Legal Issues

AUSTIN, Texas--Representatives from opposite sides in the "big data" privacy debate tangled Sunday over whether a proposed White House "privacy bill of rights" is necessary to keep Americans safe online.

During a "big data" panel sponsored by CNET at South by Southwest, Berin Szoka, president of the non-partisan, non-profit, tech policy think tank TechFreedom, argued that states and the federal government might have better results providing privacy protections for Americans by enforcing existing laws than they would if they adopted new regulations.

"We have a difference of opinion of when government should get … Read more

Want to play god much?

With Nukemap, a new tool that lets anyone test out--on a Google Map--the effects of some of history's most famous nuclear explosions on cities around the world, you can.

Say you're inclined to see just how bad the destruction would be in London if "Fat Man," the second A-bomb dropped on Japan by the Americans during World War II, detonated there. Nukemap lays it all out for you.

Nukemap lets you choose from a long list of cities to experiment with--or drag the map's marker wherever you want--and then choose either a custom yield in kilotons, or one of a list of famous bombs. When you click the "detonate" button, you quickly see a map with a series of colored circles that show the radii of the fireball, the air blast, the spread of radiation, and the spread of thermal radiation. … Read more

Coming soon to an iPhone or iPad app near you: simple and easy person-to-person voice chatting. No carrier required.

While Apple has made iMessage a staple of iOS communications, it's not behind this new development. Rather, it's Twilio, a San Francisco startup that has become a major player in the cloud communication space by giving everyone from small app developers to large corporations an inexpensive and efficient way to integrate voice communications.

Now, with the release of its software development kit today, Twilio is giving iOS app developers the same voice over IP (VoIP) tools. And while those … Read more

Mars enthusiasts hoping the United States will soon be exploring the Red Planet will likely get some bad news next week.

According to The Washington Post, President Obama's next budget will slash funding for Mars and Jupiter rovers by as much as 20 percent. The budget is expected to be unveiled on Monday.

The Post reported that the Obama Administration has briefed scientists on its proposed budget, which would slash funding for NASA's Mars program from $1.5 billion to $1.2 billion annually. And further cuts are proposed over the following four years.

The cuts are likely … Read more

The popular photo sharing service Path is deep in the weeds today after a blogger revealed that the company's app automatically uploads iPhone users' entire address books to its servers.

In a blog post, a developer named Arun Thampi said that he discovered that his "entire address book (including full names, emails, and phone numbers) was being sent...to Path." And while he also wrote that he wasn't accusing Path of doing anything "nefarious," he noted that the service had never asked for his permission to upload something as sensitive as his contacts.

In … Read more

Oakland city officials, meet Anonymous.

In response to what it claims is a series of community-busting moves by the California city's leaders and police, such as Occupy Oakland-related arrests and crackdowns, budget cutting and school, park, and library closings unaccompanied by City Hall salary cuts, the hacktivist group today released a document containing personal data on a number of officials.

"Anonymous has been watching," the group wrote on Facebook. "Since the inception of Occupy Oakland, we have been actively monitoring your behavior and exposing the identities and sensitive information of Officers of the Oakland Police Department; … Read more

U.S. chief technology officer Aneesh Chopra is leaving his post at the White House.

Chopra, who was sworn in on May 22, 2009, works closely with U.S. Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra. Prior to taking his position in the Obama administration, Chopra was Virginia's Secretary of Technology. In the White House, according to his official bio, his job included "fostering new ideas and encouraging government-wide coordination to help the country meet its goals from job creation, to reducing health care costs, to protecting the homeland."

News of his impending departure was first reported by Fedscoop. (… Read more

For nearly three years, "Star Wars" fans everywhere have been coming up with their own takes on the beloved film's many famous scenes--15 seconds at a time.

This is "Star Wars Uncut," a project to remake George Lucas' 1977 classic, entirely from fan-made scenes. And while the in-progress results have been available all along for all to see, the project's developers had never publicly released their finished product. Until now.

Today, as Laughing Squid wrote, Casey Pugh, who conceived of the "Star Wars Uncut" project, finally released his director's cut of … Read more

If you're active on Twitter, it's almost impossible to imagine that you got through today without being bombarded by mentions of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) or the Protect IP Act (PIPA), two controversial antipiracy bills under consideration in Congress.

But with today being the day that Web sites like Wikipedia, BoingBoing, Reddit, and many others went dark--not to mention Google and others that featured less drastic forms of anti-legislation protest--it was striking to see just how much issue dominated the conversation on Twitter.

On Tuesday, for example, there were approximately 106,500 mentions of the term &… Read more