News

• Open source IT Dashboard tracks govt spending

  The United States Government has open sourced the IT Dashboard project, a Web-based application designed to track IT spending used by CIOs of government agencies.

• Chinese 'driving ICT agenda' in Africa: Wikileaks

  The latest US cable released by Wikileaks scorns Chinese ICT companies doing business in Kenya as "re-colonising Africa" with "good and cheap" equipment, even if the after-sales service is described as s***.

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  WikiLeaks founder praised by Pentagon Papers exposer

  Daniel Ellsberg, the man responsible for outing the now famous Pentagon Papers in 1971, and a group of ex-intelligence officers have thrown their weight behind WikiLeaks and its founder, saying the current attempt to label WikiLeaks' leaks as trivial compared to the Pentagon Papers is wrong.

• County will rip and replace ailing SAP system

  Officials in Marin County, California, decided on Tuesday to replace the county's ailing SAP ERP (enterprise resource planning) system, an option that would cost less than trying to fix widespread problems with the software, according to officials.

• US sends message to IT industry to play fair

  Wednesday's antitrust settlement between Intel and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission sends a strong message to IT companies not to exploit their dominance in a way that squashes competition or deprives consumers of choice, industry observers said.

• New Google Apps service targets gov't security needs

  Google on Monday unveiled a new version of Google Apps designed to meet the rigorous security needs of U.S. government agencies.

• Judge permanently shuts down ISP catering to spam, porn

  A U.S. district court judge has ordered the permanent closure of an Internet service provider long accused of hosting and distributing spam, spyware, child pornography and other illegal content, at the request of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.

• US lawmakers target The Pirate Bay, other sites

  The Congressional International Anti-Piracy Caucus, a group of U.S. lawmakers concerned with copyright infringement, has listed The Pirate Bay and five other Web sites as "notorious" file-sharing sites.

• Cloud service users face confusing legal landscape

  Cloud computing has great benefits for businesses but legal uncertainties threaten to hamper adoption, said a group of lawyers speaking during a seminar in Seattle this week.

• US trade agency to investigate Apple's patent complaint

  The U.S. International Trade Commission will investigate complaints by Apple that Eastman Kodak violated its patents related to digital imaging devices and software, the latest dispute in a long-standing patent skirmish between the two companies.

• Security guard pleads guilty to hacking his employer

  A former security guard has pleaded guilty to charges that he broke into his employer's computers while working the night shift at a Dallas hospital.

• Lawmakers unveil online privacy legislation

  Two U.S. lawmakers have released a draft bill that would require companies that collect personal information from customers to disclose how they collect and share that information, but several privacy and consumer groups said the proposal would legalize current privacy violations online.

• Gonzalez sentenced for multimillion-dollar credit card scam

  As his parents and sister silently wept, hacker mastermind Albert Gonzalez was sentenced Thursday in U.S. District Court to two concurrent 20-year stints in prison for his role in what prosecutors called the "unparalleled" theft of millions of credit and debit card numbers from major U.S. retailers.

• Proposed US law would single out cybercrime havens

  A bill introduced in the U.S. Senate Tuesday would compel the White House to identify international cybercrime havens and establish plans for cleaning them up.

• US expert: Chinese gov't likely behind massive cyberattacks

  The Chinese government is likely behind recent cyberattacks on U.S. government Web sites and on U.S. companies in an apparent effort to quash criticism of the government there, an expert on U.S. and Chinese relations said Wednesday.