Law and Order

A Craigslist-like website that facilitates weapons sales between buyers and sellers cannot be liable for the actions of its users, including the murder of a woman by a handgun advertised on the site, a federal appeals court ruled.

The case decided Tuesday by the 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals concerns a woman murdered in 2011 with a .40-caliber handgun that a Seattle man advertised on Armslist for $400. A Canadian man bought the weapon.

In 2000, after being accused of child sex abuse and kidnapping in New Mexico, Neil Stammer skipped town and went underground. Fourteen years later he was arrested in Nepal.

How did the authorities catch this fugitive? Facial recognition technology.

A bill to require mandatory kill-switches on smartphones so that they can be disabled in the event of theft passed the California state senate today and could become law if Governor Jerry Brown signs it in the coming weeks. The bill would mandate (PDF) that all smartphones manufactured after July 1, 2015 to be sold in California come equipped with the means to “render the essential features of the smartphone inoperable when not in the possession of the authorized user.”

At this point, it's hard to say exactly what's going on in Microsoft's patent contract dispute with Samsung. The two companies may just be fighting out their contract terms or it could be the first shot at Microsoft's Android patent portfolio.

Microsoft's heavily redacted lawsuit was filed on August 1st in the US District Court in the Southern District of New York. In a blog posting by David Howard, Microsoft's Corporate Vice President and Deputy General Counsel, claimed that the two companies have "a fundamental disagreement as to the meaning of our contract."

Earlier this week, we reported that Google had reported an individual to the police after discovering a large quantity of child abuse images on his Gmail account. After the police obtained a search warrant, they found a considerable stash of similar content on his home computer, and the person was arrested.

On Monday, a federal court in Central California sentenced a 26-year-old to one year and nine months in prison for firing two different laser pointers at a Kern County Sheriff’s Office helicopter over a six month period in 2013.

The man, Brett Lee Scott of Buttonwillow, took a plea deal with federal prosecutors according to a May 5, 2014 court filing. Scott explained his actions by saying that he was “bored.”

Houston woman Meryem Ali has filed a $123-million lawsuit against both Facebook and a former friend who posted a picture of her on an "imposter" Facebook profile under her name, according to Texas Lawyer.

Photographs "that depict the true face of plaintiff" were altered with Photoshop and "attached to false, phony, naked body shots, and at least one pose where there is plaintiff in a graphic pornographic-like photo," states the complaint, which was filed on July 25 in Harris County.

A new Senate proposal to curb the government's bulk collection of Americans' telephone records and increase transparency about the program has White House backing, and may get more traction with critics who have dismissed other bills as too weak.

Democrat senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, introduced the legislation in the United States upper house yesterday.

A 23-year-old student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln that hacked into the systems of the educational institution and accessed student records, account information and passwords, has been sentenced last week to six months in prison.

Daniel Stratman breached the university’s computers from his apartment in Lincoln at least seven times in one month. The report does not mention what happened to the sensitive details he accessed or whether he made modifications to the records.

Way back in 2011, PlayStation Network services and websites went dark due to "an external intrusion." Anonymous claimed responsibility, names, passwords and possible payment information was lost in a data breach, and everybody in general had a bad time.