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Apple joins Google, other tech companies in resisting ‘troubling’ FBI search warrant

Apple has joined Amazon and Microsoft in a court filing which supports Google’s decision to resist an FBI warrant demanding that it hand over emails stored outside the USA. The tech companies argue that this would set a ‘troubling’ precedent. As reported, the FBI served search warrants ordering Google to surrender emails belonging to suspects […]

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Proposed California State Assembly Bill could work against smartphone encryption

For California smartphone users, this hits pretty close to home. Assembly Bill 1681, a California State Assembly bill, would ban default encryption on all smartphones. The bill, introduced in January by Assemblymember Jim Cooper, would require any smartphone sold in California “to be capable of being decrypted and unlocked by its manufacturer or its operating […]

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iPhone Legal News security

Apple, FBI director James Comey to testify before Congress on March 1st

This is going to get even more interesting. It’s been announced that both FBI Director James Comey and Apple Inc Senior Vice President and General Counsel Bruce Sewell will testify at a March 1 congressional hearing on encryption issues, the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee said in a statement on Thursday.

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iPhone Legal News

White House backs petition for unlocking of phones after contract expires

If you were looking for a bit of positive news today, this might be it. Per Engadget, a recent ruling that effectively bans third-party phone unlocking has elicited 114,322 electronic signatures to the White House. Now a petition to the White House, which asks that DMCA protection of phone unlockers be reconsidered, has finally received […]

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Revised DMCA allows for unlocking of handsets, other exemptions

There’s exceptions to every rule and some of them get pretty interesting. Per the cool cats at Ars Technica, the Digital Millennium Copyright makes it illegal to “circumvent” digital rights management schemes. But when Congress passed the DMCA in 1998, it gave the Librarian of Congress the power to grant exemptions. The latest batch of […]