Mike Wheatley
Latest from Mike Wheatley
Google Apps Banned in Sweden Over Privacy Concerns
In a ruling that went almost unnoticed last week amidst the furore of the PRISM scandal in the US, Sweden’s Datainspektionen (data privacy watchdog) has stepped in to ban a local authority from using Google Apps, saying the company’s privacy policy is not compatible with the country’s privacy laws. Following this decision, the data protection ...
Facebook To Announce News Reader on June 20?
Facebook already kicks ass in the world of social media, and now it’s setting its site on dominating news consumption as well. Various reports over the weekend suggest that Facebook is now developing its own RSS service, presumably with half an eye on the legions of Google Reader users who’ll suddenly be left without a ...
PRISM Scandal Rumbles On: Facebook, Microsoft & Apple Come Clean Over Data Requests
And so the drama over the NSAgate scandal rumbles on. This weekend, three technology companies implicated in the so-called PRISM spying program released limited information about the number of surveillance requests they had received over the course of the last year, in an apparent effort to show that they aren’t hiding anything. Google made a ...
Google Announces Big Data Plan To Eradicate Child Porn
For all the benefits it brings to the world, the internet also has a much darker side to it that only causes harm. And of these shady corners of the world wide web, few will disagree that none are more abhorrent than those sites which harbor child pornography. But despite growing awareness of this problem ...
Hats Off to Edward Snowden: His Sacrifice Gives You A Choice
A lot has been said about Edward Snowden, the NSA whistleblower who revealed its secret PRISM spying program to The Guardian newspaper last week. Some have praised the guy as a hero for exposing what really is an outrageous beach of web user’s privacy rights, while others have taken a different stance and called for ...
DuckDuckGo, The PRISM-Proof Search Engine That the NSA Just Can’t Track
In the wake of the NSA’s spying revelations, a golden opportunity has arisen for lesser known web services that offer guarantees against government snooping. Admittedly, a large number of web users will probably never leave the likes of Google and Microsoft simply because they don’t care all that much about their privacy anyway, but there’s ...
EU To Investigate Claims Google Unfairly Licenses Android
Just weeks after Google reached a legally-binding agreement with the EU following a long-winded antitrust case, the company is now reported to be facing a new investigation by European authorities into allegations surrounding its Android smartphone operating system. Rivals of Google, including Microsoft, Nokia and FairSearch.org, argue that Google is licensing Android to phone manufacturers ...
US Government Spying Extends Far Beyond PRISM
Just when we thought these spying shenanigans couldn’t get any worse, well… They just did. A report by Michael Riley in Bloomberg today suggests that the nine technology firms supplying the NSA’s PRISM program with data are in fact just the tip of the iceberg, with the stunning revelation that thousands of technology, manufacturing and ...
Facebook Opens a REALLY COLD New Data Center in Sweden
Facebook has just announced the opening of a new data center in the frosty climes of Lulea, in Northern Sweden, right on the edge of the Arctic Circle, as it looks for novel ways to reduce operating costs whilst boosting its environmental friendliness. The new data center becomes the first such facility that Facebook’s opened ...
Crowdsourcing Takes Off in China with Danger Maps & More
Not to be outdone by our own crowdsourcing efforts recently, Chinese netizens are getting in on the act as well. A new project called Danger Maps that taps on the knowledge of China’s 564 million web users is helping to draw attention to pollution hot spots in the country, and is now set to expand ...