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U.N. summit's meltdown ignites new Internet Cold War

news analysis When the history of early 21st century Internet politicking is written, the meltdown of a United Nations summit last week will mark the date a virtual Cold War began.

In retrospect, the implosion of the Dubai summit was all but foreordained: it pitted nations with little tolerance for human rights against Western democracies which, at least in theory, uphold those principles. And it capped nearly a decade of behind-the-scenes jockeying by a U.N. agency called the International Telecommunication Union, created in 1865 to coordinate telegraph connectivity, to gain more authority over how the Internet is managed.

It … Read more

New 'Dexter' malware strikes point-of-sale systems

Retailer point-of-sale systems may be at risk of malware that steals credit card data.

Israel-based security firm Seculert has identified a strain of malware, dubbed Dexter, which it asserts has infected hundreds of point-of-sale (POS) systems across 40 countries in the past two to three months. English-speaking countries appear to be a prime target, with 30 percent of infections in the U.S., 19 percent in the U.K., and 9 percent in Canada.

Rather than targeting thousands of individual machines through traditional Trojans or phishing emails, the custom-made malware targets specific POS systems. The malware injects itself into the … Read more

The state of networking and storage, and what to expect at CES 2013

It's been an exciting -- and busy -- year for networking and storage, two very important categories in consumer electronics. Important because they are at the core of information technology -- without either, most or all of your gadgets will come to a grinding halt. And as far as I know, we haven't yet seen the limit of what they can do.

That said, here is a quick roundup of the current state of this sector and what we can expect, based on my educated guesses, heading into CES 2013.

Networking

802.11ac This year will be remembered … Read more

Plaintiffs named in suit over Facebook's troubled IPO

A U.S. judge has named the lead plaintiffs in the dozens of class-action lawsuits brought against Facebook over its bungled initial public offering, according to Reuters.

District Judge Robert Sweet has been assigned 42 cases against the social network, which he consolidated in October. Today he picked a handful of plaintiffs to head the suits. The lead plaintiffs include several state pension funds, such as the North Carolina Retirement Systems, Arkansas Teacher Retirement System, the Fresno County Employees' Retirement Association, and Banyan Capital Master Fund. Collectively, this group claims a combined loss of $7.1 million.

"Its members … Read more

Foggy Bottom's future social-media approach? Hold that tweet

There's deliberative. There's slow. And then there's the U.S. State Department, which is reportedly considering a policy that would hold up employee tweets from going live for a couple of days as they went through official review and approval.

The State Department indirectly responded to leaks about the draft proposal, which was first reported by the blog Diplopundit, in an e-mail comment to CNET from spokesman Mark Toner.

Provisions in the Department's Foreign Affairs Manual are constantly under review. We are in the process of updating the regulations governing publication -- both traditional and digital … Read more

Congressman proposes two-year ban on Net regulation bills

A new proposal would temporarily stop the federal government from pushing through bills and regulations on the Internet's content.

Recent attempts to regulate the Internet -- in the form of SOPA, PIPA, and CISPA -- are all dead in the water after failing in Congress. But the potential of poorly thought-out changes remains a reality.

U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) released a draft of the proposed bill, dubbed the "Internet American Moratorium Act 2012," to Project Madison on Monday. The crowdsourcing platform allows people to read and amend draft bills online, striking through text and adding … Read more

MegaUpload extradition hearing 'likely' delayed to July

From the start, the MegaUpload case promised to be one of those long-running courtroom fights -- and that's exactly what it is turning into.

Anne Toohey, a lawyer working for the commissioner of police in New Zealand, said in court today that there is a "high likelihood" that the extradition hearing to determine whether MegaUpload founder Kim DotCom and several other company managers can be extradited to the United States will be delayed until July, according to a report by MSN in New Zealand.

If postponed, it will mark the second time the case has been pushed … Read more

WD ships high-performance 4TB hard drive

Western Digital announced today that it's now shipping the 4TB WD Black (model WD4001FAEX) hard drive.

This drive is the highest-capacity hard drive on the market, and spins at 7,200rpm to offer fast data speeds. WD says the WD Black comes with 64MB of cache memory, and supports dual-stage actuator technology and the latest SATA 3 (6Gbps) standard. The drive's integrated dual processor is designed to deliver a high level of performance.

Like other hard drives from WD, the 4TB WB Black supports WE's IntelliSeek, StableTrac, and NoTouch technology. IntelliSeek calculates optimum seek speeds to lower … Read more

Obama may have talked Kim DotCom with New Zealand PM

New Zealand Prime Minister John Key said today he took up some issues important to his country in a private conversation with President Barack Obama and one of the topics may have been about the MegaUpload case.

The impromptu discussion occurred today prior to a meeting at the East Asia Summit in Cambodia, according to several New Zealand publications. Key confirmed that he brought up the fighting in Gaza but when asked whether he and Obama talked about MegaUpload, the cloud-storage service accused by the United States of criminal copyright violations, Key said he couldn't discuss it.

New Zealand'… Read more

U.S. judge in MegaUpload case partially unseals search warrant

A federal judge has partially unsealed the warrant he issued that allowed MegaUpload's domain names to be seized.

The documents had been under seal since January, when the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia charged the company and managers, including founder Kim DotCom, with criminal copyright violations, money laundering, and wire fraud.

The search warrant offers very little new information about what kind of evidence the U.S. government possesses to support its case. But Ira Rothken, the Silicon Valley attorney who oversees MegaUpload's worldwide defense, says the document shows that U.S. officials misled … Read more