The Internal Revenue Service is again taking fire from the US government accountability office. In a report released last week the GAO chronicled the security shortfalls at the nation's tax collection agency.
“Despite the IRS' efforts, weaknesses in controls over key financial and tax processing systems continue to jeopardise the confidentiality, integrity and availability of financial and taxpayer information " the report said.
The US Department of Justice and US Federal Trade Commission should “think long and hard” before bringing antitrust cases against tech companies such as Google or Apple says Ronald Cass, former Vice Chairman of the US international Trade Commission.
His comments follow recent news reports that the DOJ is investigating Apple and five e-book publishers over pricing issues and the FTC is investigating Google over complaints that the search giant is using its dominance in the search space to unfairly drive consumers to use its other products.
Darpa director Regina Dugan will soon be stepping down from her position atop the Pentagon’s premiere research shop to take a job with Google. Dugan, whose controversial tenure at the agency lasted just under three years, was “offered and accepted at senior executive position” with the internet giant, according to Darpa spokesman Eric Mazzacone. She felt she couldn’t say no to such an “innovative company,” he adds.
Congress is doing it again: they’re proposing overbroad regulations that could have dire consequences for our Internet ecology. The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2011 (H.R. 3523), introduced by Rep. Mike Rogers and Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, allows companies or the government1 free rein to bypass existing laws in order to monitor communications, filter content, or potentially even shut down access to online services for “cybersecurity purposes.” Companies are encouraged to share data with the government and with one another, and the government can share data in return.
All those computer users whose Internet access was about to be cut off by the FBI can breathe a bit easier.
Late yesterday (March 5), federal Judge Denise Cote granted the federal government another 120 days to keep running several Domain Name System servers that were keeping hundreds of thousands, and possibly millions, of infected computers online.
According to the FBI, you're looking at Sabu, the head of LulzSec, and the de facto King of Anonymous—easily the most notorious and influential hacker alive today. One thing: he just turned in his people to the police.
Interpol’s Web site went down Tuesday just hours after the international police agency announced the arrest of 25 suspected members of the hacking collective Anonymous in Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Spain.
On Twitter, hackers affiliated with Anonymous took credit for the attack and openly encouraged their sympathizers to keep Interpol’s site offline by flooding its servers with traffic.
The website of an international prison contractor has been defaced by hackers who replaced the company's home page with a hip-hop homage devoted to former death row inmate Mumia Abu Jamal.
Hackers allied to the loose-knit Anonymous movement claimed responsibility for vandalising the site of Florida's GEO Group Inc., which manages some 60 custodial facilities in Europe, North America, Australia and South Africa.
NASA has released an RFI (Request For Information) asking for help reimplementing the nasa.gov web site using open source software and open standards. With 600,000 unique visitors and over 1.29 TB of traffic a day, 140 different web sites and applications and over 700,000 web pages, the task is large.
President Obama last week signed the FAA Air Transportation Modernization and Safety Improvement Act of 2012. Tucked inside the legislation is a provision that could have far-reaching implications in the coming decade: widespread civilian use of unmanned aerial drones.
