Posts

Google hasreleasedan “updated and more detailed”transparency report, disclosing key information that governments have asked for over a six month period. The Internet giant firstannouncedits Governments Request tool in April 2010, when it said that it was designed to supply information about the requests for user data or content removal Google receives from government agencies around the world. The latest data focuses on the last six months of 2010, and the transparency report shows private information relating to Google’s users was requested by government agencies or police on over14,000 occasionsacross the so-called 26 developed countries....

You can have all the firewalls and Internet security software in the world, but sometimes there’s just no accounting for human curiosity and stupidity. Bloombergreportsthat The US Department of Homeland recently ran a test on government employees to see how easy it was for hackers to gain access to computer systems, without the need for direct network access. Computer disks and USB sticks were dropped in parking lots of government buildings and private contractors, and 60% of the people who picked them up plugged the devices into office computers....

The United States is planning for an intervention that promotes Internet freedom by throwing millions of dollars into new technology to break through Internet censorship overseas amid a heightened crackdown on dissent in China. State Department officials said they would invest $19 million in efforts to evade Internet controls in China, among other authoritarian states, which blocks online access to politically sensitive material. The new technology would far surpass Virtual Private Networks, the current tool of choice to circumvent Internet censorship....

Comcast subscribers that have signed up to Comcast’s Xfinity broadband service have found that the US internet service provider is blocking access to the popular and controversial The Pirate Bay file-sharing service. Members of Reddit took to the websiteto complainof the block, with many Twitter usersconfirmingthat access had been blocked on their residential connections.TorrentFreak, speaking with members of ThePirateBay team, has confirmed that the file-sharing website is not actively blocking Comcast users, but the broadband provider has remained silent on the issue....

Five antitrust laws proposed in the United States aim to aggressively rein in the market power of “big tech” companies and change the way they do business. The set of bills, introducedon June 11, targets the enormous economic power wielded by the likes of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google (owned by parent company Alphabet). The expansive proposals range from breaking up different businesses run by big tech, to more effectively preventing mergers known as “killer acquisitions”, in which big tech companies buy up rivals to stamp out threats to their market power....