EFF guns for AT&T over privacy of communication

US comms giant AT&T has been sued by electronic civil rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) for its part in aiding the National Security Agency's (NSA) programme to intercept communications across the US. The EFF is suing AT&T on the basis that its activities violate communications privacy laws. It alleges that the company allowed the NSA to intercept traffic over its network and gave it access to its 300 terabyte 'Daytona' database, which includes customer data on emails and phone calls made. ...more

321 bust

321 Studios, which has been under sustained legal attack from movie studios, has raised the white flag and gone out of business. The company, which made DVD-X Copy and DVD Copy Plus had been sued by the studios on the grounds that the products assisted piracy. The studios alleged that circumventing the CSS copy protection built into DVDs was an offence under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act. ...more

IBM and Adobe lock up PDFs

Acrobat 6.0 keys into IBM security software IBM and Adobe have announced new security features that take advantage of Adobe's Acrobat 6.0 and IBM's encryption utilities. ...more

BenQ to fire up an external USB 16x DVD burner

BenQ has unveiled an external USB2.0-interface 16x DVD Dual DL (single-sided double-layer) burner (EW164B) equipped with BenQ's proprietary SolidBurn technology. The product will be launched first in the Taiwan market later this month at a tentative retail price of NT$3,799 ($118), according to the company. ...more

Leaked PDF hints at touch-screen iPod

Apple has briefly leaked a mention of a touch-screen iPod in a PDF on the Developer section of its website. According to InfoWorld, the PDF referred to support for iPod Notes on 'touch-screen models.' The document has since been altered to say: 'The Notes feature is supported for iPod models beginning with third-generation iPod (dock connector) models with touch wheel. ...more