Tag Archives: us

Net Neutrality has won as the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has voted in favor of reclassifying the Internet as a Title II public utility, preserving Net Neutrality. More than four million people wrote in to the FCC to try and persuade them to preserve Net Neutrality and even President …

CITIZENFOUR, the recently premiered documentary by Laura Poitras about the beginning of the Edward Snowden NSA revelations, has won an Oscar for “Best Documentary” at this year's Academy Awards ceremony. The film shows Snowden's efforts to expose the gross abuses of the US government's National Security Agency, along with the help of Laura Poitras …

Currently, government agencies and local police forces in the US, are only able to obtain permission to hack into the computers and other electronic devices of suspects in their region and only then once they have a warrant. However, now the FBI and other organisations want to expand that power …

In a rare opportunity, thanks to the United States Marshals Service and Ross Ulbricht of Silk Road fame, you are now able to bid on 50,000 seized Bitcoins. These Bitcoins are currently worth around £7.7 million (or $11.9 million USD) and were seized from Ulbricht when the feds snatched his laptop away from him in a San …

In a move to help protect American online businesses and help them coordinate with US authorities, Obama has signed an executive order that will make federal agencies set up a way of sharing data between technicians in these businesses and federal agents. This information sharing will go both ways, with companies tipping …

While many of us have no problem paying Netflix its monthly subscription fee, if you were on the average Cuban monthly wage of around $25 per month, you would be pretty shocked to hear that the streaming video service will soon be launching in Cuba from $7.99 per month! Not only does the Cuban …

Its been a long time coming but RadioShack, which opened its doors in 1921, has now filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the US and it will be selling off more than half of its stores to cover debts. Standard General is set to purchase up to 2,400 stores, with the remaining 1,750 …

Last Monday a small civilian drone crashed into the grounds of the White House, causing quite a stir over exactly how secure the White House actually is against drone attacks. It has now been revealed that the drone in question, a DJI Phantom quadrocopter, was actually being flown by an …

Those of you who own an LG G3 smartphone in the US and have been waiting patiently for Android 5.0 Lollipop to start rolling out may not need to wait much longer as the company has promised that the software update is ‘coming soon'. The company teased the update on …

Microsoft and Intel have placed in the top two spots for the Environmental Protection Agency's annual Green Power use ranking, both using clean energy sources for 100% of their power needs. This is all the more impressive when you see that combined, they use almost 5,600,000,000 kWh of electricity per year. …

The Interview has been a real success in many ways. Along with marking a stand – after a nudge from Mr Obama – against threats of violence, its digital release has shown that making a film available online for people to stream at home along with its cinema release, actually …

Part of the reason the US was so confident in accusing North Korea of being behind last year's attack against Sony, was because it had been invading the nation's computers since 2010, in an attempt to map out the rogue-state's digital defences and capabilities. Not enough was discovered that it …

Chairman Tom Wheeler of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has confirmed during a CES speech, that the voting on the open Internet order will go ahead on the 26th of February. He also all but confirmed that internet service providers (ISPs) will be reclassified as common carriers under Title II provisions in the Communications Act. This would …

Today, Microsoft is set to gain two more allies in its defense against the United States government, in an ongoing court case regarding a US warrant for customer data that is being stored in servers in Ireland. Both the Irish government and an European MEP, have now filed amicus briefs in support of the stance …

North Korea's internet went down last night, only returning online in a limited capacity early this morning. While the NK authorities have yet to report on the downing, at least internationally, the story was picked up by US news sources fairly quickly, prompting some to suggest that it may have …

U.S. trade embargoes have meant that, as the internet as we know it began to take shape, Cuba was left behind. With no access to the Internet at all until 1996 and only very limited, slow and censored access at present, things are about to change in a big way for the …

The MPAA and National Association of Theater Owners have officially banned Google Glass from US based cinemas due to piracy fears. Those wanting to go to the movies will need to take their smart glasses off as even though the internal space on the device is small, it can still …

You know what the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and its contemporaries like the MPAA are fed up with? Their human rights being infringed upon. No, not because organisations like theirs are clamping down on freedom of expression by restricting access to information, but because those dastardly pirate sites are …

Remember SOPA, PIPA and ACTA? Those copyright enforcing, internet freedom restricting bills were set to be pushed through by governments around the world just a few short years ago, but the internet rose up like an angry swarm and swatted them aside. Unfortunately, the clear distaste the world has for these …

Since we now live in a world dominated by digital distribution, especially in the case of music and games, it's great to see many different developers and publishers releasing their games worldwide at the same time, so everyone can enjoy them together no matter where they live. However Nintendo doesn't …

Hyrule Warriors, one of the Wii U's most anticipated titles of the second half of this year, released in the US this weekend after a reasonably successful EU launch the week before. However with the American debut, 500 copies of a limited edition version of the game were put up …

Google has announced that it is distancing itself from a US based lobby group known as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which the search giant claims has lied about climate change in order to further its own agenda in politics. ALEC describes itself as a group that hopes to: …

It looks like Microsoft is fighting to keep customer and user information safe as the company is refusing to yield to a warrant granting US authorities access to email accounts, stating that the US has no power over its customers in foreign countries. This fight started off back in April when …

Even though evidence is mounting of regular attacks on US, European and UK businesses and government offices, Britain's National Crime Agency (NCA) has been meeting with representatives of China's liberation army to encourage communication between the two countries on digital security. The most recent hacking scandal to make headlines saw …

Another US firm has stepped forward to condemn China's military for its digital attacks on US companies. This time CrowdStrike, a technology security firm is accusing China's unit 61486 of the People's Liberation Army of attacking networks of companies and organisations in the US and other Western nations for the past …

The United States' Department of Justice (DOJ) recently tried to extend its right to hold on to harvested metadata on US and foreign nationals from five years, to forever, citing reasons such as defending against government lawsuits and requiring evidence gathered by its snooping schemes. However, to the surprise of …

Despite all the negative attention that the privacy destroying revelations surrounding the NSA's PRISM scheme has brought to the US and the huge fallout because of that in the US technology sector, the government is continuing to extend its tentacles around the world and is getting local governments to force …

Last week a federal court took a hammer to the FCC's net neutrality laws and demolished them, essentially making it possible for ISP's to impede on network traffic, which is bad news for services like Netflix since now US based providers can throttle the user experience by slowing down video …

It was back in November that we first started to hear details of the SOPA like, US trade agreement known as the Trans Pacific Patnership, that would impose big limits of personal privacy, see worldwide draconian crackdowns on software and media piracy and potentially stop life saving drugs from being …

While companies like Lavabit have fearless leaders that are willing to shutdown their long term businesses to protect their customers, governments seem less and less willing to do the right thing for their people. According to a few New Zealand journalists, the Dotcom spying case involved not only the country's …