports would necessarily experience it.

"Deep in a pine forest in Wilcox County, Alabama, three workers dangled from the top of a 350-foot cellular tower," reports the New York Times. "They were there to rip out and replace Chinese equipment from the local wireless network..." As the United States and China battle for geopolitical and technological primacy, the fallout has reached rural Alabama and small wireless carriers in dozens of states. They are on the receiving end of the Biden administration's sweeping policies to suppress China's rise, which include trade restrictions, a $52 billion package to bolster domestic semiconductor manufacturing against China and the divestiture of the video app TikTok from its Chinese owner. What the wireless carriers must do, under a program known as "rip and replace," has become the starkest physical manifestation of the tech Cold War between the two superpowers. The program, which took effect in 2020, mandates that American companies tear out telecom equipment made by the Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE. U.S. officials have warned that gear from those companies could be used by Beijing for espionage and to steal commercial secrets.

Instead, U.S. carriers have to use equipment from non-Chinese companies. The Federal Communications Commission, which oversees the program, would then reimburse the carriers from a pot of $1.9 billion intended to cover their costs. Similar rip-and-replace efforts are taking place elsewhere. In Europe, where Huawei products have been a key part of telecom networks, carriers in Belgium, Britain, Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden have also been swapping out the Chinese equipment because of security concerns, according to Strand Consult, a research firm that tracks the telecom industry. "Rip-and-replace was the first front in a bigger story about the U.S. and China's decoupling, and that story will continue into the next decade with a global race for A.I. and other technologies," said Blair Levin, a former F.C.C. chief of staff and a fellow at the Brookings Institution.

But cleansing U.S. networks of Chinese tech has not been easy. The costs have already ballooned above $5 billion, according to the F.C.C., more than double what Congress appropriated for reimbursements. Many carriers also face long supply chain delays for new equipment. The program's burden has fallen disproportionately on smaller carriers, which relied more on the cheaper gear from the Chinese firms than large companies like AT&T and Verizon. Given rip-and-replace's difficulties, some smaller wireless companies now say they may not be able to upgrade their networks and continue serving their communities, where they are often the only internet providers. "For many rural communities, they are faced with the disastrous choice of having to continue to use insecure networks that are ripe for surveillance or having to cut off their services," said Geoffrey Starks, a Democratic commissioner at the F.C.C.

Last month, Senator Deb Fischer, a Republican of Nebraska, introduced a bill to close the gap in rip-and-replace funding for carriers... In January, the F.C.C. said it had received 126 applications seeking funding beyond what it could reimburse. Lawmakers had underestimated the costs of shredding Huawei and ZTE equipment, and new equipment and labor costs have risen. The F.C.C. said it could cover only about 40 percent of the expenses. Some wireless carriers immediately paused their replacement efforts. "Until we have assurance of total project funding, this project will continue to be delayed as we await the necessary funding required to build and pay for the new network equipment," United Wireless of Dodge City, Kansas, wrote in a regulatory filing to the F.C.C. in January.

Three companies "supplied millions of fake public comments to influence a 2017 proceeding by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to repeal net neutrality rules," announced New York's attorney general this week.

Their investigation "found that the fake comments used the identities of millions of consumers, including thousands of New Yorkers, without their knowledge or consent," as well as "widespread fraud and abusive practices" Collectively, the three companies have agreed to pay $615,000 in penalties and disgorgement. This is the second series of agreements secured by Attorney General James with companies that supplied fake comments to the FCC... As detailed in a report by the Office of the Attorney General, the nation's largest broadband companies funded a secret campaign to generate millions of comments to the FCC in 2017. These comments provided "cover" for the FCC to repeal net neutrality rules. To help generate these comments, the broadband industry engaged commercial lead generators that used advertisements and prizes, like gift cards and sweepstakes entries, to encourage consumers to join the campaign.

However, nearly every lead generator that was hired to enroll consumers in the campaign instead simply fabricated consumers' responses. As a result, more than 8.5 million fake comments that impersonated real people were submitted to the FCC, and more than half a million fake letters were sent to Congress. Two of the companies, LCX and Lead ID, were each engaged to enroll consumers in the campaign. Instead, each independently fabricated responses for 1.5 million consumers. The third company, Ifficient, acted as an intermediary, engaging other lead generators to enroll consumers in the campaign. Ifficient supplied its client with more than 840,000 fake responses it had received from the lead generators it had hired.

The Office of the Attorney General's investigation also revealed that the fraud perpetrated by the various lead generators in the net neutrality campaign infected other government proceedings as well. Several of the lead generation firms involved in the broadband industry's net neutrality comment campaigns had also worked on other, unrelated campaigns to influence regulatory agencies and public officials. In nearly all of these advocacy campaigns, the lead generation firms engaged in fraud. As a result, more than 1 million fake comments were generated for other rulemaking proceedings, and more than 3.5 million fake digital signatures for letters and petitions were generated for federal and state legislators and government officials across the nation.

LCX and Lead ID were responsible for many of these fake comments, letters, and petition signatures. Across four advocacy campaigns in 2017 and 2018, LCX fabricated consumer responses used in approximately 900,000 public comments submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) at the U.S. Department of the Interior. Similarly, in advocacy campaigns between 2017 and 2019, Lead ID fabricated more than half a million consumer responses. These campaigns targeted a variety of government agencies and officials at the federal and state levels...

LCX and its principals will pay $400,000 in penalties and disgorgement to New York and $100,000 to the San Diego District Attorney's Office.
Thanks to Slashdot reader gkelley for sharing the news.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: The U.S. government is seeking to turn metro areas in middle America into the next hot spots of tech innovation with an initial $500 million investment. The Department of Commerce announced Friday its first notice of funding opportunity, or NOFO, for the Regional Technology and Innovation Hub program, known as Tech Hubs. It kicks off the process for eligible groups around the country to apply to be designated as Tech Hubs. That designation gives them the chance to take advantage of the funds to make their regions attractive places for entrepreneurs and technologists to live and work.

Congress authorized $10 billion for the program between fiscal years 2023 and 2027, of which $500 million is available to be distributed this year. Under the current funding opportunity, a total of $15 million in planning grants will be made available to applicants designated as Tech Hubs. Later this year, the Department will seek to award five to 10 designated Tech Hubs grants of $50 million to $75 million each to help build out capacity in their region, according to a Department of Commerce official. President Joe Biden requested $4 billion be made available for Tech Hubs in next year's budget.

Eligible applicants are groups made up of at least one entity from each of the following categories: a higher education institution, subdivision of local or state government, industry or firm in relevant tech or manufacturing field, economic development group, and labor organization or workforce training group. Under the statute, Tech Hubs should focus on a specific set of key areas of technology, which include artificial intelligence, robotics, natural disaster prevention, biotechnology, cybersecurity, energy efficiency and more. The department must designate at least 20 Tech Hubs under the law. The hope is that the infusion of funds will help regions across the country become essential centers of innovation and create more well-paying jobs across a greater swath of the nation. "America leads the world in technological innovation. But the sad reality is that our tech ecosystem is extremely concentrated," Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told reporters on a briefing call Thursday, noting that 80% of U.S. venture capital money is invested in the San Francisco Bay Area, the Northeast and Southern California. "There's so much more potential for tech innovation all across the country. In the U.S. we have the best research institutions in the world. That's indisputable. And frankly, many of them are in America's heartland, far from the coast."

"President Biden is so clear on one point, which is that everyone in America deserves a fair shot at economic opportunity, no matter where they live, and they shouldn't have to move in order to get a good job," Raimondo said. "Nobody should have to leave their family or support system or network to move to New York or San Francisco just to get a good job."

Discord has informed users of a data breach that occurred after a third-party support agent's account was compromised, exposing user email addresses, messages exchanged with Discord support, and any attachments sent as part of the tickets. Discord immediately disabled the account and worked with the customer service partner to prevent similar incidents in the future, but users are advised to stay vigilant for any suspicious activity. BleepingComputer reports: "Due to the nature of the incident, it is possible that your email address, the contents of customer service messages and any attachments sent between you and Discord may have been exposed to a third party," Discord said in letters sent to affected users. "As soon as Discord was made aware of the issue, we deactivated the compromised account and completed malware checks on the affected machine."

They also worked with the customer service partner to implement effective measures to prevent similar incidents in the future. "While we believe the risk is limited, it is recommended that you be vigilant for any suspicious messages or activity, such as fraud or phishing attempts," the company said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Earlier this week, Microsoft released a patch to fix a Secure Boot bypass bug used by the BlackLotus bootkit we reported on in March. The original vulnerability, CVE-2022-21894, was patched in January, but the new patch for CVE-2023-24932 addresses another actively exploited workaround for systems running Windows 10 and 11 and Windows Server versions going back to Windows Server 2008. The BlackLotus bootkit is the first-known real-world malware that can bypass Secure Boot protections, allowing for the execution of malicious code before your PC begins loading Windows and its many security protections. Secure Boot has been enabled by default for over a decade on most Windows PCs sold by companies like Dell, Lenovo, HP, Acer, and others. PCs running Windows 11 must have it enabled to meet the software's system requirements.

Microsoft says that the vulnerability can be exploited by an attacker with either physical access to a system or administrator rights on a system. It can affect physical PCs and virtual machines with Secure Boot enabled. We highlight the new fix partly because, unlike many high-priority Windows fixes, the update will be disabled by default for at least a few months after it's installed and partly because it will eventually render current Windows boot media unbootable. The fix requires changes to the Windows boot manager that can't be reversed once they've been enabled. Additionally, once the fixes have been enabled, your PC will no longer be able to boot from older bootable media that doesn't include the fixes. On the lengthy list of affected media: Windows install media like DVDs and USB drives created from Microsoft's ISO files; custom Windows install images maintained by IT departments; full system backups; network boot drives including those used by IT departments to troubleshoot machines and deploy new Windows images; stripped-down boot drives that use Windows PE; and the recovery media sold with OEM PCs.

Not wanting to suddenly render any users' systems unbootable, Microsoft will be rolling the update out in phases over the next few months. The initial version of the patch requires substantial user intervention to enable -- you first need to install May's security updates, then use a five-step process to manually apply and verify a pair of "revocation files" that update your system's hidden EFI boot partition and your registry. These will make it so that older, vulnerable versions of the bootloader will no longer be trusted by PCs. A second update will follow in July that won't enable the patch by default but will make it easier to enable. A third update in "first quarter 2024" will enable the fix by default and render older boot media unbootable on all patched Windows PCs. Microsoft says it is "looking for opportunities to accelerate this schedule," though it's unclear what that would entail.

Toyota Japan has apologized after admitting to leaving millions of customers' vehicle details on the public internet for a decade. From a report: The car maker said in a notice that it will notify about 2.15 million customers whose personal and vehicle information were left exposed to the internet after a "cloud misconfiguration" was discovered recently in April. Toyota said that the exposed data includes: registered email addresses; vehicle-unique chassis and navigation terminal numbers; the location of vehicles and what time they were there; and videos from the vehicle's "drive recorder" which records footage from the car. Toyota said the data spilling from its Connected Cloud (TC) was initially exposed in November 2013, but pertains only to vehicles in Japan, according to the company. The company's connected service provides Toyota customers with information about their vehicle, provides in-car entertainment services, and helps to notify authorities in the event of an accident or breakdown.

Longtime Slashdot reader UnknowingFool writes: YouTuber Trevor Jacob has pled guilty to felony federal obstruction of an investigation for removing and destroying wreckage of his airplane that he intentionally crashed in November 2021 for online YouTube views. Maximum sentence is 20 years.

On November 24, 2021 Jacob was flying solo from Lompoc City Airport to Mammoth Lakes, California. He reported to the FAA that he had engine trouble and had to abandon the plane using a parachute. After the FAA launched an active investigation, Jacob lied about not knowing the location of wreckage for the next several weeks despite his video footage that he found the wreckage shortly after landing on the ground. On December 10, 2021 Jacob and a friend lifted the wreckage away from the national forest crash site using a helicopter. Jacob transported the wreckage back to Lompoc City Airport with a truck. He then cut up and disposed of the wreckage over then next several days using the airport's trash bins.

On December 23,2021 Jacob posted a YouTube video titled, "I Crashed My Airplane" which showed his account of engine trouble and the crash. Keen viewers were immediately skeptical of Jacob's account of a flight "emergency" noting he had multiple cameras recording the event including a selfie stick and that Jacob was wearing a parachute before the engine trouble occurred. Pilots commented how Jacob failed to follow basic procedures like attempting to restart the plane or contacting air traffic control with a mayday before ditching the plane. Largely based on the his YouTube video, the FAA revoked his pilot's license in April 2022.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The Biden administration on Thursday unveiled a sweeping plan to slash greenhouse gas emissions from the U.S. power industry, one of the biggest steps so far in its effort to decarbonize the economy to fight climate change. The proposal would limit how much carbon dioxide power plants, which are the source of more than a quarter of U.S. emissions, can chuff into the atmosphere, putting the industry on a years-long course to install billions of dollars of new equipment or shut down. Environmental groups and scientists have long argued that such steps are crucial to curb global warming, but fossil fuel-producing states argue that they represent government overreach and threaten to destabilize the electric grid.

The proposal sets standards that would push power companies to install carbon capture equipment (CCS) that can siphon the CO2 from a plant's smokestack before it reaches the atmosphere, or use super-low-emissions hydrogen as a fuel. The Environmental Protection Agency projects the plan would cut carbon emissions from coal plants and new gas plants by 617 million tons between 2028 and 2042, the equivalent of reducing the annual emissions of 137 million passenger vehicles. "Today we're proposing new technology standards that will significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel power plants, protecting health and protecting our planet," EPA Administrator Michael Regan told students at the University of Maryland on their last day of school on Thursday.

Regan said that the agency has wielded the power of the federal Clean Air Act to craft the new power plant rules, along with a suite of other measures aimed at tackling vehicle emissions, as well as potent greenhouse gases methane and HFCs, that would reduce the equivalent of 15 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions between 2022 and 2055. The proposal, more than 18 months in the making, reflects constraints imposed on the EPA by the Supreme Court, which ruled last year that the agency cannot impose a system-wide shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy, but can regulate plants by setting technology-based standards applied on-site.

An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from a collaborative investigation between Motherboard, lavialibera, and IrpiMedia: Mafioso Bartolo Bruzzaniti needed everyone to do their job just right. First, the Colombian suppliers would hide a massive amount of cocaine inside bananas at the port city of Turbo, Colombia. That shipping container would then be transported across the ocean to Catania, in Sicily, Italy. A corrupt port worker on the mafia's payroll would wave the shipment through and had advised the group how to package the drugs. This was so the cocaine could remain undetected even if the worker was forced to scan the shipment. Another group of on-the-ground mafiosos would then unload the cocaine outside of the port.

In March 2021, Bruzzaniti, an alleged member of the infamous 'Ndrangheta mafia group and who says Milan belongs to him "by right," asked his brother Antonio to go fetch something else crucial to the traffickers' success. "Go right now," Bruzzaniti wrote in a text message later produced in court records. "It's needed urgently." Investigators know what Bruzzaniti said because European authorities had penetrated an encrypted phone network called Sky and harvested around a billion of the users' messages. These phones are the technological backbone of organized crime around the world.

The thing Antonio needed to urgently fetch was a phone from a different encrypted phone network, one that the authorities appear to have not compromised and which the mafia have been using as part of their operations. To that phone, a contact sent one half of the shipping container's serial number. A reporting collaboration between Motherboard, lavialibera, and IrpiMedia has identified that encrypted phone as being run by a company called No. 1 Business Communication (No. 1 BC). The investigation has found members of the mafia and other organized crime groups turning to No. 1 BC as authorities cracked down on other platforms. The collaboration has identified multiple key players in No. 1 BC's development, sales, and legal structure. "Take the bc1 right away," Bruzzaniti wrote in another text, referring to the No. 1 BC phone.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: An ex-Ubiquiti engineer, Nickolas Sharp, was sentenced to six years in prison yesterday after pleading guilty in a New York court to stealing tens of gigabytes of confidential data, demanding a $1.9 million ransom from his former employer, and then publishing the data publicly when his demands were refused. Sharp had asked for no prison time, telling United States District Judge Katherine Polk Failla that the cyberattack was actually an "unsanctioned security drill" that left Ubiquiti "a safer place for itself and for its clients," Bloomberg reported. In a court document (PDF), Sharp claimed that Ubiquiti CEO Robert Pera had prevented Sharp from "resolving outstanding security issues," and Sharp told the judge that this led to an "idiotic hyperfixation" on fixing those security flaws.

However, even if that was Sharp's true motivation, Failla did not accept his justification of his crimes, which include wire fraud, intentionally damaging protected computers, and lying to the FBI. "It was not up to Mr. Sharp to play God in this circumstance," Failla said. US attorney for the Southern District of New York, Damian Williams, argued (PDF) that Sharp was not a "cybersecurity vigilante" but an "inveterate liar and data thief" who was "presenting a contrived deception to the Court that this entire offense was somehow just a misguided security drill." Williams said that Sharp made "dozens, if not hundreds, of criminal decisions" and even implicated innocent co-workers to "divert suspicion." Sharp also had already admitted in pre-sentencing that the cyber attack was planned for "financial gain." Williams said Sharp did it seemingly out of "pure greed" and ego because Sharp "felt mistreated" -- overworked and underpaid -- by the IT company, Williams said.

Court documents show that Ubiquiti spent "well over $1.5 million dollars and hundreds of hours of employee and consultant time" trying to remediate what Williams described as Sharp's "breathtaking" theft. But the company lost much more than that when Sharp attempted to conceal his crimes -- posing as a whistleblower, planting false media reports, and contacting US and foreign regulators to investigate Ubiquiti's alleged downplaying of the data breach. Within a single day after Sharp planted false reports, stocks plummeted, causing Ubiquiti to lose over $4 billion in market capitalization value, court documents show. Williams had pushed the court to impose a sentence between eight to 10 years, arguing that anything less would be perceived by the public as a "slap on the wrist." Sharp's six-year term is slightly less than that, but in a press release, Williams described the sentence as imposing "serious penalties" for Sharp's "callous crimes." "He was disgruntled at his employer, planning to leave the company, and wanted to extort millions of dollars and cause damage on his way out," Williams said in his sentencing memo.

Former Coinbase product manager Ishan Wahi was sentenced to two years in prison for insider trading. Decrypt reports: Ishan Wahi, 32, and his associates -- including his brother, Nikhil -- made over $1.5 million from investing in new digital assets just before they were listed by America's biggest crypto exchange. Wahi was able to use his knowledge of incoming assets to buy them and then quickly sell them, to make huge profits. When the San Francisco-based exchange lists new coins and tokens, they quickly shoot up in value, a phenomenon known as "the Coinbase effect."

The Indian national tried to flee the country after being quizzed by Coinbase, the Department of Justice said. But he was stopped from boarding a flight to India by American cops. Wahi pleaded guilty in February to two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud brought against him by prosecutors in the Southern District of New York. Wahi, his brother and his friend, Sameer Ramani, were also hit with civil charges by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. "[Wahi] violated the trust placed in him by his employer" by sharing the secret listings," said U.S. Attorney Damian Williams. "Today's sentence should send a strong signal to all participants in the cryptocurrency markets that the laws decidedly do apply to them."

Clearview AI, the US startup that's attracted notoriety in recent years for a massive privacy violation after it scraped selfies off the Internet and used people's data to build a facial recognition tool it pitched to law enforcement and others, has been hit with another fine in France over non-cooperation with the data protection regulator. From a report: The overdue penalty payment of $5.7M has been issued by the French regulator, the CNIL -- on top of a $22M sanction it slapped the company with last year for breaching regional privacy rules. The European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) sets out conditions for processing personal data lawfully. Clearview has been found to have breached a number of requirements set out in law -- by France's CNIL and several other regional data protection authorities, including authorities in the UK, Italy and Greece, garnering several tens of millions in total fines to date. Whether Clearview will ever pay any of these fines remains an open question, since the US-based company has not been cooperating with EU regulators.

A Delaware judge has dismissed a shareholder lawsuit against financial technology company Block over its 2021 acquisition of majority ownership in Tidal, the music streaming service partly owned by rapper Jay-Z. From a report: A pension fund shareholder alleged that Block founder and CEO Jack Dorsey and the company's board of directors breached their fiduciary duties in agreeing to pay roughly $300 million to take control of Tidal as it was failing financially and the target of an ongoing criminal investigation. Chancellor Kathaleen St. Judge McCormick ruled Tuesday that the pension fund had failed to demand that Block's board pursue legal action itself before filing a derivative lawsuit on behalf of the company. Under Delaware law, shareholders must make such a demand or demonstrate that doing so would be futile because a majority of directors were self-interested, lacked independence or faced a substantial likelihood of liability.

McCormick noted that the demand requirement is a manifestation of Delaware's business judgment rule, under which courts defer to the decision-making of corporate directors unless there is an indication they acted in bad faith. That deference remains even if a corporate decision turns out to be unwise. "It seemed, by all accounts, a terrible business decision," the judge said of Block's acquisition of Tidal. "Under Delaware law, however, a board comprised of a majority of disinterested and independent directors is free to make a terrible business decision without any meaningful threat of liability, so long as the directors approve the action in good faith."

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried is seeking the dismissal of 10 of the 13 charges against him over the collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange. Axios reports: Lawyers for Bankman-Fried, who's pleaded not guilty to fraud, conspiracy, campaign finance law violations and money laundering, in a filing argued that several of the charges failed to properly state an offense. The motion that was filed to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York is seeking the dismissal of 10 of the 13 charges against him. "Simply making a false statement, by itself, does not constitute wire fraud unless it is made for the purpose of obtaining money or property from the victim of the fraud," Bankman-Fried's lawyers wrote.

According to Ars Technica, SBF's lawyers are essentially arguing that there's no evidence of harm caused because fraud requires a "scheme to cause economic loss to the victim," which prosecutors allegedly haven't proved. Instead, SBF alleges that federal prosecutors have concocted "a hodgepodge of different intangible losses" suffered by banks and lenders -- including "the right to honest services," "the loss of control of assets," and "the deprivation of valuable information." [...] "In the end, the Government is trying to transform allegations of dishonesty and unfair dealing into violations of the federal fraud statutes," SBF's lawyers wrote. "While such conduct may well be improper, it is not wire fraud."

The 31-year-old Bankman-Fried, who is currently under house arrest on a $250 million bond at his parents' home in Palo Alto, California, faces more than 155 years in prison if convicted on all counts. A trial has been scheduled for October.

International online sports broadcasting company DAZN has joined a global task force that aims to shut down pirated and unauthorized sports streaming operations worldwide. The new group is operated by the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), which counts giants like Amazon, Apple, NBC Universal, Netflix, Disney, Sony, and Warner Bros. among its members. From a report: Unauthorized streaming sources can often be the only available option for people to watch certain teams and matches subject to complicated broadcasting deals, locked into high-priced bundles, and blackouts. With more tech and entertainment companies using sports as a sweetener for their services (NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube, MLS / MLB for Apple TV Plus, and Thursday Night Football on Amazon Prime are a few examples), they have more reasons to collectively take issue with anyone popping up a free stream.

ACE as a whole had previously taken down IPTV-based service NitroTV, which allegedly charged users $20 per month in the US for a collection of unlicensed streaming content. ACE was first formed in 2017 as the anti-piracy arm of the Motion Picture Association (formerly known as the MPAA until it dropped the second A in 2019). Now with DAZN, it consists of 53 big media companies.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: An EU plan under which all WhatsApp, iMessage and Snapchat accounts could be screened for child abuse content has hit a significant obstacle after internal legal advice said it would probably be annulled by the courts for breaching users' rights. Under the proposed "chat controls" regulation, any encrypted service provider could be forced to survey billions of messages, videos and photos for "identifiers" of certain types of content where it was suspected a service was being used to disseminate harmful material. The providers issued with a so-called "detection order" by national bodies would have to alert police if they found evidence of suspected harmful content being shared or the grooming of children.

Privacy campaigners and the service providers have already warned that the proposed EU regulation and a similar online safety bill in the UK risk end-to-end encryption services such as WhatsApp disappearing from Europe. Now leaked internal EU legal advice, which was presented to diplomats from the bloc's member states on 27 April and has been seen by the Guardian, raises significant doubts about the lawfulness of the regulation unveiled by the European Commission in May last year. The legal service of the council of the EU, the decision-making body led by national ministers, has advised the proposed regulation poses a "particularly serious limitation to the rights to privacy and personal data" and that there is a "serious risk" of it falling foul of a judicial review on multiple grounds.

The EU lawyers write that the draft regulation "would require the general and indiscriminate screening of the data processed by a specific service provider, and apply without distinction to all the persons using that specific service, without those persons being, even indirectly, in a situation liable to give rise to criminal prosecution." The legal service goes on to warn that the European court of justice has previously judged the screening of communications metadata is "proportionate only for the purpose of safeguarding national security" and therefore "it is rather unlikely that similar screening of content of communications for the purpose of combating crime of child sexual abuse would be found proportionate, let alone with regard to the conduct not constituting criminal offenses." The lawyers conclude the proposed regulation is at "serious risk of exceeding the limits of what is appropriate and necessary in order to meet the legitimate objectives pursued, and therefore of failing to comply with the principle of proportionality". The legal service is also concerned about the introduction of age verification technology and processes to popular encrypted services. "The lawyers write that this would necessarily involve the mass profiling of users, or the biometric analysis of the user's face or voice, or alternatively the use of a digital certification system they note 'would necessarily add another layer of interference with the rights and freedoms of the users,'" reports the Guardian.

"Despite the advice, it is understood that 10 EU member states -- Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Spain -- back continuing with the regulation without amendment."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The US Justice Department has seized the domains of 13 DDoS-for hire services as part of an ongoing initiative for combatting the Internet menace. The providers of these illicit services platforms describe them as "booter" or "stressor" services that allow site admins to test the robustness and stability of their infrastructure. Almost, if not all, are patronized by people out to exact revenge on sites they don't like or to further extortion, bribes, or other forms of graft. The international law enforcement initiative is known as Operation PowerOFF. In December, federal authorities seized another 48 domains. Ten of them returned with new domains, many that closely resembled their previous names.

"Ten of the 13 domains seized today are reincarnations of services that were seized during a prior sweep in December, which targeted 48 top booter services," the Justice Department said. "For example, one of the domains seized this week -- cyberstress.org -- appears to be the same service operated under the domain cyberstress.us, which was seized in December. While many of the previously disrupted booter services have not returned, today's action reflects law enforcement's commitment to targeting those operators who have chosen to continue their criminal activities." According to a seizure warrant (PDF) filed in federal court, the FBI used live accounts available through the services to take down sites with high-capacity bandwidth that were under FBI control. "The FBI tested each of services associated with the SUBJECT DOMAINS, meaning that agents or other personnel visited each of the websites and either used previous login information or registered a new account on the service to conduct attacks," FBI Special Agent Elliott Peterson wrote in the affidavit. "I believe that each of the SUBJECT DOMAINS is being used to facilitate the commission of attacks against unwitting victims to prevent the victims from accessing the Internet, to disconnect the victim from or degrade communication with established Internet connections, or to cause other similar damage."