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Joaquin Almunia left his job as the E.U.’s economics and monetary affairs commissioner this month to become antitrust chief.

Christine Varney, the head of the antitrust division at the United States Justice Department, warned European regulators in a speech on Monday to restrict imposing obligations to the European Union on American companies that are doing business globally.Regulators in Europe are under pressure from governments, media companies and technology developers to blunt the market power that Google has amassed by running the world’s most popular Internet search tools.

Mr. Almunia also will need to resolve whether to give greater freedom to online merchants like eBay and Amazon which, like Google, are based in the United States. Some specialty goods and luxury goods brands, in particular LVMH of France, have lobbied hard to require that merchants have traditional shops as a precondition for selling goods over the Internet.

On October 06, 2008, OASIS issued a public call for participation in a new technical committee chartered to define specifications for use of Web services and Web 2.0 interfaces to enable information sharing across content management repositories from different vendors. The OASIS Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) TC will build upon existing specifications to "define a domain model and bindings that are designed to be layered on top of existing Content Management systems and their existing programmatic interfaces. The TC will not prescribe how specific features should be implemented within those Enterprise Content Management (ECM) systems. Rather it will seek to define a generic/universal set of capabilities provided by an ECM system and a set of services for working with those capabilities." As of February 17, 2010, the CMIS technical work had received broad support through TC participation, industry analyst opinion, and declarations of interest from major companies. Some of these include Adobe, Adullact, AIIM, Alfresco, Amdocs, Anakeen, ASG Software Solutions, Booz Allen Hamilton, Capgemini, Citytech, Content Technologies, Day Software, dotCMS, Ektron, EMC, EntropySoft, ESoCE-NET, Exalead, FatWire, Fidelity, Flatirons, fme AG, Genus Technologies, Greenbytes GmbH, Harris, IBM, ISIS Papyrus, KnowledgeTree, Lexmark, Liferay, Magnolia, Mekon, Microsoft, Middle East Technical University, Nuxeo, Open Text, Oracle, Pearson, Quark, RSD, SAP, Saperion, Structured Software Systems (3SL), Sun Microsystems, Tanner AG, TIBCO Software, Vamosa, Vignette, and WeWebU Software. Early commentary from industry analysts and software engineers is positive about the value proposition in standardizing an enterprise content-centric management specification. The OASIS announcement of November 17, 2008 includes endorsements. Principal use cases motivating the CMIS technical work include collaborative content applications, portals leveraging content management repositories, mashups, and searching a content repository.

Information is a logical arrangement of symbols, and those symbols, regardless of their meaning, can be translated into the symbols of mathematics.

“bit”—indicating a single binary choice: yes or no, on or off, one or zero—as the fundamental unit of information

Content management systems today continue to be based on the types of structured database systems about one or two steps more evolved than dBASE. We've known they would be insufficient for the task, but we've put off the problem of composing a new architecture. It's already too late for major IT companies to start that new architecture from square one; if a company has any hope of addressing this colossal, underappreciated problem, it will need to acquire the architectural project in progress. This is what Hewlett-Packard announced yesterday that it intends to do: acquire a software firm whose core product aims to supplant everything we know about databases, both the SQL kind and the Google kind. In its place would come a clustered approach whose goal is no less than to be the central repository for meaning in the world.

As CEO Apotheker told analysts yesterday, HP intends to exploit the prospects for using Autonomy's technology as a foundation for a content management system. For now, that CMS would be a project for what, on the surface, seems an unlikely department: the Imaging and Printing Group (IPG). Autonomy describes this technology - which it calls Intelligent Data Operating Layer (IDOL) - as nothing less than a replacement for, a complete substitute for, a revolutionary disruption of, Google.

Elsewhere in Autonomy's literature is a monkey wrench it hurls directly at Google, with hopes of messing up its gears. Here, the company attacks the value of Google's page ranking technology in the enterprise: "in many cases, the most popular information is also the most relevant. The importance or popularity of a Web page is approximated by counting the number of other pages that are linked to it, and by how frequently those pages are viewed by other users. This works quite well on the Internet but in the enterprise it is doomed to failure. Firstly, there are no native links between information in the enterprise. Secondly, if a user happens to be an expert, perhaps in the field of gallium arsenide laser diodes, there may be no one else interested in the subject, but it is still imperative that they find relevant information." This is what HP is buying: an opportunity to disrupt Google. If IDOL is every bit the next stage of database evolution that Autonomy makes it out to be, then HP (at least in its executives' own minds) is not surrendering to Google at all, as some consumer publications this morning are suggesting. As HP perceives it, rather than cutting off Google's left arm, it's targeting the gut.

Details on Dart on the Goto conference site were brief and Google has not officially said anything. Goto called Dart: "A new programming language for structured web programming." According to the email, though, Dash has been designed to hit three objectives: improved performance, developer usability and what Google is calling the "ability to be tooled".

Email encryption in transit Many email providers don’t encrypt messages while they’re in transit. When you send or receive emails with one of these providers, these messages are as open to snoopers as a postcard in the mail. A growing number of email providers are working to change that, by encrypting messages sent to and from our services using Transport Layer Security (TLS). When an email is encrypted in transit with TLS, it makes it harder for others to read what you’re sending. The data below explains the current state of email encryption in transit.

Generally speaking, use of encryption in transit increases over time, as more providers enable and maintain their support. Factors such as varying volumes of email may explain other fluctuations.

Below is the percentage of email encrypted for the top domains in terms of volume of email to and from Gmail, in alphabetical order.

Newspapers in Spain will now be able to demand a monthly fee from the search engine before it can list them on Google News

A similar law passed in Germany saw Google removing the affected newspapers from Google news altogether – before the publishers eventually came back and asked to be relisted after seeing their traffic plummet, a step they said they had to take because of the “overwhelming market power of Google”.

For more than two years, researchers and rights activists have tracked the proliferation and abuse of computer spyware that can watch people in their homes and intercept their e-mails. Now they’ve built a tool that can help the targets protect themselves.The free, downloadable software, called Detekt, searches computers for the presence of malicious programs that have been built to evade detection. The spyware ranges from government-grade products used by intelligence and police agencies to hacker staples known as RATs—remote administration tools. Detekt, which was developed by security researcher Claudio Guarnieri, is being released in a partnership with advocacy groups Amnesty International, Digitale Gesellschaft, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Privacy International.Guarnieri says his tool finds hidden spy programs by seeking unique patterns on computers that indicate a specific malware is running. He warns users not to expect his program (which is available only for Windows machines) to find all spyware, and notes that the release of Detekt could spur malware developers to further cloak their code.

In a pathbreaking case on Fourth Amendment privacy rights and modern technology, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the police must obtain warrants before searching the digital contents of cellphones taken from people who are placed under arrest. Here are some key points in the opinion by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and a concurrence by Justice Samuel Alito.

Despite the post-Snowden spotlight on mass surveillance, the intelligence community’s easiest end-run around the Fourth Amendment since 2001 has been something called a National Security Letter. FBI agents can demand that an Internet service provider, telephone company or financial institution turn over its records on any number of people — without any judicial review whatsoever — simply by writing a letter that says the information is needed for national security purposes. The FBI at one point was cranking out over 50,000 such letters a year; by the latest count, it still issues about 60 a day. The letters look like this:

Recipients are legally required to comply — but it doesn’t stop there. They also aren’t allowed to mention the order to anyone, least of all the person whose data is being searched. Ever. That’s because National Security Letters almost always come with eternal gag orders. Here’s that part:

Despite the use of the word “now” in that first sentence, however, the FBI has yet to do any such thing. It has not announced any such change, nor explained how it will implement it, or when. Media inquiries were greeted with stalling and, finally, a no comment — ostensibly on advice of legal counsel. “There is pending litigation that deals with a lot of the same questions you’re asking, out of the Ninth Circuit,” FBI spokesman Chris Allen told me. “So for now, we’ll just have to decline to comment.” FBI lawyers are working on a court filing for that case, and “it will address” the new policy, he said. He would not say when to expect it.

Help strengthen Oregon's privacy protections and limit the use of dragnet surveillance. We are advocating for:•    SB 339 - Strict guidelines for the use of automatic license plate readers (ALPR) •    SB 640 - A warrant requirement to access email, phone, and location records •    SB 641 - A warrant requirement to search cell phones Advances in technology have made it too easy for law enforcement to track where you go, what you do, and who you are with. Most of the data the government collects is about innocent people who are not suspected of any crimes. Yet the government collects that personal information - or accesses it directly from your internet or cell phone provider – and can keep it for years on end.  Technology has changed but your rights haven't.

Montreal (AFP) - A Canadian charged for refusing to give border agents his smartphone passcode was expected Thursday to become the first to test whether border inspections can include information stored on devices.Alain Philippon, 38, risks up to a year in prison and a fine of up to Can$25,000 (US$20,000) if convicted of obstruction.He told local media that he refused to provide the passcode because he considered information on his smartphone to be "personal."Philippon was transiting through the port city of Halifax on his way home from a Caribbean vacation on Monday when he was selected for an in-depth exam.

"Philippon refused to divulge the passcode for his cell phone, preventing border services officers from their duties," Canada Border Services Agency said in an email.The agency insists that the Customs Act authorizes its officers to examine "all goods and conveyances including electronic devices, such as cell phones and laptops."But, according to legal experts, the issue of whether a traveler must reveal the password for an electronic device at a border crossing has not been tested in court. "(It's) one thing for them to inspect it, another thing for them to compel you to help them," Rob Currie, director of the Law and Technology Institute at Dalhousie University, told public broadcaster CBC.Philippon is scheduled to appear in court on May 12.

Nearly 20 years after Congress passed the Electronic Freedom of Information Act Amendments (E-FOIA), only 40 percent of agencies have followed the law's instruction for systematic posting of records released through FOIA in their electronic reading rooms, according to a new FOIA Audit released today by the National Security Archive at www.nsarchive.org to mark Sunshine Week. The Archive team audited all federal agencies with Chief FOIA Officers as well as agency components that handle more than 500 FOIA requests a year — 165 federal offices in all — and found only 67 with online libraries populated with significant numbers of released FOIA documents and regularly updated.

Congress called on agencies to embrace disclosure and the digital era nearly two decades ago, with the passage of the 1996 "E-FOIA" amendments. The law mandated that agencies post key sets of records online, provide citizens with detailed guidance on making FOIA requests, and use new information technology to post online proactively records of significant public interest, including those already processed in response to FOIA requests and "likely to become the subject of subsequent requests." Congress believed then, and openness advocates know now, that this kind of proactive disclosure, publishing online the results of FOIA requests as well as agency records that might be requested in the future, is the only tenable solution to FOIA backlogs and delays. Thus the National Security Archive chose to focus on the e-reading rooms of agencies in its latest audit. Even though the majority of federal agencies have not yet embraced proactive disclosure of their FOIA releases, the Archive E-FOIA Audit did find that some real "E-Stars" exist within the federal government, serving as examples to lagging agencies that technology can be harnessed to create state-of-the art FOIA platforms. Unfortunately, our audit also found "E-Delinquents" whose abysmal web performance recalls the teletype era.

E-Delinquents include the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House, which, despite being mandated to advise the President on technology policy, does not embrace 21st century practices by posting any frequently requested records online. Another E-Delinquent, the Drug Enforcement Administration, insults its website's viewers by claiming that it "does not maintain records appropriate for FOIA Library at this time."