Apple

Federal Judge Rules Google is Illegal Monopolist in Landmark Search Antitrust Decision

| Importance: 10/10

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled that Google illegally maintained monopolies in general search services and search text advertising, marking the most significant antitrust victory against a tech company since the Microsoft case in 1998. The ruling found that Google’s payments exceeding $26 …

Judge Amit Mehta Department of Justice Google Sundar Pichai Apple antitrust google monopoly regulatory-capture tech-monopoly +3 more
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DOJ Sues Apple for iPhone Monopoly Maintained Through Ecosystem Lock-In and Developer Restrictions

| Importance: 9/10

The Department of Justice, joined by 16 state attorneys general, filed a comprehensive antitrust lawsuit against Apple alleging the company illegally monopolizes smartphone markets through a systematic strategy of ecosystem lock-in, developer restrictions, and suppression of “super apps” …

Department of Justice Apple Tim Cook 16 State Attorneys General antitrust apple doj monopoly regulatory-capture +4 more
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DOJ Sues Google for Search Monopoly Through Exclusionary Contracts

| Importance: 10/10

On October 20, 2020, the United States Department of Justice, joined by eleven state Attorneys General, filed a landmark antitrust lawsuit against Google LLC for illegally monopolizing search and search advertising markets. The case represented the federal government’s most significant …

Department of Justice Google Sundar Pichai Apple Tim Cook +3 more google doj antitrust search-monopoly apple-deal +3 more
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UAE Targets Human Rights Defender Ahmed Mansoor with NSO Pegasus Spyware

| Importance: 9/10

On August 10-11, 2016, Ahmed Mansoor, an internationally recognized UAE-based human rights defender and recipient of the Martin Ennals Award, receives suspicious SMS messages on his iPhone promising “new secrets” about detainees tortured in UAE jails. Instead of clicking the malicious …

Ahmed Mansoor Citizen Lab NSO Group UAE Government Apple nso-group pegasus-spyware uae ahmed-mansoor citizen-lab +2 more
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FBI Works with Cellebrite to Crack San Bernardino Shooter's iPhone After Apple Refuses

| Importance: 9/10

The FBI engages Israeli mobile forensics company Cellebrite to crack the iPhone 5C used by San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook, after Apple refuses to create software to bypass the device’s security features. Following the December 2015 terrorist attack that killed 14 people, the FBI …

FBI Cellebrite Apple surveillance mobile-forensics encryption privacy terrorism
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FBI Orders Apple to Break iPhone Encryption in San Bernardino Case

| Importance: 9/10

A federal magistrate judge ordered Apple to create special software to bypass security features on an iPhone 5C used by San Bernardino terrorist Syed Rizwan Farook, triggering the most public battle over encryption in U.S. history. The FBI sought to unlock the device after the December 2015 attack …

Apple Tim Cook FBI James Comey Department of Justice encryption privacy-rights tech-resistance apple fbi +2 more
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Apple Announces iOS 8 Encryption Makes iPhones Unlockable Even by Apple

| Importance: 9/10

Apple announced that iOS 8 implements encryption so strong that the company itself cannot unlock iPhones or iPads, even when presented with a valid search warrant. This represented a dramatic escalation in the encryption debate and a direct response to NSA surveillance revelations, fundamentally …

Apple Tim Cook NSA FBI encryption privacy-rights tech-resistance apple nsa-surveillance +1 more
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Washington Post and Guardian Reveal NSA PRISM Program for Direct Server Access

| Importance: 10/10

The Washington Post and The Guardian simultaneously published explosive revelations about PRISM, a classified program allowing the National Security Agency and FBI to tap directly into the central servers of nine major U.S. internet companies to extract audio, video, photographs, emails, documents, …

Edward Snowden Glenn Greenwald Bart Gellman NSA Microsoft +4 more nsa-surveillance prism edward-snowden mass-surveillance tech-surveillance +1 more
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Google Fined Record $22.5M for Deliberately Overriding Safari Privacy Settings

| Importance: 9/10

On August 9, 2012, the Federal Trade Commission announced that Google would pay a record $22.5 million civil penalty—the largest ever levied against a single company in FTC history—to settle charges of deliberately circumventing Apple Safari browser privacy settings to track users without their …

Google Federal Trade Commission Apple Jon Leibowitz (FTC Chairman) Stanford Web Security Research google privacy-violation ftc tracking safari +3 more
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