Hasta La Gadget!

Woo, boy. You know those National Security Letters that the FBI has been issuing at its own discretion — the ones Google has been doing its best to track? Judge Susan Illston of Federal District Court in San Francisco just found ’em unconstitutional. As the story goes, NSLs arrive from the factory with a gag order on the recipient, and as Illston sees it, forbidding the recipient from “disclosing that they had received such an order.” So, she’s suggesting that the whole thing should be banned under the First Amendment.

Moreover, she’s ordering the US government to stop enforcing the gag provision in any lingering cases, though she reportedly “stayed her order for 90 days to give the government a chance to appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.” Needless to say, the move comes as a blow to the existing administration’s surveillance practices, but something tells us this isn’t the last word we’ll be hearing on the matter. Hit up the links below for a look at the decision.

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Via: The New York Times

Source: Wired

There have been an onslaught of trade secret thefts and espionage strikes that have affected many U.S. corporations, including General Motors, Ford, DuPont, Dow Chemical and Cargill, as well as many media news outlet including The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg news. All of the attacks seem to be originating from one area in China, and that’s the HQ for the People’s Liberation Army Unit 61398.

The White House said that the trade secret thefts “threatens American businesses, undermines national security and places the security of the U.S. economy in Jeopardy.” According to Mandiant, a U.S. security firm, there is strong evidence that support that these attacks were coming straight from Chinese hacker groups that have links to the Chinese government. Mandiant’s collected evidence amounts to a 60-page report.

The White House released a report that listed a dozen cases of trade secret theft by Chinese companies and individuals, which is a lot more than any of the other countries mentioned. They stated that “the pace of economic espionage and trade secret theft against the U.S. corporations are accelerating.” The new strategy that the White House will implement “coordinates and improves existing U.S. government efforts to protect the innovation that drive the American economy of cyber assaults”.

U.S. Trade Representative, Ron Kirk, made a statement on the cyber attacks, saying, “For an economy like ours, that’s going to win based on our innovation of what we produce and create, this is a critically important issue.” Many of the affected companies have moved their corporate operations back to U.S. soil, in which Kirk says, “If you’re going to take our core technology, then we’re better off being in our home country.”

[via Reuters]

U.S. to implement strategy against China trade secret theft is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

This week the French government has released a report that proposes an internet tax to make up for the supposed lost revenue the web is making a reality with online businesses such as Amazon and social networks like Facebook. The proposed tax would not be on products sold, but on the collection of personal data, which they feel is something they’re entitled to earn with. President François Hollande’s report speaks of what the French government sees as tax avoidance by major internet companies who collect what France sees as the “raw material of the digital economy.”

This report was published this past Friday, speaking on how the French government’s view here is that people using services like Google and Facebook are more like employees than patrons. The report suggests that in collecting personal information from French citizens and in turn using that information to push precisely located advertisements, citizens are in effect working for the companies – this would require taxation by the government, of course. Sound reasonable to you thus far?

According to the New York Times, digital economy minister Fleur Pellerin spoke up to the press in Paris, saying “we want to work to ensure that Europe is not a tax haven for a certain number of Internet giants.” Google also spoke up in a statement, assuring the public that they were indeed having a look and reviewing the report at hand: “the Internet offers huge opportunities for economic growth and employment in Europe, and we believe public policies should encourage that growth.”

The taxes proposed have not been detailed in full at the moment, but it has been claimed by the government entities that suggested it that legislation to make this tax a law could be introduced by the end of 2013. The predecessor to the current President, miser Nicolas Sarkozy, proposed a levy on internet advertising during his term of office. This levy failed due to French companies complaining that such a measure would affect them more than it would giant companies like Google.

French internet tax proposed for American companies is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

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