Politics and Law

A federal judge on Thursday told Google it needs to hand over documentation about how it's searching for information it's required to provide as part of a lawsuit between Apple and Samsung.

Apple earlier this week had requested the court require Google to disclose its methodology, adding that the search giant was not doing "a full search" for documents related to its Android operating system, which Apple wants to use as evidence in its patent lawsuit against Samsung.

In a court order, U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul Grewal said that Google has two days to provide … Read more

Last month, Sen. Mark Udall and a handful of other privacy-focused politicians persuaded the IRS to promise to cease warrantless searches of Americans' private correspondence.

Now Udall, a Colorado Democrat, is taking aim at the Justice Department, which has claimed the right to conduct warrantless searches of Americans' e-mail, Facebook chats, and other private communications.

"I am extremely concerned that the Justice Department and FBI are justifying warrantless searches of Americans' electronic communications based on a loophole in an outdated law that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit ruled was unconstitutional," Udall said in … Read more

Online discount retailer Monoprice has apparently discontinued selling its top-rated home theater speakers shortly after being hit with a patent-infringement lawsuit.

In March, CNET reported on Monoprice, a darling of tech geeks for its cut-rate cables, noting that a handful of its new products were virtually identical to rival offerings.

Perhaps the most striking: Monoprice's 5.1 Hi-Fi Home Theater Satellite Speakers & Subwoofer system, which bears more than a passing resemblance to the Energy Take Classic 5.1 system, which CNET's Matt Moskovciak called "the best budget speaker system we've reviewed." Other than the … Read more

Gadget lovers rejoice. Commissioners on the Federal Communications Commission have high hopes for making Wi-Fi onboard airplanes more ubiquitous, cheaper, and faster.

On Thursday, the FCC voted to look into a proposal that would free up additional wireless spectrum for in-flight broadband use, a move that will likely increase availability and speed of in-flight Wi-Fi. And ultimately it could help lower prices for the service.

Currently, only about 4MHz of wireless spectrum is being used for the so-called ground-to-air service that enables some airlines to offer in-flight broadband. The way it works is that signals are transmitted from towers on … Read more

Billionaire investor and philanthropist Peter Thiel plans to announce Thursday the next group of 20 young men and women who will receive $100,000 each to work as tech entrepreneurs instead of spending that time on a college campus.

The group, dubbed the "20 Under 20" Thiel Fellows, is the third group of entrepreneurs the Thiel Foundation has funded. It includes Christopher Walker, who dropped out of college to form a software company, and Zach Hamed, a junior at Harvard who's leaving to work on education software.

Jonathan Cain, president of the Thiel Foundation, said in a … Read more

Syria is back online after an Internet outage cut it off from the rest of the online world on Tuesday.

Internet monitoring company Renesys updated its latest blog post on Wednesday, saying that "Syrian Internet has returned." The outage itself lasted 19.5 hours from Tuesday to Wednesday.

A new graph tweeted by content delivery network Akamai shows a huge spike in traffic to Syria, indicating that the Internet is flowing once again.

Syria Digital Reports earlier confirmed the news by tweeting that it received reports that Internet connectivity was returning.

This latest outage marks the third time … Read more

The U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI believe they don't need a search warrant to review Americans' e-mails, Facebook chats, Twitter direct messages, and other private files, internal documents reveal.

Government documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union and provided to CNET show a split over electronic privacy rights within the Obama administration, with Justice Department prosecutors and investigators privately insisting they're not legally required to obtain search warrants for e-mail. The IRS, on the other hand, publicly said last month that it would abandon a controversial policy that claimed it could get warrantless access … Read more

The iPhone could one day come with buttons and controls that blend right into the background, effectively making them invisible.

Granted to Apple on Tuesday by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, a patent dubbed "Disappearing button or slider" describes how various controls on the iPhone and other devices would normally stay hidden and fully appear only when needed.

A button would be made of the same material as the housing of the phone, so it would blend in seamlessly. But it could be selectively backlit through small holes to pinpoint its location, or the backlight itself … Read more

President Obama has picked Nicole Wong, Twitter's legal director, to be the White House's first chief privacy officer, CNET has learned.

Wong previously was a vice president and deputy general counsel at Google at its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters, where she managed a team of lawyers that worked with the company's engineers to review products before they launched. The reviews included privacy, copyright, and removal requests, which earned her a nickname of "The Decider" -- as recounted in a 2008 New York Times Magazine article.

A person familiar with the situation told CNET that the … Read more