A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit by Wikimedia and other groups challenging one of the U.S. National Security Agency's mass surveillance programs, the Baltimore Sun reported. The lawsuit filed in federal court in Maryland, where the spy agency is based, said the NSA is violating U.S
Read moreSony Pictures Entertainment Inc has agreed to pay up to $8 million to resolve a lawsuit by employees who claimed their personal data was stolen in a 2014 hacking tied to the studio's release of a comedy set in North Korea, “The Interview.” The settlement with the Sony Corp unit and current and former employees was disclosed in papers filed on Monday in federal court in Los Angeles. Under the deal, Sony will pay up to $2.5 million, or $10,000 per person, to reimburse employees for identity theft losses and up to $2 million, or $1,000 per person, to reimburse them for protective measures they took after the cyber attack. Sony has also agreed to pay up to $3.49 million to cover legal fees and costs, according to court papers.
Read moreBy Dan Levine and Joseph Menn SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Eight months after disclosing a major data breach, ride service Uber [UBER.UL] is focusing its legal efforts on learning more about an internet address that it has persuaded a court could lead to identifying the hacker. In February, Uber revealed that as many as 50,000 of its drivers' names and license numbers had been improperly downloaded, and the company filed a lawsuit in San Francisco federal court in an attempt to unmask the perpetrator. Uber's court papers claim that an unidentified person using a Comcast IP address had access to a security key used in the breach.
Read moreBy Nate Raymond NEW YORK (Reuters) – A Florida private investigator is facing criminal charges over his alleged effort to infiltrate a charity's computer network while researching whether nonprofits are financing Islamic militants, U.S. prosecutors said on Monday.
Read moreBy Ece Toksabay ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkish police raided a magazine on Monday over a mocked-up “selfie” of a smiling President Tayyip Erdogan with the coffin of a soldier – an allusion to comments that families of soldiers killed by Kurdish rebels could be happy about their martyrdom. An Istanbul prosecutor’s office banned distribution of the latest edition of Nokta magazine and ordered raids on its offices over charges of “insulting the Turkish president” and “making terrorist propaganda”, after the cover was published online, the magazine said in a statement. The cover depicted a grinning Erdogan in shirt-sleeves taking a selfie, in the background a coffin draped in the red Turkish flag being borne along in state by soldiers.
Read moreThe reasons the weekly financial newspaper gave for the dour outlook: China's struggling economy, increasing competition in e-commerce and more scrutiny of the company's culture and governance. Alibaba spokesman Bob Christie said the article “contains factual inaccuracies and selective use of information, and the conclusions the reporter draws are misleading.” The company has posted on the internet a letter to Barron's editor complaining about the story.
Read more(Reuters) – Google Inc said it named auto industry veteran John Krafcik as chief executive of its self-driving car project from late September. With the hiring of Krafcik, currently the president of automotive pricing terminal Truecar Inc and a former CEO of Hyundai Motors America, Google is starting to look at the project as a potential and relevant business in the near future. Chris Urmson, who has been head of the self-driving car program since 2009, will continue overseeing the project as its technical lead, the company said in an emailed statement
Read moreBy Nate Raymond NEW YORK (Reuters) – A Florida man accused of running an unlicensed bitcoin exchange and who is among five defendants linked to last summer's massive data breach at JPMorgan Chase & Co is in talks to resolve his criminal case, according to court papers filed Friday. In a court filing in federal court in Manhattan, a prosecutor said Yuri Lebedev, one of two men charged with operating the bitcoin exchange service, was in discussions “regarding a possible disposition of this case.” The filing used language that is usually indicative of plea talks, though cases in some instances can be resolved with deferred prosecution agreements or with charges being dropped. Eun Young Choi, a prosecutor under Manhattan U.S
Read moreOnline music streaming service Grooveshark, admitting “very serious mistakes,” shut down its operations as part of a settlement with major record labels, joining the ranks of several now-defunct peers sued over copyright infringement. In a message posted to its website on Thursday, Grooveshark said that “despite (the) best of intentions, we made very serious mistakes
Read moreBy Andrew Chung NEW YORK (Reuters) – Online music streaming service Grooveshark could potentially have to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to major record labels after a U.S. judge ruled ahead of its trial starting on Monday that Grooveshark’s copyright violations on nearly 5,000 songs were “willful” and made “in bad faith.” U.S. District Judge Thomas Griesa, who will preside over the trial in federal court in Manhattan, said in a court order on Thursday that because of Grooveshark’s actions he will tell jurors they can choose to award the statutory maximum of $150,000 in damages per song
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