Earlier this month media reports of increased government surveillance of electronic communications have rattled the public on both sides of the Atlantic.  Here in the United States, the ACLU revealed on April 2 that it had surveyed about 200 law enforcement agencies across the country and found that many of them track cell phones without [...]

Or the future? Nokia has filed a patent for vibrating phone-alert magnetic tattoos. For real.

Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) has drafted legislation, the “Mobile Device Privacy Act,” that would require both smartphone manufacturers and carriers to inform customers of monitoring software when purchasing a smartphone.  Customers would have to give consent before the software can collect and transmit any information.  The legislation would also outline security policies that phone companies [...]

The New York Times (via The Hairpin) starts off 2012 with an entertaining, and potentially life-saving, guide for those of us who partake in the most dangerous activity of all – walking while texting.

 The new Research In Motion operating system may be potentially infringing on another company’s trademark. RIM made an announcement at a software conference recently that the new operating system for the next generation of BlackBerry phones will be named BBX. But a software company based in Albuquerque, N.M., holds the trademark for a slight variation [...]

Apple won a huge victory against HTC, the maker of Android phones in a year-long patent infringement case. HTC will of course appeal the decision. But in the meantime, we’ve avoided the mass hysteria that could have been caused by a ruling preventing iPhone and iPad imports to the US (which was the remedy sought [...]

The man responsible for hacking the accounts of more than 50 people, including celebrities Scarlett Johansson, Mila Kunis and Christina Aguilera, has been indicted on 26 counts including computer hacking for gain, aggravated identity theft and illegal wiretapping and faces a maximum sentence of 121 years in federal prison if convicted. The hacker, who is [...]

Sprint is taking a huge gamble in ordering 30.5 million of Apple’s newest iPhone so its network can finally establish an alliance with the country’s most popular smartphone. But does Sprint know that the new iPhone is, well, a bit underwhelming? In the past, each successive iPhone made significant technological advancements over the previous version. [...]

With the Apple iPhone 5 on the brink of release in the next week or so, Apple seems to have run into a bit of trouble with Samsung.  After Apple filed a U.S. patent suit against Samsung in April of this year, Samsung counter-sued in nine other countries alleging that Apple is using some of [...]

A number of consumer advocates and digital civil rights groups, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, have filed an emergency petition asking the FCC to review whether a government agency has the authority to close down channels of communication in the event of an emergency.  This petition comes a little over a month after the Bay [...]