The European Commission has called on the US to provide guarantees to restore trust in the wake of revelations of mass internet surveillance by whistleblower Edward Snowden.
Until now, trust has relied on the Safe Harbor Privacy Principles designed to ensure US companies respect EU citizens’ right to protection of personal data.
Neelie Kroes, European commissioner for digital agenda, made a cameo appearance here at IEF 2013, in the initiative dubbed the Airbus of Chips.
In a short video, she said Europe had to pool its resources in the initiative, launched in May, with an ambitious roadmap intended to double semiconductor production here in a bid to catch up with the USA.
The European Union has been pushing for a universal cell phone charger for years, and on Thursday it took another step forward in this process.
The European Parliament's internal market and consumer protection committee unanimously voted on a legislative resolution to create a law requiring all companies to make the same type of charger. One of the reasons for this resolution is to cut down on e-waste.
Europe's data protection regime is now nearly 20 years old, predating the cloud, social media and smartphones. When the current law was passed, I was just getting the hang of surfing the web with Netscape Navigator and was about to be granted my very own email address at university, accessed through Pine. Suffice to say that the current regime is looking more than a little out of date.
Cyber criminals could face tougher penalties across the European Union under new rules adopted by the European Parliament, which include the creation of a specific offence of using botnets.
The draft directive adopted by the parliament on Thursday defines specific criminal offences for cybercrime and sets specific sanctions for each. It also requires E.U. countries to assist fellow member states and respond to urgent requests for help within eight hours in the event of a cyber attack.
The EU is pushing through a directive calling for harsher criminal penalties against convicted hackers.
The proposed rules (PDF) set a baseline sentence of two years' imprisonment in cases where hacks are carried out with the intent to cause serious harm, involve circumventing security measures and where no attempt is made to notify website owners or other vulnerable parties about a security breach.
Plans by the European Union to prohibit Internet service providers (ISPs) from blocking or throttling customers' access under new net neutrality rules will not have any impact on website blocking at a member state level.
As reported by our London bureau on Tuesday, EU Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes set out plans to prevent anti-competitive blocking of rival services, such as those that compete with their own offerings.
Cisco Systems Inc, the world's leading network equipment maker, will try to convince Europe's second highest court on Wednesday that it should overturn the EU's approval of Microsoft's purchase of Skype.
Peter Sunde, one of four cofounders of notorious BitTorrent search site The Pirate Bay, says he plans to run in next year's European Parliament elections, despite his impending incarceration for copyright violation.
Sunde, along with partners Carl Lundström, Frederik Neij, and Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, were convicted of "accessory to breaching copyright laws" by a Swedish court in 2009.
Hackers recently hit dozens of computer systems all across Europe due to a flaw recently discovered in Adobe’s software. NATO headquarters confirmed that they too had been attacked.
These recent government attacks were said to be far more sophisticated than other attempted attacks that happen nearly on a daily basis. Some experts have suggested that this recent attack may have been some form of a state sponsored hack, but no nation being accused was mentioned in the report.
