Google Pulls Privacy Feature it Says Wasn’t Supposed to Be in Android in First Place

Google maintains that the unsupported feature can cause apps to crash.
pile_of_androids

House Proposes New Patent Troll Litigation Bill

More momentum against patent trolls.

Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and Others Call for More NSA Transparency

The alliance includes 63 companies, investors, non-profits and trade organizations.

High Stakes Issues

… fear of individual exposure when participating in political debates over high-stakes issues can dissuade people from taking part. That’s why the Supreme Court ruled in 1958 that membership lists of groups have strong First Amendment protection. Telephone records, especially complete records collected over many years, are even more invasive than membership lists, since they show casual or repeated inquiries as well as full membership.

Electronic Frontier Foundation legal director Cindy Cohn

Twitter’s Legal Blow in Occupy Case Will Make a Lot of Companies Nervous

The outcome of Twitter’s legal battle has implications for companies that compile private user information.

News Byte

San Francisco’s BART Subway Defends Protest-Stifling Cellphone Shutdown

Authorities said they shut down cellphone service on parts of San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit on Thursday night to stifle a planned protest on the subway system. A BART statement defended the move “as one of many tactics to ensure the safety of everyone on the platform.” The Electronic Frontier Foundation immediately described the move as a “Mubarak”; others noted the parallels with the United Kingdom’s proposal to limit phone and social media services in the wake of that country’s riots.

Exploring iStuff at CES With Mobilized (Video)

Apple may not have been in Vegas, but its legions of followers were. The maker of the Mac and iPhone prefers having the stage to itself, but an entire section of CES was devoted to iStuff. Mobilized toured the show floor and has a video report.

How Much Copyright Infringement Can You Cram Into a Single Tweet?

If you run a user-generated content site, takedown notices from copyright holders are a fact of life. That even goes for Twitter, where messages are limited to 140 characters of text. The site received on the order of 300 takedown notices in the last month.

Jennifer Granick, Lawyer to Hackers, Joins Zwillinger Genetski

San Francisco lawyer Jennifer Granick, until recently civil liberties director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is joining the Washington, D.C.-based law firm of Zwillinger Genetski. Granick gained a reputation as a lawyer willing to defend accused computer hackers.

Google Gets a Copyright Pro

High-profile technology attorney Fred von Lohmann is reportedly leaving the Electronic Frontier Foundation and heading to Google, where he’ll be the search giant’s new senior copyright counsel. In the intellectual property world, that’s a big deal.

Senate Passes "Eye of Sauron" Act

Richter Scales' Tom Shields Speaks!

Big Mother