By Larry Dignan | EBay said Tuesday that it is suing craigslist, Craig Newmark and Jim Buckmaster to “safeguard its four-year financial investment.” The auction giant bought a 28.4 percent stake in craigslist in 2004, but alleges that in January that Newmark and Buckmaster “adopted measures that, among other things, unfairly diluted eBay’s economic interest in craigslist by more than 10 percent.” I have ...

By Tomos Livingstone | A CONTROVERSIAL database that calculates council tax bands according to features like parking space and the view from the front room is to be used in Wales. The database is run by the Valuation Office Agency, the Government body that decides which homes fall into which council tax bands. It is already in use in England, which has ...

By DON CLARK A Los Angeles start-up says it has developed a way to dramatically expand the range of a popular wireless tracking technology, opening up many new applications for low-cost identification tags. Closely held Mojix Inc. says its enhancements to a technology known as RFID -- for radio frequency ...

Ewen Callaway New Scientist Long before you decided to read this story, your brain may have already said "click that link". By scanning the brains of test subjects as they pressed one button or another – though not a computer mouse – researchers pinpointed a signal that divulged the decision about seven seconds before people ever realised their choice. The discovery has implications for mind-reading, and the nature of free will. "Our ...

By Lewis Carter The internet could soon be made obsolete by a new "grid" system which is 10,000 times faster than broadband connections. Web could collapse as video demand soars Scientists in Switzerland have developed a lightning-fast replacement to the internet that would allow feature films and music catalogues to be downloaded within seconds. The invention could signal the end of the dreaded ...

Ron Paul Last month, the House amended the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to expand the government’s ability to monitor our private communications. This measure, if it becomes law, will result in more warrantless government surveillance of innocent American citizens. Though some opponents claimed that the only controversial part of this legislation was its grant of immunity to telecommunications companies, there is much more to be wary of in the bill. ...

Plans for the Department of Homeland Security to launch a new satellite surveillance system is coming under new criticism on Capitol Hill. Last week, Secretary Michael Chertoff said the satellite surveillance system would be soon ready to go. But now the Wall Street Journal reports Democrats are threatening to shut down the program unless the department does more to address privacy concerns. The satellite program is designed to provide ...

WASHINGTON, March 24 (UPI) -- The U.S. National Security Agency has released its own version of the open-source computer operating system Linux, which offers enhanced security for users. The new software was rolled out earlier this month to an e-mail list for users of Linux -- an operating system that many experts believe provides a more secure alternative to the ubiquitous Microsoft Windows. Linux is open-source, which means the core ...

By Clive Thompson Wired Trolling down the street in Manhattan, I suddenly hear a woman's voice. "Who's there? Who's there?" she whispers. I look around but can't figure out where it's coming from. It seems to emanate from inside my skull. Was I going nuts? Nope. I had simply encountered a new advertising medium: hypersonic sound. It broadcasts audio in a focused beam, so that only a ...

A DNA police technique used to hunt down a rapist is being lauded in the United States as an example of pioneering detective work. Avon and Somerset Police's first success using familial DNA searches to crack unsolved cases could now be adopted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In October 2007, 42-year-old Bridgwater man Geoffrey Godfrey was jailed for raping a 36-year-old woman in April 1993. The success of the force's ...

Brain expert warns of huge rise in tumours and calls on industry to take immediate steps to reduce radiation. Mobile phones could kill far more people than smoking or asbestos, a study by an award-winning cancer expert has concluded. He says people should avoid using them wherever possible and that governments and the mobile phone industry must take "immediate steps" to reduce exposure to their radiation. The study, by Dr Vini Khurana, ...

US intelligence agencies are using Google's technology to help its agents share information about their suspects Google has been recruited by US intelligence agencies to help them better process and share information they gather about suspects. Agencies such as the National Security Agency have bought servers on which Google-supplied search technology is used to process information gathered by networks of spies around the world. Google is also providing the search ...

A promise by the biggest broadband provider in the US that it would stop discriminating against users who swap music and video online has failed to quell a grassroots movement demanding legislation to protect equal access to the internet. Comcast, led by chairman and chief executive Brian Roberts, said it would stop interfering with the popular BitTorrent programs used for file sharing, ending a covert practice that was exposed last year ...

A brain imaging technique called fMRI may be being used as a "lie detector" by US intelligence agencies, despite concerns over unreliability and the possibility of abuse, a leading academic has claimed. Professor Jonathan Marks, a bioethicist at Pennsylvania State University in the US and a lawyer at London's Matrix Chambers, says in an article in the American Journal of Law and Medicine that he believes that the use of ...

Heiss - A CARELESS mistake by Microsoft programmers has revealed that special access codes prepared by the US National Security Agency have been secretly built into Windows. The NSA access system is built into every version of the Windows operating system now in use, except early releases of Windows 95 (and its predecessors). The discovery comes close on the heels of the revelations ...