Politics and Law

In a further attempt to ease national security concerns over its proposed acquisition of Sprint, Japan-based SoftBank has agreed to give the U.S. government the right to approve one of the members SoftBank would appoint to Sprint's board of directors, according to a report.

The U.S.-approved board member would make sure a SoftBank-owned Sprint honored whatever security agreement is hammered out with U.S. regulators, The Wall Street Journal reported late Wednesday, citing unnamed sources.

Regulators are also seeking oversight of Sprint's network equipment purchases to prevent gear from Chinese suppliers Huawei Technologies and ZTE … Read more

Twitter has won a new patent that it hopes to use as an example to stem the tide of patent lawsuits.

Granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office today, the patent named "User interface mechanics" refers to a way of refreshing the screen by pulling it down, a feature found in Twitter's mobile app as well as a host of other apps for smartphones and tablets.

In this case, though, the patent itself may be less important than the way it which Twitter plans to use it.

Under a new assignment known as the Innovator's Patent Agreement, … Read more

SAN JOSE -- The Winklevoss twins, who transformed a lucrative Facebook payout into a venture capital fund, say it's now time for Bitcoin companies to work with governments rather than against them.

Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the twin Harvard graduates famously portrayed in the 2010 film "The Social Network," showed up at the Bitcoin 2013 conference to talk up the future of what is the Internet's favorite alternative currency -- as long as it escapes a government crackdown.

"I don't think anyone wants a fight -- I think everyone here wants to build Bitcoin, … Read more

In yet another recent example of Apple's increasing role in Washington politics, CEO Tim Cook reportedly plans to propose a "dramatic simplification" of corporate tax laws before Congress next week -- and is taking to the D.C. press to argue his case.

At a hearing on May 21 before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation, which CNET learned about last night, Cook says he will present proposals aimed at "encouraging companies to bring back foreign earnings to the United States and invest that money into creating jobs, as well as research and development," according … Read more

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder supports privacy changes that would require the government to seek a warrant based on probable cause to obtain cloud-stored e-mail, and other documents and files stored in the cloud.

"But the more general notion of having a warrant to obtain the content of communications from a service provider is something that we support," Holder added, noting that citizen privacy and the government's ability to access such data is "one of the most important conversations" to be had in this day and age.

He stated that there were "very … Read more

A single iPhone may not provide enough light to shoot a dark scene. But a handful of them remotely controlled might just do the trick. At least, that's the idea behind a patent filed by Apple.

Published today by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, a patent application dubbed simply "Illumination system" describes a method whereby multiple iPhones or other mobile devices team up to act as camera flashes. The primary device could be a camera or a smartphone. The secondary devices could be smartphones, tablets, or other gadgets with their own built-in flash or a … Read more

Update: Syrian Internet access has been restored as of about 8:30 a.m. PT. Full story here.

Syria has again been cut off from the rest of the online world.

Internet access for the battle-torn country has been down since Wednesday, 7:01 UTC (12:01 a.m. PDT), according to an update from Internet monitoring firm Renesys. A tweet from Renesys says that BGP (border gateway patrol) is down, inbound traceroutes are failing, and DNS severs and government Web sites are down.

A tweet from the state-run Syrian news agency says that workers are trying to fix the problem … Read more

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security confirmed it has initiated legal action that prompted the Dwolla payment service to stop processing bitcoin transactions.

Nicole Navas, a representative for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, confirmed the legal action to CNET this afternoon.

Dwolla, a Des Moines, Iowa-based startup, which raised $16.5 million in funding two weeks ago, notified users about the move earlier Tuesday. It blamed the decision on "recent court orders" limiting its ability to send money through Mt. Gox, the largest bitcoin exchange.

"In order not to compromise this ongoing investigation being conducted … Read more

Six months after wireline telephone operators and trade groups asked the Federal Communications Commission for permission to begin shutting down their aging switched networks, the agency responded late Friday, calling for further study.

In a public notice (PDF) issued by an agency task force created in December 2012, the FCC reiterated the importance of accelerating the transition from switched networks to native IP infrastructure. But rather than approving limited trials to test technical and regulatory obstacles to a full conversion, the agency instead raised more questions about the trials and called for more rounds of comments.

The task force also … Read more