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Submission + - Twitter Rejects Prosecutors' Subpoena For A User's Data Without Warrant (forbes.com)

Submitted by Sparrowvsrevolution
Sparrowvsrevolution writes: In an unprecedented stand for user privacy, Twitter filed a motion yesterday in a New York state court asking a judge to block a subpoena that would force the company to turn over the data of one of its users, Malcolm Harris. Harris was arrested in an Occupy Wall Street protest on the Brooklyn Bridge in October for “disorderly conduct.” The company's lawyers claim that the subpoena violates the fourth amendment and Twitter's terms of service, which says that users' tweets belong to them and thus can't be handed over to law enforcement without their consent.
Google

Submission + - The Patent Mafia and What You Can Do To Break It Up (networkworld.com)

Submitted by colinneagle
colinneagle writes: Just like the organization of which Don Fanucci was part of in the Godfather, Part II, there is another "organization" today seeking to "wet their beak" every time some company comes up with a new or better way to use technology. This "Patent Mafia" is building patent stockpiles like the US and USSR stockpiled nuclear missiles at the height of the cold war. A difference between the real Mafia and the Patent Mafia is that the Patent Mafia actually uses the government and the courts to strong arm and enforce their will.

The lawsuits are raging all across the tech world. Oracle sues Google, Yahoo sues Facebook, they counter-sue. Others threaten, others buy more patents and the circle goes round and round.

Don't be fooled by the lawsuits between these tech titans though. The real cost that the patent mafia extracts from the tech world is on the smaller companies who can't afford to battle the Apples and Microsofts of the world. Their choices are far simpler. They can abandon their innovations or they can choose to pay and allow the Mafiosos to wet their beaks. Also, don't be fooled about who the real losers are here. The the real losers are you and me. We lose out on being able to leverage innovative new ideas and technologies that come to market or have to pay more for them so that the the mafia can wet its beak.

This system of software patents has been called out by many. While companies are certainly entitled to the fruits of their inventions, many of these patent rackets are based on patents improperly issued, improperly enforced or improperly applied.
DRM

Submission + - Sci-Fi publisher Tor ditches DRM. A positive step towards the removal of DRM? (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by FBeans
FBeans writes: "Science fiction publisher Tor UK is dropping digital rights management from its e-books alongside a similar move by its US partners."

"Tor UK, Tor Books and Forge are divisions of Pan Macmillan, which said it viewed the move as an "experiment"." s

With experiments, come results. Now users can finally read their books across multiple devices such as Amazon's Kindle, Sony Reader, Kobo eReader and Apple's iBooks. Perhaps we will see the *increase* of sales, because of the new unrestricted format, outweighs the decrease caused by piracy!? Time will tell...
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft censors The Pirate Bay links on Windows Live Messenger (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by
RemyBR
RemyBR writes: "Microsoft has confirmed that users of its instant messaging app will not be able to send each other links to popular torrent site The Pirate Bay, citing malware fears.
"We block instant messages if they contain malicious or spam URLs based on intelligence algorithms, third-party sources, and/or user complaints. Pirate Bay URLs were flagged by one or more of these and were consequently blocked," Redmond told The Register in an emailed statement."
Security

Submission + - Iran blamed for major cyberattack on BBC (techworld.com)

Submitted by Qedward
Qedward writes: Iran is privately being blamed for a major cyberattack on the BBC earlier this month that blocked access to its popular Persian TV service and disrupted the Corporation’s IT using denial-of-service.

The multi-pronged March 2 attack took down much of the BBC’s email, overloaded its telephone switchboard with automatic phone calls, and blocked a satellite feed for the BBC Persian station. BBC servers were also on the end of a DDoS.

In an unprecedented tactic, the BBC has trailed a speech to be given this week to the Royal Television Society in which Director General Mark Thompson will mention the attacks in some detail while stopping short of formally naming Iran as the perpetrator.
Music

Submission + - Hackers Nab Unreleased Michael Jackson Tracks from Sony (securityweek.com) 1

Submitted by wiredmikey
wiredmikey writes: The plot thickens, and Sony once again has found itself in the news surrounding another hacking-related incident. This time around, the breach doesn’t appear to be in regard any lost user data or customer accounts, but instead, some valuable property owned by the record company.

Today, several British news outlets have reported that more than 50,000 music tracks have been illegally accessed and downloaded by hackers, including a large number from the late Michael Jackson.

Sony bought the catalog from Jackson’s estate for $250 Million in 2010, giving the company distribution rights to the unreleased music.

The attack reportedly occurred shortly after details of the massive PlayStation Network breach last April, but details were only revealed this past weekend.

Submission + - SSDs cause crisis for digital forensics (techworld.com) 5

Submitted by rifles only
rifles only writes: Firmware built into many solid state drives (SSDs) to improve their storage efficiency could be making forensic analysis at a later date by police forces and intelligence agencies almost impossible to carry out to legally safe standards, Australian researchers have discovered.

They found that SSDs start wiping themselves within minutes after a quick format (or a file delete or full format) and can even do so when disconnected from a PC and rigged up to a hardware blocker.

Comment Why didn't they do this before (Score 1) 2

by E5Rebel (#35313676) Attached to: LSE calls crisis meeting with market data vendors
Big implemenation, complex processes, why weren't they having meetings with their customers daily after teh switch over? Why weren't they running the new platform and the old one in tandem to have a fall back in case of problems. No doubt there will be fault on all sides, but one thing is certain. London's reputation as a financial powerhosue has taken another beating.
Facebook

Submission + - Lawyers Using Facebook Research for Jury Selection (wsj.com) 2

Submitted by unassimilatible
unassimilatible writes: The Wall Street Journal is reporting that trial lawyers are increasingly using social networking sites like Facebook to research jurors in real-time during the voir dire process. Armando Villalobos, the district attorney of Cameron County, Brownsville, Texas, last year equipped his prosecutors with iPads to scan the Web during jury selection. But what of the jurors who have their privacy settings restricted to "friends only?" Mr. Villalobos has thought of a potential workaround: granting members of the jury pool free access to the court's wi-fi network in exchange for temporarily "friending" his office. Faustian bargain, or another way to get out of jury duty?
Oracle

Submission + - Oracle's open source identity reborn at ForgeRock (internetnews.com)

Submitted by
darthcamaro
darthcamaro writes: "Oracle trashed a lot of former Sun technologies — not the least of which is Sun's open source identity platform which included OpenSSO and OpenDS. Now open source startup ForgeRock has taken those castoffs and created a business that has now been running successfully for year.

"My personal goal here is to prove that you can have an open source business that is profitable," Simon Phipps former chief open source officer and Sun and now chief strategy officer at ForgeRock said. "Having principles and having profit are not mutually exclusive."

"
Novell

Submission + - LSE price errors ‘emerged at Linux launch' (computerworlduk.com)

Submitted by DMandPenfold
DMandPenfold writes: Within the first 20 seconds of the London Stock Exchange’s new matching engine going live on Monday, price data vendors began displaying incorrect prices, blank prices and wrong trading volumes, according to Computerworld UK sources.

Thomson Reuters, Interactive Data and Netbuilder are among the largest data vendors, providing share prices to traders, that have been displaying pricing problems on some stocks throughout the week. Even the LSE’s own data vendor, ProQuote, experienced problems.

Concerns are being raised that there could be mistakenly setup connections or incorrect software interfaces at some of the large data vendors. Alternatively, there may be a data caching issue at the LSE that means data going out is not properly synchronised between different systems.

Comment Re:article omits very important point. (Score 2) 98

by E5Rebel (#35066464) Attached to: London Stock Exchange Was 'Under Major Cyberattack' During Linux Switch
No, the London Stock Exchange and the UK police are the ones who have clamped down on the info. They believe the LSE was under cyber attack and this occured during the shift from the .Net platform to the new LInux platform. The London Stock Exchange issued a set of contradictory statements at the time of the attack and about what was going on with migration to the new Linux platform. The LSE said the attack was suspicious and that they had called in the police. Every appropriate police force contacted by ComputerworldUK denied any knowledge of an investigation or of having been contacted by the Exchange. This sort of blanket denial usually only happens if the authorities believe there may be some terrorist aspect to the incident. ConputerworldUK tried to report what was happening and bring people up to speed with the attack and with the delayed move to the Linux-based platform. The story is not FUD, it is incomplete, but that is because answers to CWUK questions are being withheld. Mike Simons, CWUK editor
Security

Submission + - Police arrest five over Anonymous attacks (pcpro.co.uk)

Submitted by nk497
nk497 writes: Five people have been arrested in the UK, accused of taking part in Anonymous' DDOS attacks in support of WikiLeaks. The five men — aged from 15 to 26 — are still being held by police for questioning. Met Police said the investigation was a collaborative effort between forces in the UK, EU and the US.

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