Russia was likely behind the hacks of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has finally acknowledged.
In his first news conference in about six months, Trump also said Wednesday that cybersecurity will be a top priority for his administration. He wants proposals on new hacking defenses within 90 days. "We get hacked by everybody," he said.
Trump's new found belief that Russia was responsible for cyberattacks during the presidential campaign comes after months of doubting U.S. intelligence reports that blamed Russia. But Trump also suggested U.S. intelligence may have leaked a 35-page dossier that accuses his campaign of working with Russian intelligence.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Russia was likely behind the hacks of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has finally acknowledged.
In his first news conference in about six months, Trump also said Wednesday that cybersecurity will be a top priority for his administration. He wants proposals on new hacking defenses within 90 days. "We get hacked by everybody," he said.
Trump's new found belief that Russia was responsible for cyberattacks during the presidential campaign comes after months of doubting U.S. intelligence reports that blamed Russia. But Trump also suggested U.S. intelligence may have leaked a 35-page dossier that accuses his campaign of working with Russian intelligence.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Atlassian, the company behind HipChat and the JIRA software development tool, plans to acquire Trello, a vendor of the eponymous collaborative project management software.The deal will give Atlassian users new ways to organize, discuss and complete their work, Mike Cannon-Brookes, Atlassian's co-founder and co-CEO, wrote in a blog post Monday. "By adding Trello to the Atlassian family, we're giving teams more choice in the tools they use to support the way that they want to work," he said. Trello will offer "a fun new way for teams to organize the often messy range of information that feeds into great teamwork."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The U.S. government should consider a broad range of retaliations against Russia for its attempts to interfere with November's presidential election, the outgoing director of national intelligence recommended.The default response to cyberattacks shouldn't necessarily be a cyber one, intelligence director James Clapper said Thursday. "We should consider all instruments of national power," he told a Senate committee. "We currently cannot put a lot of stock ... in cyber deterrence. Unlike nuclear weapons, cyber capabilities are difficult to see and evaluate and are ephemeral."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The U.S. government should consider a broad range of retaliations against Russia for its attempts to interfere with November's presidential election, the outgoing director of national intelligence recommended.
The default response to cyberattacks shouldn't necessarily be a cyber one, intelligence director James Clapper said Thursday. "We should consider all instruments of national power," he told a Senate committee. "We currently cannot put a lot of stock ... in cyber deterrence. Unlike nuclear weapons, cyber capabilities are difficult to see and evaluate and are ephemeral."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The U.S. Department of Labor has filed a lawsuit against Google, with the company's ability to win government contracts at risk.The agency is seeking what it calls "routine" information about wages and the company's equal opportunity program. The agency filed a lawsuit with its Office of Administrative Law Judges to gain access to the information, it announced Wednesday.Google, as a federal contractor, is required to provide the data as part of a compliance check by the agency's Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP), according to the Department of Labor. The inquiry is focused on Google's compliance with equal employment laws, the agency said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Nokia has filed new patent infringement lawsuits against Apple on Thursday, a day after it weighed in on a licensing dispute with the company by filing claims in Germany and the U.S.On Wednesday, the Finland-based mobile network vendor filed lawsuits in three German courts and two lawsuits in a Texas court, leveling infringement claims against Apple on the widely used H.264 video codec and other technologies. Those suits cover 32 of Nokia's patents.Nokia's first round of lawsuits came after Apple filed a lawsuit Tuesday accusing Nokia of working with patent assertion firms Acacia Research and Conversant Intellectual Property Management to “extract and extort exorbitant revenues unfairly and anticompetitively” from Apple and other smartphone makers. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
An international patent dispute has broken out between Apple and Nokia over the Finnish mobile network vendor's licensing terms for the widely used H.264 video codec and other technologies.Nokia on Wednesday filed lawsuits against Apple in Germany and in the U.S., alleging that the smartphone giant has infringed 32 of its patents.Nokia's five lawsuits follow an Apple lawsuit filed in California Tuesday. The U.S. company accused Nokia of working with patent assertion firms Acacia Research and Conversant Intellectual Property Management to "extract and extort exorbitant revenues unfairly and anticompetitively" from Apple and other smartphone makers. Nokia was not named as one of eight defendants in the Apple lawsuit.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia has filed lawsuits against Apple in Germany in the U.S., alleging that the smartphone giant has infringed 32 of its patents, including the widely used H.264 video codec.The patent infringement lawsuits, filed with the Regional Courts in Dusseldorf, Mannheim and Munich in Germany and the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, cover patents related to displays, user interfaces, software, antennas, chipsets, and video coding, Nokia said Wednesday. Nokia is planning to file more lawsuits in other jurisdictions, the company said in a press release.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Privacy Shield, the new international framework allowing companies to transfer customer data between the EU and the U.S., is getting good reviews so far, but some companies aren't betting on it for the long term.Companies using Privacy Shield worry that it may face the same fate as long-used predecessor the Safe Harbor Framework, which was overturned by the European Court of Justice in October 2015 after revelations of mass surveillance by the U.S National Security Agency. Digital Rights Ireland and French civil liberties group La Quadrature du Net have also challenged Privacy Shield in court, saying the new framework doesn't adequately protect Europeans' privacy.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
U.S. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler will step down on Jan. 20, clearing the way for President-elect Donald Trump to appoint a Republican chairman and majority at the agency.Wheeler, a Democrat appointed chairman by President Barack Obama in late 2013, was the architect of the FCC's strong net neutrality regulations, approved by the FCC in February 2015. Ajit Pai, a Republican commissioner who's mentioned as a possible successor to Wheeler, has vowed to repeal the net neutrality rules and to take a "weed wacker" to other FCC regulations.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
U.S. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler will step down on Jan. 20, clearing the way for President-elect Donald Trump to appoint a Republican chairman and majority at the agency.Wheeler, a Democrat appointed chairman by President Barack Obama in late 2013, was the architect of the FCC's strong net neutrality regulations, approved by the FCC in February 2015. Ajit Pai, a Republican commissioner who's mentioned as a possible successor to Wheeler, has vowed to repeal the net neutrality rules and to take a "weed wacker" to other FCC regulations.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The rapidly expanding wearable device market raises serious privacy concerns, as some device makers collect a massive amount of personal data and share it with other companies, according to a new study.Existing health privacy laws don't generally apply to wearable makers, the study says. While consumers are embracing fitness trackers, smart watches, and smart clothing, a "weak and fragmented" health privacy regulatory system in the U.S. fails to give consumers the privacy protections they may expect, said the study, released Thursday by the Center for Digital Democracy and the School of Communication at American University.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The rapidly expanding wearable device market raises serious privacy concerns, as some device makers collect a massive amount of personal data and share it with other companies, according to a new study.Existing health privacy laws don't generally apply to wearable makers, the study says. While consumers are embracing fitness trackers, smart watches, and smart clothing, a "weak and fragmented" health privacy regulatory system in the U.S. fails to give consumers the privacy protections they may expect, said the study, released Thursday by the Center for Digital Democracy and the School of Communication at American University.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos, and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son are investors in a new clean energy technology venture firm launched Monday.Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a US$1 billion venture capital fund, will focus on "next generation technologies to provide reliable, affordable, zero-carbon energy, food, and products to the world," according to its website.Other investors include Virgin Group founder Richard Branson, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, Alibaba Group Executive Chairman Jack Ma, and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Chairman John Doerr.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft Ventures has launched an artificial intelligence investment fund, signaling its parent company's growing focus on the emerging technology.The VC arm of Microsoft has also funded Element AI, an incubator to help organizations embrace an AI-first strategy, Nagraj Kashyap, corporate vice president of Microsoft Ventures, said Monday in a blog post."AI holds great promise to augment human capabilities and improve society by tackling some of the world’s biggest problems," Kashyap wrote. "We’ll make investments in startups that are responsibly harnessing the promise of AI to empower people and businesses."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The U.S. Supreme Court has invalidated a US$399 million infringement award against Samsung Electronics in a long-running design patent dispute with Apple.The court, in an 8-0 decision, kicked back the patent award to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, saying the lower court calculated the patent award based on the whole iPhone, while the design patents may cover only pieces of the device.The Federal Circuit's failure to consider a smaller damage award based on pieces of the iPhone "cannot be squared" with patent law, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote for the Supreme Court. The lower court, in its ruling, said it could not separate out the infringing pieces of the smartphones because they were not available for sale to the public, she noted.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Privacy groups in the U.S. and seven European countries will ask consumer protection agencies to investigate the maker of two internet-connected toys for violations of laws designed to protect children's privacy.The complaints are scheduled to be filed Tuesday against Genesis Toys, maker of the My Friend Cayla and I-Que Intelligence Robot toys, and Nuance Communications, the provider of voice-recognition software for the products.The complaints, to be filed in the U.S., France, Sweden, Greece, Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Norway, may be only the beginning of actions taken by consumer and privacy groups targeting a lucrative slice of the internet of things market, the so-called internet of toys.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Privacy groups in the U.S. and seven European countries will ask consumer protection agencies to investigate the maker of two internet-connected toys for violations of laws designed to protect children's privacy.The complaints are scheduled to be filed Tuesday against Genesis Toys, maker of the My Friend Cayla and I-Que Intelligence Robot toys, and Nuance Communications, the provider of voice-recognition software for the products.The complaints, to be filed in the U.S., France, Sweden, Greece, Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Norway, may be only the beginning of actions taken by consumer and privacy groups targeting a lucrative slice of the internet of things market, the so-called internet of toys.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Three senators' efforts to stop a major expansion of U.S. law enforcement agencies' hacking powers has failed for now.Proposed changes to Rule 41, the search-and-seizure provision in the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, will go into effect Thursday barring any last-minute action in Congress. The rules change will give U.S. law enforcement agencies the authority to cross jurisdictional lines and hack computers anywhere in the world during criminal investigations. Until now, the rules, in most cases, prohibited federal judges from issuing a search warrant outside their jurisdictions. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Grant Gross