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Submission + - UK orders Apple to give it access to users' encrypted accounts (reuters.com)

Bruce66423 writes: Britain has ordered Apple (AAPL.O), opens new tab to give it unprecedentedly broad access to encrypted user data stored on Apple's data cloud, the Washington Post newspaper reported on Friday.
The UK government's "technical capability notice" requires blanket access rather than merely assistance to access a specific account, the paper reported, citing unnamed sources.
Governments routinely ask technology companies for user data to crack criminal cases, but Britain's sweeping demand, issued last month, has no known precedent in major democracies, the Post said.'

Not even a reference to the need to protect children! Amazing.

Comment Return theft, or scamming sellers? (Score 5, Interesting) 107

Ordered a tablet computer and received a bottle of car cleaner, which I duly packed up back in the box and returned. Another time I ordered a graphics card and received a bundle of papers.

No doubt both sellers, if questioned by Amazon, would try to accuse me of "refund theft". How to prove it one way or the other? If Amazon starts siding with sellers in these situations there are going to be a lot of angry customers.

Submission + - Faulty software lands postmasters and postmistresses in prison. (bbc.co.uk)

Martin S. writes: Today the UK will Court of Appeal will issue its ruling on A group of 42 sub-postmasters and postmistresses will learn later whether convictions for stealing money will be quashed amid a Post Office IT scandal.

This case has been rumbling on for over a decade Post Office scandal: What the Horizon saga is all about

As a software geek, the part I find most troubling is that blind faith that those in authority placed in the software without proper accounting. Accounting systems and Software are deterministic, well they should be. IFF the system/software worked correctly this missing money must have shown up somewhere. Software defects are always traceable. It might be expensive and time consuming but persistence will win in the end. Somebody somewhere is responsible for this and defacto framing of these people is criminal in principle, if not in law.

Comment Should be a public API for this (Score 4, Informative) 125

Doesn't help that the new tab page lives inside a protected "chrome://" namespace which extensions are almost entirely prevented from touching, and uses private APIs for things like showing the most used pages, meaning that anyone wanting to put it back how it was by writing an extension has to reimplement everything from scratch.

Music

Submission + - Megaupload.com shut down, founder charged with pir (bgr.com) 2

zacharye writes: Federal prosecutors in Virginia have shut down notorious file-sharing site Megaupload.com and charged the service’s founder with violating piracy laws. The Associated Press broke the story on Thursday, reporting that the indictment accuses Megaupload.com’s owner with costing copyright holders including record labels and movie studios more than $500 million in lost revenue.

Comment Re:No appeal? (Score 3, Insightful) 157

To protect their interest, they are trying to enforce laws that are currently being broken. Seems reasonable to me. Hopefully, this will deter the casual downloader who isn't particularly aware of the illegality of what they are doing.

It's a slippery slope though. How long before Ryan Giggs or someone like him demands that they block Twitter to protect his super injunction?

Comment No appeal? (Score 0) 157

Disappointed that BT are rolling over on this. It's the thin end of the wedge, and once they make it known that they are willing to censor one site then every special interest group and their dog will be getting court orders to silence parts of the web they don't like - well in the UK at least.

Comment Re:author makes no reasonable point (Score 4, Insightful) 159

the BBC isn't a public body in the sense that is, say, the British Army. The Army is funded by a general, compulsory taxes on income and other trade. The BBC is funded by a licence which you only need to pay if you choose to watch (possibly time-shifted) live broadcast television

A tax doesn't have to be universal, unless you're also going to argue that the tax on cigarettes and alcohol aren't really taxes because only smokers and drinkers pay them. The licence fee is a compulsory tax on anyone who watches broadcast TV, whether or not they consume or even care about BBC services. Now I'm not saying that I don't enjoy BBC output, or even that I necessarily resent paying the licence fee, but please don't try to use weasel words and pretend it's something it isn't. It might be a special purpose tax and the money it generates might be ring fenced, but it's a tax and the BBC is a public body.

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