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Aggressive Changes Planned amid Cyber Attacks on UK
Following a number of small but successful cyber attacks on the UK's Ministry of Defense's (the "Ministry") computer systems, the Ministry will review and implement the best approach to better safeguard their data from future attacks. The Ministry was surprised by the sophistication and frequency of the cyber attacks and how vulnerable the Ministry's system remains.

RCMP Shuts Down Illegal Carding Ring in a Series of Raids and Arrests
Last week the Royal Canadian Mounted Police ("RCMP") conducted upwards of 60 raids and over 40 arrests throughout the Montreal area and in Ontario. Calling the thefts massive in scale and executed with military precision, the RCMP claim that the scam was valued at over $100-million and had international ties with accomplices in Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Tunisia and England.

Twitter Defends Occupier
Twitter recently brought a motion before a New York court dealing with criminal charges related to the "Occupy Wall Street" movement. The motion sought to quash an earlier and bizarre decision of the court holding that a Twitter user did not have standing to challenge a subpoena for his own communications and Twitter account information. Given the effect of the court's ruling, Twitter felt that it was placed in a difficult position, potentially being itself responsible to assert its users rights when information is subpoenaed from it. Twitter's move has been lauded by privacy and civil liberties advocates, however there has yet to be a ruling on the motion to quash.

FTC to Monitor Myspace After Privacy Violations
Social media and networking services are increasingly finding themselves subject to mandatory privacy audits by the Federal Trade Commission (the "FTC"). Popular services already being required to undertake privacy audits include Facebook, Google and Twitter. The most recent addition to this group is Myspace which has just agreed to settle its FTC charges with an agreement to undergo mandatory privacy audits for the next 20 years.

California Moves to Protect Employee's Facebook Passwords
While it does not appear to be a common practice yet, reports of employers demanding employees' Facebook passwords has led California's Assembly to pass legislation that forbids employers or prospective employers from demanding access to employees' personal online accounts. Maryland has already approved similar legislation, and Michigan, Minnesota and Illinois are also considering taking similar action. The American Civil Liberties Union is also pushing for similar federal legislation that would be binding on all states, but there are some concerns with the current draft legislation since it does not appear to cover university or other students.

New York Court Creates Loophole for Access to Child Pornography
The New York Court of Appeals has ruled that pornographic images stored in a computer's browser cache are insufficient evidence to convict someone for possession of child pornography under the state law. The ruling holds that the state's child pornography statute requires proof that the accused knew that his computer automatically stored cached images, or that he printed or downloaded the images. Merely viewing the images is not sufficient to constitute possession or procurement of child pornography.

Academic Critiques Software Patents
Vivek Wadhwa of Stanford University critiques software patents in an opinion column in the Washington Post. Mr. Wadhwa, a founder of two software companies prior to joining academia, argues that software patents need to be eliminated or curtailed. He opines that the patent system is flawed and sapping billions out of the tech economy while crushing technology startups because of so-called patent trolls.

Oracle - Google Verdict Stirs Mixed Reaction amongst Lawyers
When a unanimous jury found that Google infringed on Oracle's 37 Java Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) but could not decide whether Google had made "fair use" of the infringing material, copyright lawyers were similarly unable to agree on the ramifications of this partial verdict. Some legal experts found that the question of infringement cannot be answered without dealing with the issue of fair use first, which is the position that Google maintained throughout the lawsuit. Others, such as Julie Samuels, who opposed Oracle's lawsuit from the start, went even further to state that copyright does not contemplate the protection of functional computer programming, but only the product created by programming languages such as an API. This position was supported by a ruling of the European Union Court of Justice last week, which found that APIs cannot be copyrighted.

US Homeland Security Investigates Flaws with Airport Body Scanners
Airport full-body scanners, which arrived in US airports to equal parts fanfare and outrage, were installed with the expectation of increased security in airports. Though there have been ongoing debates whether these new photographing x-ray scanners are more or less personally invasive than the traditional magnetometer wands and pat-downs, concerns are arising about the effectiveness of these new scanners.

Facebook "Likejackers" Settle with Washington State
The parties in Washington State v. Adscend Media LLC have settled out of court in relations to an alleged "likejacking" scheme, wherein, the defendant was accused of generating traffic for their clients' websites by tricking Facebook users into clicking links that then marked the site as one that they "like" on the user's Facebook news feed. The parties agreed to consent to a decree requiring the defendant to cease the alleged "likejacking" and to pay the state $100,000.00 in attorney fees. The defendant has also settled with Facebook in a related action for an undisclosed amount.

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Current Headlines