Legal Archive

I am told by my attorney that Apple & the firm like my channel, are fans of it, and are friendly.

I am as surprised by this as any of you are.

I'm still interested in the precise issue they have with the channel, as it isn't often customary for high end Manhattan lawfirms to reach out to me to tell me that they're fans. It is persistently clear that there is an issue they have with the content, but I don't know what it is yet. That in and of itself is bothersome and unnerving, but whatayagannado.

We talk a lot on this blog about why it's getting harder to fix electronics. Not just because of how those devices are designed, but also because a lot manufacturers don't want anyone to know how to fix them. And those companies can issue legal threats to keep repair information - like schematics and repair manuals - out of public view.

It looks like Louis Rossmann, an independent Apple repair tech, is fending off a legal attack from one of those companies.

For context, Louis does board-level repairs of Apple laptops. You can't do that and you can't teach other people how to fix boards without circuit schematics - which he shows on his channel. Most electronics companies don't share schematics with the public. And certain companies might argue that showing schematics on video is a violation of their copyright. (Louis, by the way, was one of the most vocal supporters of a Right to Repair law in New York that would have protected independent repair techs and given them more access to repair information. Apple's lobbyists killed the bill before it could be voted on.)

You would think there would be some more tangible action Congress could take, given its constitutional mandate to provide oversight of the executive branch, but you would be wrong. In theory, they might repeal FISA, but it's pretty clear that's not going to happen. We've been doing this dance for three congressional terms now and this is basically all that ever occurs.

It's especially weird since the NSA's charter is for foreign intelligence, so the answer to "how many Americans are you spying on?" should really be zero. But we all know that's not true, thanks to documents leaked by a whistleblower who is unable to enter the country on pain of immediate lifetime imprisonment.

After months of work, the FBI finally has a way into the San Bernardino iPhone. In a court filing today, prosecutors told the court the new method for breaking into the phone is sound, and Apple's assistance is no longer required. "The government has now successfully accessed the data stored on Farook's iPhone," the filing reads, "and therefore no longer requires assistance from Apple." The filing provides no further details on the nature of the new method. Still, the result effectively finishes the court fight that has consumed Apple since February.

Technology companies could face civil penalties for refusing to comply with court orders to help investigators access encrypted data under draft legislation nearing completion in the U.S. Senate, sources familiar with continuing discussions told Reuters on Wednesday. The long-awaited legislation from Senators Richard Burr and Dianne Feinstein, the top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, may be introduced as soon as next week, one of the sources said.

"I was all with you until I actually started getting briefed by the people in the Intel Community," Graham told Attorney General Loretta Lynch during an oversight hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee. "I will say that I'm a person that's been moved by the arguments about the precedent we set and the damage we might be doing to our own national security."

The wall separating "foreign" intelligence operations from domestic criminal investigations has finally, fully collapsed. The FBI is now acting on a rule change initiated by the Bush administration, and finally massaged into actionable policy by Obama: Now, FBI agents can query the NSA's database of Americans' international communications, collected without warrants pursuant to Section 702 of the 2008 FISA Amendments Act. That law put congress' stamp of approval on the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program, which was widely denounced as totalitarian when the New York Times' James Risen exposed it to the world in 2005.

"We do not believe that courts should seek to resolve issues of 21st Century technology with a law that was written in the era of the adding machine," Smith said.

The EU-US Privacy Shield reflects the requirements set out by the European Court of Justice in its ruling on 6 October 2015, which declared the old Safe Harbour framework invalid. The new arrangement will provide stronger obligations on companies in the U.S. to protect the personal data of Europeans and stronger monitoring and enforcement by the U.S. Department of Commerce and Federal Trade Commission (FTC), including through increased cooperation with European Data Protection Authorities. The new arrangement includes commitments by the U.S. that possibilities under U.S. law for public authorities to access personal data transferred under the new arrangement will be subject to clear conditions, limitations and oversight, preventing generalised access. Europeans will have the possibility to raise any enquiry or complaint in this context with a dedicated new Ombudsperson.

The European Court of Justice has just ruled that the transatlantic Safe Harbour agreement, which lets American companies use a single standard for consumer privacy and data storage in both the US and Europe, is invalid. The ruling came after Edward Snowden's NSA leaks showed that European data stored by US companies was not safe from surveillance that would be illegal in Europe.

Google and Microsoft have agreed to end their long-running patent feud over smartphones and video game systems, dropping about 20 lawsuits in the U.S. and Germany.

The two companies, which didn't disclose financial terms, have been litigating over technology innovations for five years. Google's former Motorola Mobility unit had been demanding royalties on the Xbox video-gaming system, and Microsoft had sought to block Motorola mobile phones from using certain features.

The following companies just betrayed billions of people.

Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, Symantec, and a handful of other tech companies just began publicly lobbying Congress to pass the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA), a bill that would give corporations total legal immunity when they share private user data with the government and with each other. Many of these companies have previously claimed to fight for their users' privacy rights, but by supporting this bill they've made it clear that they've abandoned that position, and are willing to endanger their users' security and civil rights in exchange for government handouts and protection.

The ongoing legal saga known as the Oracle-Google copyright battle took a huge leap Wednesday when Oracle claimed the last six Android operating systems are "infringing Oracle's copyrights in the Java platform."

That's according to the latest paperwork Oracle filed in the five-year-old closely watched case that so far has resulted in the determination that Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are, indeed, copyrightable.

On Monday, the Supreme Court opted not to review a 2014 ruling on copyright law that held Google's Android operating system infringed copyrights relating to Oracle's Java platform. This is a disaster for the software industry.

Here's the problem: the digital economy depends on gadgets and software being able to communicate seamlessly. Last year's decision by the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals opened the possibility that efforts to make software work together better could trigger copyright liability. The result could be more compatibility problems and less innovation.

The Justice Department is weighing in on the hot-button intellectual property dispute between Google and Oracle, telling the Supreme Court that APIs are protected by copyright.

The Obama administration's position means it is siding with Oracle and a federal appeals court that said application programming interfaces are subject to copyright protections. The high court in January asked for the government's views on the closely watched case.