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Remote-control vehicles once primarily inhabited the territory of hobbyists. People would take their planes out to a field on a Saturday afternoon and spin a few lazy circles in the sky. With the advent of unmanned aerial vehicles, drones and other high-tech applications, however, it has quickly bec...
Long known for its out-and-out censorship, Beijing now appears to be filling Chinese social media with pro-government messages. The new tack was on full display after the Thursday indictment of fallen Communist Party member Bo Xilai, who was busted for corruption and abuse of power in 2012. While Ch...
A proposal to restrict the NSA's surveillance of Americans' phone calls was defeated by a mere 12 votes in the House of Representatives on Wednesday in a battle that drew unusual bipartisan support at a time when partisanship is running at an all-time-high. Reps. Justin Amash, R-Mich., and John Co...
It turns out that Germany, Europe's most outspoken critic in the wake of U.S. snooping revelations, has itself used a National Security Agency spying program and collaborated with the NSA on surveillance. Takes one to know one. Germany's foreign intelligence service, called the "BND," and its dome...
Google, which is fighting government requests for data in two courts and demanding greater transparency in the wake of the brouhaha over the NSA's PRISM program, reportedly also is experimenting with encrypting files on Google Drive. Some files may already have been encrypted. In related news, a co...
Devout followers pay heed: The Catholic Church is offering indulgences for those who take the righteous step of following Pope Francis on Twitter. The granting of indulgences, a centuries-old practice, is believed to reduce the time that one must spend in purgatory. Traditional means of obtaining in...
European Union justice commissioner Viviane Reding implored EU member states to get on board with Germany's call for tougher and more unified data protection laws. German chancellor Angela Merkel spent the weekend clamoring for EU-wide regulations that would force more transparency from Internet com...
While not many taxpayers consider the Internal Revenue Service a friend, most do expect the agency to protect their data like a brother. That's why news revealed last week about a database the IRS posted online of filings for so-called Section 527 organizations, such as political campaign committees...
In Japan, a flubbed privacy setting made public a Google Groups chat among Japanese bureaucrats, allowing any-and-everyone to see internal memos, including negotiating positions for an international treaty. The default settings for Google Groups, which are established by the party that started the c...
France has abandoned a law that called for copyright infringers' Internet connections to be cut off upon a third offense. The law stipulated that letters be sent the first and second time people illicitly downloaded copyrighted material; the third time around, an offender's Web access would be disco...
It looks as though leaker/hero/traitor Edward Snowden has options as he seeks a place to take up asylum. Venezuela and Bolivia have now both offered asylum to Snowden, who is believed to be holed up in a Moscow airport. Snowden reportedly submitted a formal asylum request with Venezuela and Nicaragu...
After launching Graph Search into beta earlier this year, Facebook on Monday announced that it is now beginning to roll the feature out to everyone who uses the social network's U.S. English version. Graph Search lets users perform searches on the social network that combine phrases -- "my friends i...
The UK and Germany have become the latest European countries to demand that Google amend the privacy policy revamp it launched in April 2012, which consolidated user data across all its services. The Information Commissioner's Office in the UK announced that it has sent a letter to Google notifying ...
In what could be a prelude to censorship, the Turkish government has asked Twitter to establish a "representative office" in Turkey. The government has hinted that it might ban Twitter if the company doesn't comply. Turkey did as much to YouTube, blocking the site for two years until last October, w...
The UK's NSA-ish surveillance program, "Project Tempora," has drawn the ire of the German government. Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, the Germany justice minister, sent a pair of letters Tuesday to the British justice secretary detailing the angst and anger that Britain's snooping has caused. Ge...