James Farrell
Latest from James Farrell
Online shopping could cost more as Supreme Court rules states can demand sales taxes
People who often do their shopping online might see prices rising soon following a U.S. Supreme Court decision Thursday to allow states to implement sales taxes on goods sold through e-commerce. The 5-4 decision overturns older precedents regarding states not being allowed to demand a sales tax if the store had no physical presence. Forty states had asked ...
‘Dark day’: EU filtering proposal could change how we use the internet
It’s being called a “dark day” for the internet following a European parliament committee’s vote to overhaul the continent’s internet copyright laws. The legislation is still being drafted, but on Wednesday the European Parliament’s Committee on Legal Affairs voted in favor of articles 13 and 11. The latter means online platforms would have to pay ...
US carriers pledge not to sell customer location data after shady practices revealed
Verizon Communications Inc., AT&T Inc. and Sprint Corp. will no longer sell customer data to third-party data brokers after an investigation revealed such data had been leaked. The investigation found that California-based brokers LocationSmart and Zumigo had sold the location data of millions of Americans to their own corporate customers, making it possible to pinpoint ...
Pressure intensifies on Amazon to stop selling surveillance tech to the government
Amazon.com Inc. found itself in the eye of a storm in May when it was revealed that it was selling its facial recognition technology, “Rekognition,” to law enforcement. Now the pressure on the company has intensified. While China seems to be making hay with such technology, the possibility of a “surveillance state” may threaten American’s civil ...
Google invests $550M in Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com
Google Inc. will invest $550 million in China’s second largest e-commerce firm JD.com, a move that will give the company a bigger presence in the Asian market and potentially bolster its position against Amazon.com Inc. For its investment, Google will receive 27 million newly-issued class A ordinary shares in JD.com, which will give Google a less ...
The man in charge of Facebook’s public image is out of the door
Elliot Schrage, Facebook Inc.’s head of communications and policy, announced on Thursday that he was leaving the company. After more than a decade at Facebook, Schrage (pictured, right, with Mark Zuckerberg) is gone. Lately he has been a lodestone at the company, where he was tasked with dealing with the image of Facebook during numerous scandals ...
Ratcheting up surveillance, China will now track cars with radio chips
China is fast becoming the most closely surveilled country on the planet, with its omnipresent CCTV cameras and the use of facial recognition technology. Now it has decided its citizens’ cars should be monitored. Starting July 1, vehicles in the country will be fitted with radio-frequency identification chips, according to an article in the Wall ...
Facebook promises to get rid of misleading ads by businesses
As part of a long series of adjustments Facebook Inc. has been making to clean up the platform, it might now start banning businesses from running ads if enough people complain about them. In a blog post today, the company talked about how “bad shopping experiences,” such as receiving something different from what was advertised ...
Google say it won’t help weaponize AI, but it won’t quit working with the military
Google Inc. has tried to make it clear just how far it will go in helping the military with technology, following months of brouhaha over its involvement with the Pentagon in creating artificial intelligence surveillance to go through drone video footage. The company lost employees over the Project Maven work, which has become a bone ...
Facebook teams up with major US news media to tackle fake-news problem
Facebook Inc. is taking steps to diminish the criticism it has faced over the proliferation of “fake news” appearing in its news feed. The solution? Create your own news and do it with some of the largest news organizations in the U.S. The company is joining with some of the biggest names in America news ...