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April 3, 2024

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EU Privacy Regulators Give EU, US 3 Months to Find New Data Pact

by onkar
written by onkar

Companies could face action from European privacy regulators if the European Commission and United States do not come up with a new system enabling them to shuffle data across the Atlantic in three months, the regulators said on Friday.

The highest EU court last week struck down a system known as Safe Harbour used by over 4,000 firms to transfer personal data to the United States, leaving companies without alternatives scrambling to put new legal measures in place to ensure everyday business could continue.

Under EU data protection law, companies cannot transfer EU citizens’ personal data to countries outside the EU deemed to have insufficient privacy safeguards, of which the United States is one.

EU data protection authorities meeting in Brussels to assess the implications of the ruling, said in a statement that they would assess the impact of the judgement on other data transfer systems, such as binding corporate rules and model clauses between companies.

“If by the end of January 2016, no appropriate solution is found with the US authorities and depending on the assessment of the transfer tools by the Working Party, EU data protection authorities are committed to take all necessary and appropriate actions, which may include coordinated enforcement actions,” the watchdogs said in a statement.

The Commission and the United States have been in talks for two years to reform Safe Harbour after former US National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden revealed the existence of mass US government surveillance programmes.

Talks have been hampered by the difficulty of extracting sufficient guarantees that US authorities’ access to personal data would be limited and proportionate.

The regulators said in their statement the EU and the United States should negotiate an “intergovernmental agreement” providing stronger privacy guarantees to EU citizens, including oversight on government access to data and legal redress mechanisms.

Multinationals can set up internal privacy rules which have to be approved by regulators to transfer data to the United States, known as binding corporate rules. However, only about 70 companies currently use this system.

Lawyers have said alternative data transfer systems could also be at risk to legal challenge since they do not provide stronger protection against US government snooping than Safe Harbour did.

“The good news is that the European data protection authorities have agreed on a kind of grace period until the end of January,” said Monika Kuschewsky, a lawyer at Covington & Burling.

[“source-gadgets.ndtv”]

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Google Book-Scanning Project Legal, Says US Appeals Court

by onkar
written by onkar
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A US appeals court ruled on Friday that Google’s massive effort to scan millions of books for an online library does not violate copyright law, rejecting claims from a group of authors that the project illegally deprives them of revenue.

The 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in New York rejected infringement claims from the Authors Guild and several individual writers, and found that the project provides a public service without violating intellectual property law.

The authors sued Google, whose parent company is now named Alphabet Inc , in 2005, a year after the project was launched.

But Google argued that the effort would actually boost book sales by making it easier for readers to find works, while introducing them to books they might not otherwise have seen.

A lawyer for the authors did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Google had said it could face billions of dollars in potential damages if the authors prevailed.

Circuit Judge Denny Chin, who oversaw the case at the lower court level, dismissed the litigation in 2013, prompting the authors’ appeal.

Chin found Google’s scanning of tens of millions of books and posting “snippets” online constituted “fair use” under US copyright law.

A unanimous three-judge appeals panel said the case “tests the boundaries of fair use,” but found Google’s practices were ultimately allowed under the law.

“Google’s division of the page into tiny snippets is designed to show the searcher just enough context surrounding the searched term to help her evaluate whether the book falls within the scope of her interest (without revealing so much as to threaten the author’s copyright interests),” Circuit Judge Pierre Leval wrote for the court.

In a statement, Google spokesman Aaron Stein said the project is like a “card catalogue for the digital age.”

“Today’s decision underlines what people who use the service tell us: Google Books gives them a useful and easy way to find books they want to read and buy, while at the same time benefiting copyright holders,” he said.

The individual plaintiffs who filed the proposed class action against Google included former New York Yankees pitcher Jim Bouton, who wrote the acclaimed memoir, “Ball Four.”

The 2nd Circuit had previously rejected a similar lawsuit from the Authors Guild in June 2014 against a consortium of universities and research libraries that built a searchable online database of millions of scanned works.

[“source-gadgets.ndtv”]

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Internet

Top 10 YouTube Creators Made $54 Million in 2015: Forbes

by onkar
written by onkar

Zomato has confirmed that it is in the process of laying off staff from its content team – the team that gathers restaurant information on the ground – and will have to let go of approximately 300 employees in the course of the next week or two. The news was first reported by TechCrunch, and has been independently confirmed by Gadgets 360.

A Zomato spokesperson told Gadgets 360 that the current model – where the company uses on-ground staff to collect menus and other information – used by the company is being reviewed, and is not a good fit for the US, where the company expanded through its acquisition of Urbanspoon.

(Also see: Urbanspoon Acquisition Wasn’t Planned, Says Zomato Co-Founder)

As a result of this acquisition, the US became Zomato’s biggest market, but the expansion has not been without issues. A Zomato spokesperson explained to Gadgets 360 that some of the company’s processes were not a good fit for the US market, which actually echoes something that Zomato’s CEO Deepinder Goyal had said some years before the company sealed the Urbanspoon acquisition: “If I expand to the USA, it won’t be to offer menus, because you can already get that information online, so I would be looking for some other value-add,” he had said at the time.

“The US is actually a very mature market, and a lot of the information that we gather with our feet on the street is something that is already available online,” a Zomato spokesperson told Gadgets 360 on Friday. A part of the layoffs that are happening in the US are taking place because of this reason, as thefeet on the street approach isn’t required there.

The spokesperson confirmed that the layoffs will take place mostly in the US, because of the sheer number of restaurants there. “There are 70,000 restaurants in India, and 7 lakh there,” the spokesperson said, adding that while there could be some layoffs in India as well, the impact would be minimal.

In a blog post addressing the matter, Goyal pointed out that 40 percent of the restaurants listed on the site account for 92 percent of traffic. This means that a lot of the data collected isn’t even relevant to the success of the site, and by focusing its on-ground presence on the 40 percent the company can reduce its expenditure without losing out in other ways.

“We are going to have to make important changes to our business and make sure we put every dollar and every Zoman [Zomato employee] behind the things that matter the most,” Goyal wrote. This will be accomplished by pushing the Zomato Business app for restaurant owners, who can input and update their information without a content team.

“The countries we entered in the recent past have not been working with our existing model of collecting content and building community relations,” he added. “Alternate models will need to be identified and implemented. We have a few ideas we will be piloting in a select few regions right away.”

In the post, Goyal talks about full stack markets, where Zomato is a market leader and can offer its entire range of services, from content, to ad sales, to bookings and ordering. These full stack regions are India, the Middle East, South East Asia (the Philippines and Indonesia), and ANZ (Australia and New Zealand).

In other markets, Goyal writes, Zomato will not look to ad sales, but will focus on its table reservation engine, with less focus on on-the-ground community.

[“source-gadgets.ndtv”]

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Internet

Zomato to Lay Off 300 Employees, Mostly in the US

by onkar
written by onkar

Zomato has confirmed that it is in the process of laying off staff from its content team – the team that gathers restaurant information on the ground – and will have to let go of approximately 300 employees in the course of the next week or two. The news was first reported by TechCrunch, and has been independently confirmed by Gadgets 360.

A Zomato spokesperson told Gadgets 360 that the current model – where the company uses on-ground staff to collect menus and other information – used by the company is being reviewed, and is not a good fit for the US, where the company expanded through its acquisition of Urbanspoon.

(Also see: Urbanspoon Acquisition Wasn’t Planned, Says Zomato Co-Founder)

As a result of this acquisition, the US became Zomato’s biggest market, but the expansion has not been without issues. A Zomato spokesperson explained to Gadgets 360 that some of the company’s processes were not a good fit for the US market, which actually echoes something that Zomato’s CEO Deepinder Goyal had said some years before the company sealed the Urbanspoon acquisition: “If I expand to the USA, it won’t be to offer menus, because you can already get that information online, so I would be looking for some other value-add,” he had said at the time.

“The US is actually a very mature market, and a lot of the information that we gather with our feet on the street is something that is already available online,” a Zomato spokesperson told Gadgets 360 on Friday. A part of the layoffs that are happening in the US are taking place because of this reason, as thefeet on the street approach isn’t required there.

The spokesperson confirmed that the layoffs will take place mostly in the US, because of the sheer number of restaurants there. “There are 70,000 restaurants in India, and 7 lakh there,” the spokesperson said, adding that while there could be some layoffs in India as well, the impact would be minimal.

In a blog post addressing the matter, Goyal pointed out that 40 percent of the restaurants listed on the site account for 92 percent of traffic. This means that a lot of the data collected isn’t even relevant to the success of the site, and by focusing its on-ground presence on the 40 percent the company can reduce its expenditure without losing out in other ways.

“We are going to have to make important changes to our business and make sure we put every dollar and every Zoman [Zomato employee] behind the things that matter the most,” Goyal wrote. This will be accomplished by pushing the Zomato Business app for restaurant owners, who can input and update their information without a content team.

“The countries we entered in the recent past have not been working with our existing model of collecting content and building community relations,” he added. “Alternate models will need to be identified and implemented. We have a few ideas we will be piloting in a select few regions right away.”

In the post, Goyal talks about full stack markets, where Zomato is a market leader and can offer its entire range of services, from content, to ad sales, to bookings and ordering. These full stack regions are India, the Middle East, South East Asia (the Philippines and Indonesia), and ANZ (Australia and New Zealand).

In other markets, Goyal writes, Zomato will not look to ad sales, but will focus on its table reservation engine, with less focus on on-the-ground community.

[“source-gadgets.ndtv”]

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Internet

Digital India Backs RTI, Says Prime Minister Narendra Modi

by onkar
written by onkar

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said the Digital India initiative was complementary to the RTI – a tool through which the common man gets the right to question those in power.

“RTI (Right to Information) is a tool through which the common man has got not only the right to know but also the right to question those in power… It has become a tool for good governance,” he said in a statement here.

Describing the government’s Digital India initiative as complementary to the RTI, he said: “Putting information online brings transparency, which in turn, builds trust.”

In his remarks made at the 10th Annual Convention of the Central Information Commission, Modi mentioned the auction of coal blocks as well as spectrum and FM radio licenses, and said information should be given out pro-actively to people.

Calling an end to the “silo-approach” in government, he said: “Administrative processes should be run based on trusting people, rather than doubting people.”

In the meanwhile, Ankit Fadia, one of the brand ambassadors for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Digital India” campaign, responded to controversy surrounding his appointment to the post. The 30-year-old ethical hacker believes that it is not possible to be successful without having critics who dislike you.

“Critics will always remain. I prefer to let my work speak for itself. I love what I do and I will continue my work,” Fadia, 30, told IANS during an interaction on the sidelines of a promotional tour for his newly-launched books.

[“source-gadgets.ndtv”]

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US Justice Department Expands Anti-Cybercrime Reach Into Southeast Asia

by onkar
written by onkar

The Justice Department is broadening its overseas efforts against cybercrime, for the first time stationing a legal adviser in Malaysia to help ensure that Southeast Asian countries have the laws and tools to fight hackers.

The position is intended to shore up international partnerships against a type of crime that’s without geographic borders and is often carried out by overseas hackers who elude American prosecution.

Officials say they see stronger foreign cybercrime laws as essential if other countries hope to address the problem, especially given the obstacles US officials often face in locating, extraditing and convicting overseas hackers.

The post is funded by the State Department and lasts for a year, though Justice Department officials hope to expand the initiative to other parts of the world if it proves successful.

“It’s a region of the world where there’s a high level of sophistication with technology” where cyber criminals can set up “and prey on others in the world,” Assistant Attorney General Leslie Caldwell, head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, said in an interview with The Associated Press. She was scheduled to discuss the move in a speech Friday in Rhode Island.

On Thursday, the Justice Department said Malaysian authorities had detained a citizen of Kosovo on a US provisional arrest warrant. The man is alleged to have provided material support to the Islamic State group and committed computer hacking and identity theft violations in conjunction with the theft and release of personally identifiable information of US service members and federal employees.

The new Justice Department post in Malaysia is occupied by Thomas Dougherty, who spent years as a Justice Department computer crimes prosecutor. He already has met with officials from Vietnam to discuss potential improvements to that country’s penal code and has reviewed cases with Malaysian officials.

He’ll also be a point of contact for coordinating training on cyber investigations and prosecutions and a resource for questions about the use of electronic evidence and other topics, State Department officials said.

The new position is an acknowledgement that encouraging foreign countries to arrest hackers within their own borders can be a more efficient strategy than hauling them into US courts. But US officials say they’ll continue seeking extradition of those captured overseas, and that improving laws in foreign countries is part of that process.

Caldwell called it “a two-way street” because US extradition laws require that the laws be similar in the country that’s extraditing a suspect.

The initiative is similar to one undertaken by the FBI, which for several years has stationed specialized cyber agents at some of the 64 legal attache offices the bureau maintains around the world.

The FBI has permanent agents in seven countries, including Estonia, Romania, Australia and Canada. It has temporary positions in 12 countries, said Gerald Bessette, an FBI cyber section chief.

“Every country has different legal investigative structures,” Bessette said. “So we want to know who our partners are if we have an investigation where we’re going to ask a foreign country to take legal action” such as seizing a computer server that’s being used to commit crimes.

He said those partnerships paid off in an investigation last year into sophisticated malware known as BlackShades that infected more than a half-million computers worldwide and that permittedcybercriminals to remotely hijack a computer and its webcam. Federal authorities charged about 100 people and police throughout Europe were involved in coordinating arrests.

Shawn Henry, a former FBI executive assistant director, said good relationships are crucial because the FBI generally can’t work an international case successfully without a host government’s cooperation.

“I don’t care who arrests them, as long as they’re bad guys and off the playing field,” said Henry, president of CrowdStrike Services, a security technology company. “If a foreign government can arrest them and charge them successfully, I’m happy.”

[“source-gadgets.ndtv”]

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Internet

Russian Hackers Breached Dow Jones For Trading Tips: Report

by onkar
written by onkar
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Russian hackers had infiltrated Dow Jones & Co to steal information to trade on before it was made public, and the breach was “far more serious than a lower-grade intrusion” disclosed by the company, Bloomberg reported, citing sources.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, Secret Service and the Securities and Exchange Commission are leading an investigation, which began at least a year ago, Bloomberg reported.

“Since Bloomberg published its article, we have worked hard to establish whether the allegations it contains are correct. To date, we have been unable to find evidence of any such investigation”, Dow Jones spokeswoman Colleen Schwartz said in an email.

Dow Jones, the publisher of the Wall Street Journal and a unit of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, disclosed last week a breach of its systems that put payment card and contact information of about 3,500 individuals at risk.

Dow Jones had said that there was unauthorized access to its systems at certain times between August 2012 and July 2015.

“We are aware of the Dow Jones intrusion and looking into it,” FBI spokeswoman Kelly Langmesser said via email.

Langmesser added that she could not confirm anything else in the Bloomberg report.

The hackers sought information including stories being prepared for publication, Bloomberg said on Friday, citing two people familiar with the investigation.

The Secret Service could not be immediately reached for comment on the Bloomberg report. The SEC declined to comment.

[“source-gadgets.ndtv”]

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Internet

Sweden on Track to Becoming First Cashless Nation

by onkar
written by onkar

With widespread use of information technology and rapid decline in cash transactions, Sweden is on its way to becoming the world’s first cashless society, says a new study.

The widespread and growing popularity of the mobile payment system Swish is helping hasten the day when Sweden replaces cash altogether, said researcher Niklas Arvidsson, industrial technology and management researcher at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.

“Cash is still an important means of payment in many countries’ markets, but that no longer applies here in Sweden,” Arvidsson said in a statement released by the institute recently.

“Our use of cash is small, and it is decreasing rapidly,” Arvidsson noted.

In a country where bank cards are routinely used for even the smallest purchases, there are less than 80 billion Swedish Krona (SEK) in circulation (about EUR 8 billion), a sharp decline from just six years ago, when the total in circulation was SEK106 billion.

“And out of that amount, only somewhere between 40 and 60 percent is actually in regular circulation,” he said.

The rest is socked away in people’s homes and bank deposit boxes, or can be found circulating in the underground economy, the study said.

The result of collaboration between major Swedish and Danish banks, Swish is a direct payment app that is used for transactions between individuals, in real time.

[“source-gadgets.ndtv”]

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Alibaba Makes Offer to Buy Youku Tudou, China’s YouTube

by onkar
written by onkar

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba on Friday offered to buy the outstanding shares of Internet television company Youku Tudou, the Asian country’s equivalent of YouTube, the firms said.

The move marks Alibaba’s latest push into entertainment as the company seeks to develop beyond its traditional transaction platforms.

Alibaba, which already owns 18.3 percent of the New York-listed target company, is offering $26.60 (roughly Rs. 1,800) in cash per American depositary share (ADS), a Youku Tudou statement said, without giving a total value for the deal.

Bloomberg News reported that the offer was worth $3.6 billion (roughly Rs. 23,348 crores) for the remaining stake in Youku Tudou, quoting a person familiar with the matter.

Each ADS represents 18 ordinary shares in Youku Tudou.

The offer represents a 30.2 percent premium over their closing price on Thursday, said the statement, which described the “going private” proposal as preliminary.

Most of Youku Tudou’s online video offerings are professionally produced content licensed from copyright holders, according to the company.

Alibaba’s Taobao platform holds more than 90 percent of the consumer-to-consumer market in China, while its Tmall platform is believed to command more than half the Chinese market for business-to-consumer transactions.

But Alibaba has invested in its first Hollywood film, “Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation”, acting as promotional partner in China with Paramount Pictures for the movie.

Last month, Alibaba also set up a new company to focus on professional sports, including media, events and ticketing.

[“source-gadgets.ndtv”]

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My Work With Digital India Will Silence My Critics, Says Ankit Fadia

by onkar
written by onkar

Ankit Fadia, one of the brand ambassadors for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Digital India campaign, is controversy’s child. Yet, the 30-year-old ethical hacker believes that it is not possible to be successful without having critics who dislike you.

“Critics will always remain. I prefer to let my work speak for itself. I love what I do and I will continue my work,” Fadia, 30, told IANS during an interaction on the sidelines of a promotional tour for his newly-launched books.

“In July, when I was appointed as one of the brand ambassadors of the Digital India initiative, I thought about how I can make a contribution to making Indians more digital. This is when I got the idea to write my own book series,” he said.

The series titled “Stretch Your Technology” has three books – ‘Email’, ‘Protect’ and ‘Productivity’.

“In each book, I have discussed simple tips, tricks and apps that people can download to their smartphones to make their digital lives better,” Fadia said.

Happy to be part of the “Digital India” initiative, he says he is excited to begin a new journey.

“I have been mandated by the Government of India to promote Digital India through various channels like social media, seminars and workshops that I conduct globally and my personal network,” said Fadia who has been repeatedly accused of making false claims and plagiarising in the media.

“I have a degree from Stanford University, I have published more than 15 books and I have received several awards – including ‘Global Shaper’ by the World Economic Forum (WEF). And I stand by what I say,” he added.

The book called Protect contains simple apps, tips and tricks that people can use to improve their online security and privacy.

“There have been cases where security vulnerabilities have been found in mobile operating systems which make them vulnerable to infection via an MMS or file download,” he pointed out.

“It is important for people to be careful about what kind of files they open on their phone. It is also advisable that smartphone users must install antivirus software on their phones,” he advised.

[“source-gadgets.ndtv”]

 

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