A massive protest have planned over web NSA spying revelations

The NSA's actions were revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden

Some of the web's biggest names have backed mass protests over internet surveillance carried out by the US National Security Agency (NSA).

The Restore the Fourth movement - referring to the US constitution's fourth amendment - said it wants to end "unconstitutional surveillance".

Reddit, Mozilla and Wordpress are among the big web names backing the action, due to take place on Thursday.

Almost 100 events have been planned across the US.

An interactive map detailing their locations has been published.

The site quotes a line from the fourth amendment which pledges "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures".

As well as the "real-world" protests, many influential websites plan to display messages of protest on their homepages on Thursday, co-ordinated by a group called the Internet Defence League (IDL).

Petition

The action has taken inspiration from similar efforts that took place last year.

Wikipedia, Google and others went "dark", or put black boxes over parts of their pages, to show their disagreement with proposed anti-piracy measures being discussed by US lawmakers.

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In reaction to the revelations made by whistleblower Edward Snowden, Mozilla, maker of the widely used Firefox browser, launched stopwatching.us - a petition calling for full disclosure of the US's "spying" programmers.

At the time of writing, the site had amassed 536,559 signatures. Dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei is listed as being among the petition's backers.

The demand comes at a time when one top US intelligence official was forced to apologise for telling Congress in March that the NSA did not have a policy of gathering data on millions of Americans.

National intelligence director James Clapper said in a letter to the Senate intelligence committee that his answer had been "clearly erroneous".

Source:BBC

Twitter is going to use cookies for ad targeting

Twitter is only the latest Web company to use cookies, which have been deployed for years by firms like Google Inc, Facebook Inc, Amazon Inc and practically every other major website. These small files, placed on Web surfers' computers, contain bits of information about the user, such as what other sites they have visited or where they are logging in from.

In the case of Twitter, the company will further allow retailers to attach anonymous versions of their customers' email addresses, known as hashes, to Twitter's advertising engine to individually target their customer base.

Privately owned Twitter, valued at close to $10 billion by investors, has ramped up its advertising capabilities ahead of a widely expected initial public offering in 2014.

Twitter's new feature, which is expected to raise advertising rates and revenues for the company, arrives in the midst of heightened public debate over the erosion of online privacy.

In recent years both the European Union and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission have probed the extent of tracking technologies used by sites like Facebook. Last year, European authorities began requiring websites to inform visitors that cookies were being placed on their computers.

Twitter noted in a blog post Wednesday that its use of cookies was "how most other companies handle this practice, and we don't give advertisers any additional user information."

In a blog post on Wednesday, Twitter said it would give its users the option of disabling cookies by enabling a "Do Not Track" option in their browser. Many leading browsers such as Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer contain such options. Twitter users can also wholly opt out of ads tailored by outside data by opening their account settings, the company said.

The efforts by authorities, particularly in Europe, to clamp down on tracking technologies have spurred a furious backlash from the media and technology industries, which argue that cookies are critical to practically the whole $100 billion internet advertising market.

Via: Reuters

Samsung blames Apple wouldn’t have sold a single iPhone without stealing our technology

Another day, another Apple (AAPL) vs. Samsung (005930) trial. The two consumer electronics companies are preparing to do battle in San Jose, California next week, and now-public court documents shed light on the positions each firm is taking. On Tuesday, Apple told Samsung exactly what it thinks its technology patents are worth (spoiler: barely anything at all), and subsequent filings from Samsung reveal that the South Korea-based company has a few choice words for Apple as well.

As highlighted by The Wall Street Journal, Samsung’s trial brief pulls no punches in telling the court exactly where it stands regarding Apple’s repeated patent-related accusations. In short, Apple is the thief here, not Samsung. A few key excerpts (emphasis is ours):

Samsung has been researching and developing mobile telecommunications technology since at least as early as 1991 and invented much of the technology for today‘s smartphones.Indeed, Apple, which sold its first iPhone nearly twenty years after Samsung started developing mobile phone technology, could not have sold a single iPhone without the benefit of Samsung‘s patented technology.

For good measure, Apple seeks to exclude Samsung from the market, based on its complaints that Samsung has used the very same public domain design concepts that Apple borrowed from other competitors, including Sony, to develop the iPhone. Apple‘s own internal documents show this. In February 2006, before the claimed iPhone design was conceived of, Apple executive Tony Fadell circulated a news article that contained an interview of a Sony designer to Steve Jobs, Jonathan Ive and others. In the article, the Sony designer discussed Sony portable electronic device designs that lacked “excessive ornamentation” such as buttons, fit in the hand, were “square with a screen” and had “corners [which] have been rounded out.”

Contrary to the image it has cultivated in the popular press, Apple has admitted in internal documents that its strength is not in developing new technologies first, but in successfully commercializing them. . . . Also contrary to Apple‘s accusations, Samsung does not need or want to copy; rather, it strives to best the competition by developing multiple, unique products. Samsung internal documents from 2006, well before the iPhone was announced, show rectangular phones with rounded corners, large displays, flat front faces, and graphic interfaces with icons with grid layouts.

Apple relied heavily on Samsung‘s technology to enter the telecommunications space, and it continues to use Samsung‘s technology to this day in its iPhone and iPad products. For example, Samsung supplies the flash memory, main memory, and application processor for the iPhone. . . .  But Apple also uses patented Samsung technology that it has not paid for. This includes standards-essential technology required for Apple‘s products to interact with products from other manufacturers, and several device features that Samsung developed for use in its products.

It’s clear that we’re in for yet another action-packed adventure when the trial kicks off next week.

Via: Bgr

Samsung sell 20 million s4 units

Samsung's Galaxy S4 is still selling extremely well, a new report out of Korea claims.

Samsung has sold 20 million Galaxy S4 units worldwide since that device's launch two months ago, Korea-based news outlet Yonhap News is reporting (Translate Page). That's roughly 1.7 times faster than sales of the Galaxy S3 (that's global channel sales, not sales to consumers) at the same point in that device's life cycle.

Samsung has yet to confirm that it has sold 20 million units. The company will hold its earnings call later this week, and could announce the sales milestone at that time.

(Source: Engadget)