The stock exchange operator will give funds to brokerages that lost money due to Nasdaq glitches that delayed the May 18 debut of Facebook shares by half an hour.
After the stock finally started trading, would-be investors complained they were not able to confirm changes or cancellations made to Facebook orders starting as early as 4:30 a.m. PT. Later on in the morning, some traders said they had not … Read more
The U.S. Senate voted overwhelmingly today to endorse levying Internet sales taxes on American shoppers, despite warnings from a handful of senators that the proposal is antibusiness, harmful to taxpayers, and will be a "bureaucratic nightmare."
By a vote of 75 to 24, senators adopted an amendment to a Democratic budget resolution that, by allowing states to "collect taxes on remote sales," is intended to eventually usher in the first national Internet sales tax.
The vote follows a week of fierce lobbying from the National Retail Federation and the Retail Industry Leaders Association, which represent … Read more
An unusual bipartisan revolt has erupted against law enforcement plans to fly more drones equipped with high-tech gear that can be used to conduct surveillance of Americans.
A combination of concerns about privacy, air traffic safety, facial recognition, cell phone tracking -- and even the possibility that in the future drones could be armed -- have suddenly placed police on the defensive.
A public outcry in Seattle last month prompted the mayor to ground the police department's nascent drone program. Oregon held a hearing this week on curbing drones, following one in Idaho last week. And on Tuesday, Rep. … Read more
Torrent search site IsoHunt has lost its appeal against Hollywood movie studios to have keyword filters removed from its results.
The court battle between the torrent indexing site and the Motion Picture Association of America's member studios has resulted in the former losing its appeal to remove an injunction that forces the Web site to filter its search results.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday upheld a 2010 ruling (PDF) that stated the site does not qualify for safe harbor under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The site's founder, Gary Fung, allegedly had "red flag&… Read more
A historic lobbying effort today to update U.S. privacy laws for the 21st century seemed to be in danger of derailment by a law enforcement-backed proposal to require Internet companies and e-mail providers to keep records of what their users are doing online.
Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner, the chairman of a key House of Representatives subcommittee, said this morning that it was time to resuscitate the idea of the government mandating data retention. Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican, had drafted a mandatory logging proposal seven years ago that included prison terms for company executives who failed to comply. A law … Read more
Here's a fun one: The folks over at Federal Computer Week got their hands on a hot rumor about Amazon supposedly building a cloud service for the spooks over at the Central Intelligence Agency, a project estimated to be "worth up to $600 million over 10 years."
Amazon Web Services will help the intelligence agency build a private cloud infrastructure that helps the agency keep up with emerging technologies like big data in a cost-effective manner not possible under the CIA's previous cloud efforts, sources told FCW.
Given how Amazon usually considers everything -- including the … Read more
AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint, and other wireless providers would be required to capture and store Americans' confidential text messages, according to a proposal that will be presented to a congressional panel today.
The law enforcement proposal would require wireless providers to record and store customers' SMS messages -- a controversial idea akin to requiring them to surreptitiously record audio of their customers' phone calls -- in case police decide to obtain them at some point in the future.
"Billions of texts are sent every day, and some surely contain key evidence about criminal activity," Richard Littlehale … Read more
The Obama administration has dropped its insistence that police should be able to warrantlessly peruse Americans' e-mail correspondence.
But at the same time, the Justice Department is advancing new proposals that would expand government surveillance powers over e-mail messages, Twitter direct messages, and Facebook direct messages in other ways.
It's a development that will complicate the political wrangling over Americans' electronic privacy rights, which are in large part protected by a 1986 privacy law written in the pre-Internet days of the black-and-white Macintosh Plus and dial-up computer bulletin board systems.
"It's like two steps forward and two … Read more
Earlier today, the feds announced a breakthrough: The agency now knows the identity of the thieves and where the stolen art was transported. But in a bid to get out the word, the FBI has put together a Web site carrying updates about the … Read more
Widely followed Chinese commentator Kai-fu Lee, a former Google and Microsoft executive, took to Twitter today to lay out just how often his blog posts get censored.
Turns out, it's quite often.
Lee, who ran Google's China division and founded Microsoft's China research lab before that, is now an investor in China. He speaks out regularly about censorship in China and recently encouraged his 30 million followers on the Chinese social-networking site Weibo to follow him on Twitter.
Today, Lee tweeted to those followers that his posts have been deleted dozens of times during the last year. … Read more
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