Indiana Appeals Court Says Forcing Someone To Unlock Their Phone Violates The 5th Amendment – This Week in Tech – 09/02/2018
Indiana Appeals Court Says Forcing Someone To Unlock Their Phone Violates The 5th Amendment
Passwords and PINs still beat fingerprints when it comes to the Fifth Amendment. But just barely. Nothing about the issue is settled, but far more cases have been handed down declaring fingerprints to be non-testimonial. Fingerprints are obtained during the booking process — a physical, traceable representation of the suspect. If they can be obtained during booking, they can certainly be obtained again to unlock a device. A physical aspect of a human being can’t be considered “testimonial” as far as courts have interpreted the Fifth Amendment…
Gen Z Teenagers Have Begun Quitting Social Media in Droves
For 17-year-old Mary Amanuel, from London, it happened in Tesco. “We were in year 7,” she remembers, “and my friend had made an Instagram account. As we were buying stuff, she was counting the amounts of likes she’d got on a post. ‘Oooh, 40 likes. 42 likes.’ I just thought: ‘This is ridiculous.’”…
IP Address is Not Enough to Identify Pirate, US Court of Appeals Rules
The owner of an adult foster care home who operated an open WiFi network has booked a big win against a copyright troll. Thomas Gonzales was accused of downloading the Adam Sandler movie The Cobbler but won $17k last year after being wrongfully targeted. The case went to appeal and in a ruling handed down yesterday by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Gonzales emerged victorious again…
California Passes Strongest Net Neutrality Law in the Country
California’s legislature has approved a bill being called the strongest net neutrality law in the US. The bill would ban internet providers from blocking and throttling legal content and prioritizing some sites and services over others. It would apply these restrictions to both home and mobile connections…
President Trump Claims Google Is Rigging Search Results to Make Him Look Bad
Donald Trump has accused Google of rigging its search results to make him look bad…
Google Rejected for Trying to Patent Use of a Data Compression Algorithm That the Real Inventor Has Already Dedicated to the Public Domain
At EFF, we often criticize software patents that claim small variations on known techniques. These include a patent on updating software over the Internet, a patent on out-of-office email, and a patent on storing data in a database. Now, Google is trying to patent the use of a known data compression algorithm – called asymmetric numeral systems (ANS) – for video compression. In one sense, this patent application is fairly typical. The system seems designed to encourage tech giants to flood the Patent Office with applications for every little thing they do. Google’s application stands out, however, because the real inventor of ANS did everything he could to dedicate his work to the public domain…
A Small Swiss Company Is Developing Technology to Suck Carbon Dioxide Out of the Air — and It Just Won $31 Million in New Investment
OSLO (Reuters) – A small Swiss company won $31 million in new investment on Tuesday to suck carbon dioxide from thin air as part of a fledgling, costly technology that may gain wider acceptance from governments in 2018 as a way to slow climate change…