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The LG Wine II was released a few months ago, but we did not have a chance to get a closer look at the phone until CTIA 2010. This overall design is not quite as shiny as its predecessor, the LG Wine, but it still has that basic flip phone form factor. It has a nice and colorful external screen, and the internal display is not too shabby, either. Like its predecessor, the keypad is very spacious with really big keys that are nicely domed for easy dialing and texting. The four shortcut keys have been moved from under the … Read more

Washingon's new U.S. Cyber Command is prepped and ready but is still waiting for Senate approval of its new commander before it can open for business.

The new command would unify and administer the U.S. Department of Defense's vast computer networks to better defend against cyberattacks. In June, Defense Secretary Robert Gates approved the creation of Cyber Command as a unified, sub-division of U.S. Strategic Command to operate the Defense Department's information resources of 15,000 computer networks across 4,000 military bases in 88 countries.

Cyber Command is seen within the Defense Department … Read more

CNET reporter Declan McCullagh talks about privacy concerns arising around U.S. Census-taking time, and why those fears might be heightened in 2010. That, and other headlines of the day, including the riskiest U.S. cities for cybercrime. See where your city ranks.

Today's stories:

Norton ranks riskiest cities for cybercrime

Amazon unveils Kindle app for iPad

Cheaper electric car rides on battery manufacturing

Group formed to sell consumers on smart grid

Census time heightens privacy concerns

SanDisk ships 32GB memory card for phones

Wiesenthal study details online hate, terror groups

DemoSpring: Where start-ups sprout

When a census worker visited Oliver Sarle's home in Warwick, R.I., the crusty farmer refused to answer a series of questions, including how much revenue his crops had generated the previous year and how many gallons of milk his cows had produced.

Sarle was charged with a misdemeanor: not answering questions posed by an official representative of the census. A Rhode Island judge sided with the government, ruling that the "information required by the statute to be collected must be assumed to be important and necessary for the public service."

The year was 1890, but the … Read more

A leaked U.S. Army intelligence report, classified as secret, says the Wikileaks Web site poses a significant "operational security and information security" threat to military operations.

Classified U.S. military information appearing on Wikileaks could "influence operations against the U.S. Army by a variety of domestic and foreign actors," says the report, prepared in 2008 by the Army Counterintelligence Center and apparently disclosed in its entirety on Monday.

The embarrassing twist: It was Wikileaks that published the 32-page document, but not before editor Julian Assange prepended a critique saying some details in the Army … Read more

Social-networking site, Classmates.com is once again accused of misleading consumers.

At a time when Classmates.com and parent company United Online are already mixed up in a congressional investigation, Classmates.com is attempting to settle a lawsuit that accuses the company of sending e-mails that duped users into believing the messages had come from old high school chums.

E-mail recipients only learned the truth after paying for upgrades to their membership, according to court documents. In a court filing, Classmates.com has agreed to pay $9.5 million to settle the suit but did not admit any wrongdoing. The … Read more

As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama was young, a technology fan, and appeared to be an establishment outsider. For those reasons some techies hoped he might be sympathetic to copyright reform.

Those hopes are fading fast as President Obama appears to have lined up on the side of copyright owners. In a speech at the Export-Import Bank's annual conference in Washington, D.C., President Obama told attendees Thursday that his administration is firmly behind producers of creative works.

"We're going to aggressively protect our intellectual property," Obama said. "Our single greatest asset is the innovation and the ingenuity and creativity of the American people...It is essential to our prosperity and it will only become more so in this century. But it's only a competitive advantage if our companies know that someone else can't just steal that idea and duplicate it with cheaper inputs and labor."

The president's comments come as his administration continues to revitalize an improving but still ailing U.S. economy. They echo statements made often by leaders in the U.S. film, music, video game, and software industries. For a while these sectors have claimed piracy and Internet file sharing mean the loss of U.S. jobs and poison the economy. Critics say that the job losses are more due to poor business decisions made by the studios and music labels. … Read more

Sadly, the U.S. is often behind the times when it comes to handsets and mobile technology. Our European and Asian brethren usually get first dibs on all the cool gear, and sometimes, we won't even see it at all. Sure, we can get some of the fancier Sony Ericsson and HTC phones unlocked, but few U.S. carriers actually pick them up. Still, some of the phones do support U.S. bands, so that's an upside. Take a look at our slideshow of phones you can't get from a U.S. carrier to drool over and … Read more

If the Samsung Trill looks familiar, we don't blame you. It is almost the spitting image of the Samsung Trance from Verizon Wireless, except for the navigation keys. The Trill is also from U.S. Cellular, so it won't benefit from the Verizon V Cast Music service. Still, it's a pretty good music phone thanks to its affiliation with Bang & Olufsen. It has 3D surround sound technology and we have to say, it offers good music for a relatively simple phone. It also has a 3.5mm headset jack, stereo Bluetooth, and a 1.3-megapixel camera. … Read more