department of justice

A politically ambitious Justice Department official who oversaw the criminal case against Aaron Swartz has come under fire for alleged prosecutorial abuses that led the 26-year-old online activist to take his own life.

Carmen Ortiz, 57, the U.S. attorney for Massachusetts who was selected by President Obama, compared the online activist -- accused of downloading a large number of academic papers -- to a common criminal in a 2011 press release. "Stealing is stealing whether you use a computer command or a crowbar," Ortiz said at the time. Last fall, her office slapped Swartz with 10 additional … Read more

Autonomy founder and former CEO Mike Lynch is firing back at Hewlett-Packard after the release of HP's annual report with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission today. The report states that the federal government opened an inquiry into HP's acquisition of Autonomy in November and hints that Autonomy's accounting is partially to blame.

"It is extremely disappointing that HP has again failed to provide a detailed calculation of its $5 billion write-down of Autonomy, or publish any explanation of the serious allegations it has made against the former management team, in its annual report filing … Read more

A Senate proposal touted as protecting Americans' e-mail privacy has been quietly rewritten, giving government agencies more surveillance power than they possess under current law, CNET has learned.

Patrick Leahy, the influential Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has dramatically reshaped his legislation in response to law enforcement concerns, according to three individuals who have been negotiating with Leahy's staff over the changes. A vote on his bill, which now authorizes warrantless access to Americans' e-mail, is scheduled for next week.

Leahy's rewritten bill would … Read more

Bob Kohn, the founder of eMusic and apparently an amateur cartoonist, has had his laughs but he has no standing in an antitrust case involving five top publishers and Apple, the U.S. Department of Justice argued this week.

Kohn is trying to stop the settlement agreement between the DOJ and three of the five publishers accused earlier this year of conspiring with Apple to raise e-book prices. A U.S. District Court denied Kohn's motion to intervene in the case, and he filed an appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

On Tuesday, … Read more

Apple is on the offensive again in the e-book pricing lawsuit. A subpoena issued by the tech giant in July has just surfaced and demands that the Department of Justice turn over interviews it conducted with Amazon employees for the suit, according to Paid Content.

The subpoena asks for "transcripts and exhibits" and a "list of individuals interviewed" by the DOJ in depositions.

To recap the case: in an antitrust lawsuit filed in April, federal prosecutors accused Apple and five book publishers of conspiring to artificially hike prices. At the time, Amazon was selling e-books much … Read more

The U.S. Department of Justice has reined down hard on a Taiwanese LCD screen maker in court, demanding $1 billion in fines and significant jail time for two former executives.

According to the Associated Press, AU Optronics carried out an extensive price-fixing scheme that feds said was the most significant ever prosecuted in the U.S. During a federal trial in March, the jury found both AU Optronics and two of its executives, Hsuan Bin Chen and Hui Hsiung, guilty of price-fixing.

The original complaints for the case alleged that the company worked to create an international "cartel&… Read more

After pleading guilty last year to creating a botnet that wreaked havoc on about 72,000 computers, Joshua Schichtel was sentenced to prison today. The Department of Justice announced that Schichtel received a 30-month prison sentence for "selling command-and-control access to and use of thousands of malware-infected computers."

Schichtel was a unique hacker. Rather than infecting computers for his own benefit, he instead sold botnets to customers who must have not had the tech know-how to create their own malware.

"Individuals who wanted to infect computers with various different types of malicious software (malware) would contact Schichtel … Read more

New York Sen. Charles Schumer reprimanded the Department of Justice today for filing its e-book antitrust lawsuit against Apple. Using strong language in a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed, he wrote that "the suit could wipe out the publishing industry as we know it."

The Department of Justice brought the lawsuit against Apple in April alleging that the tech giant and a group of book publishers colluded to illegally fix e-book prices to boost profits and force e-book rival Amazon to abandon its discount pricing.

The suit also alleges that Apple and the publishers pushed an "agency model&… Read more

commentary Amazon.com has outmaneuvered Apple in the e-books sector. Nowhere was this made more apparent than in court documents released last week.

In antitrust lawsuits filed by the U.S. Department of Justice and others, Apple stands accused of conspiring with five of the six largest U.S. book publishers to raise the price consumers paid for e-books and stifle competition in an attempt to snatch control of the e-book market away from Amazon, the sector's dominant player.

Soon after the Justice Department filed its complaint last month, Apple and two of the five publishers filed motions with … Read more