The U.S. House Judiciary Committee abruptly adjourned today without voting on the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), a controversial measure that would impose radical new requirements on search engines, ISPs, ad networks and other key internet players. The hearings will resume "earliest practical day that Congress is in session” according to the chief sponsor of the legislation, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Tex), but with the Congressional holiday recess imminent that could be weeks from now. UPDATE: Representative @DarrellIssa tweeted that the Judiciary Committee has scheduled the rest of #SOPA marku [...]

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Related Topics: Features: Analysis | Google: Gmail | Legal: Security

Circumstantial and indirect evidence has long implicated the Chinese government and its surrogates in numerous incidents of digital espionage and other hacking into US corporations' and government-owned websites and databases. The infamous Gmail hacking episode that triggered Google's censorship protest and "withdrawal" from the Chinese search market is only one example. The Chinese themselves have vigorously and indignantly denied any and all such accusations, despite mounting evidence to the contrary.  Now new evidence of Chinese state-sponsored "cyberattacks" comes in the form of a broa [...]

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With much of the world's focus on the tragic earthquake in Japan, Internet security watchers are warning about dangerous web pages showing up in some quake-related search results. Trend Micro reported earlier this morning that malware sites had started targeting search terms shortly after the quake hit. As shown in the image above, Trend Micro found several sites offering fake anti-virus software in the search results for the term, "most recent earthquake in Japan." Thanks to Trend Micro's post and related coverage, the first page of Google's results for that phrase now includes several [...]

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A broad coalition of interest groups, non-profits and private companies, including Microsoft, Google, AOL, the ACLU, EFF and others, have come together to set forth four principles that would update Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA). That statute was enacted in 1986 and, in the words of Jim Dempsey, Vice President for Public Policy at the Center for Democracy and Technology, hasn't kept pace with technology and the way that people use the internet today. The point was made repeatedly that the "internet didn't even really exist" in 1986. The principles aim to upgrade and enhance p [...]

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