Author: David Kravets

The Supreme Court is setting aside a petition from the Electronic Privacy Information Center that demanded the Department of Homeland Security release the US government's secret plan to shutter mobile phone service during disasters.

The top court, without comment, refused Monday to review a federal appeals court's May ruling that the DHS did not have to divulge the full contents of Standard Operating Procedure 303. That court held that the government could withhold the plan's contents under the Freedom of Information Act if its disclosure would "endanger" public safety.

The privacy group had demanded the document in 2011 following the shuttering of cell service in the San Francisco Bay Area subway system to quell a protest. The DHS refused to divulge the SOP 303 documents, which the appeals court described as a "unified voluntary process for the orderly shut-down and restoration of wireless services during critical emergencies such as the threat of radio-activated improvised explosive devices." (Here is a copy of a heavily redacted version (PDF) of the protocol that EPIC's lawsuit produced.)

A woman charged in connection to a string of armed jewelry store heists was arrested after the authorities analyzed cell-site data of telephone calls made during the nine-month robbery spree across the US Southeast, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said.

The bureau said in court documents that the 24-year-old suspect, Abigail Kemp, wore an earpiece and was talking into it during several of the robberies. Store employees were tied up and shoppers were held at gunpoint during the robberies. At one incident in Florida in August, in which the Georgia woman allegedly netted $400,000 in jewelry, the FBI said (PDF) that the suspect "was observed with a cellular telephone and wearing a cellular telephone earpiece during the robbery and was heard speaking to someone. At one point during the robbery, the earpiece fell out of the white female's ear and she promptly put it back in."

"Based on an analysis of cellular tower information obtained by law enforcement, telephone number (404) 630-2685 appeared at or near all of the robbery locations in Panama City Beach, Florida, Woodstock, Georgia, and Blufton, South Carolina, during the time that the robberies discussed above were being committed," according to an FBI arrest warrant. "A check of law enforcement databases revealed telephone number (404) 630-2685 is associated with an individual named Abigail Kemp." Ars called that number and left a voice message.

Electronic Arts is making good on its year-old promise that it would fight to protect its stated First Amendment right to produce one of the world's most popular video games, Madden NFL,  while using the likenesses of pro players without their permission.

The video game maker has now rushed from the virtual gridiron to the US Supreme Court, where EA claims it is being punished for producing a game that looks too real. Electronic Arts is asking the justices to review a federal appellate court decision from last year that found EA cannot claim that the use of the players' images were "incidental" and covered by the First Amendment.

"We hold EA's use of the former players' likenesses is not incidental because it is central to EA's main commercial purpose—to create a realistic virtual simulation of football games involving current and former NFL teams," Judge Raymond Fisher wrote (PDF) for the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals. The same San Francisco-based federal appeals court in 2013 sided with NCAA college football players in their lawsuit against EA, a ruling that resulted in a $40 million settlement.

Theft in professional baseball used to be about stealing bases and signs. But not any more—not in the era of big data.

The St. Louis Cardinals' former scouting chief pleaded guilty Friday in a Texas federal courtroom to five hacking counts (PDF) in connection to unlawfully accessing a highly confidential database of another Major League Baseball (MLB) team, the Houston Astros.

Court documents said Christopher Correa guessed the password to the Astros' database called "Ground Control." Court documents describe the data as including scouting reports, statistics and other information "to improve the team's scouting, communication, and decision-making for every baseball-related decision." (PDF) The record said that Correa, who faces years in prison when sentenced later this year, used a "variation" of the password that a departed Cardinals employee used before leaving to work for the Astros.

An Arizona lawmaker is proposing legislation to make it a crime to get too close to the police to film them in action. The proposal from Republican state Sen. John Kavanagh, which includes penalties of a $300 fine and up to six months in jail, comes as lawmakers nationwide grapple with a new YouTube society of sorts. In light of high-profile incidents, filming the police has become a routine endeavor.

Last year, a Texas lawmaker proposed similar legislation but scrapped it following widespread opposition. Colorado and California went to other extremes, approving measures protecting the public from police retaliation for filming them. For their part, police officers across the nation are taking to body cameras to fulfill filming goals as well.

"Basically what this law says is if the officer is engaged in law enforcement activity, so he's making an arrest or he's questioning a suspicious person, you can film, but you've got to stay back 20 feet," Kavanagh told The Associated Press. "The reason being when you get closer, you become a distraction, the officer doesn't know if you're a threat, and that jeopardizes everybody's safety, including the officer."

SAN FRANCISCO—A federal judge on Wednesday said that a monkey that swiped a British nature photographer's camera during an Indonesian jungle shoot and snapped selfies cannot own the intellectual property rights to those handful of pictures.

US District Judge William Orrick was tasked with hearing a lawsuit brought by the People For The Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). The Animal rights group was trying to represent the 6-year-old monkey, Naruto, in a case brought against the human photographer, David Slater, and his self-publishing platform, Blurb of San Francisco.

The monkey—via PETA's intervention—was seeking monetary damages for copyright infringement from Slater and the Blurb, the platform Slater used to publish the selfies. The US Copyright Office says Slater cannot own the rights to the handful of images snapped in the Tangkoko reserve on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi in 2011. Works "produced by nature, animals, or plants" cannot be granted copyright protection, the US Copyright Office said in 2014.

Lumos Labs, the company behind the popular Lumosity "Brain Training" program, is agreeing to pay $2 million to settle deceptive advertising claims brought by the Federal Trade Commission.

“Lumosity preyed on consumers’ fears about age-related cognitive decline, suggesting their games could stave off memory loss, dementia, and even Alzheimer’s disease," Jessica Rich, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a statement. “But Lumosity simply did not have the science to back up its ads.”

The FTC charged in its complaint (PDF) that Lumosity offered dozens of online or mobile games designed to train specific areas of the brain. The company claimed in its massive advertising campaign that the training would help customers reach their "full potential in every aspect of life," such as in school, at work, and in sports, and that it would protect against dementia and Alzheimer's disease. Among other things, the company also claimed that the training could help customers reduce the side effects of chemotherapy. Subscription prices ranged from $14.95 a month to $299.95 for a lifetime membership, the FTC said.

This post was updated at 3:21pm ET to reflect Tuesday's developments.

President Barack Obama on Tuesday announced that the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives will require those selling guns—whether at a flea market or online—to register as a firearms dealer and to perform background checks on gun purchasers.

The chief executive's announcement, during a teary-eyed national speech, comes following a spate of mass shootings nationwide and a month after the Senate voted against a measure that would have barred gun sales to people on federal terror watchlists. Another gun-control measure to expand background checks at gun shows, and for online purchases, also failed. Obama met Monday with Attorney General Loretta Lynch and James Comey, the FBI director.

The heirs to a poet who claim their mother wrote a poem popularized in the TV series The Big Bang Theory are suing CBS and others connected to the sitcom for allegedly using the "soft kitty" lyrics without their permission on at least eight episodes.

The lawsuit, filed last Wednesday in a New York federal court, claims that the lyrics beginning with "Soft kitty, warm kitty" were created by Edith Newlin some eight decades ago and published in 1937 in a book called Songs for the Nursery School. The suit says the book's copyright registration was renewed in 1964, which "served also to register and renew" Newlin's copyright.

"Defendants have used the Soft Kitty Lyrics without authorization in their entirety as an emblematic feature of The Big Bang Theory, contributing materially to the program's enormous success, and in promotion and advertising for the show," according to the suit (PDF). "Defendants have also used the Soft Kitty Lyrics in their entirety on a wide range of merchandise items, from t-shirts to air fresheners, as part of one of the largest global licensing and merchandising programs ever mounted for a live-action television series."

Congress on Friday adopted a $1.15 trillion spending package that included a controversial cybersecurity measure that only passed because it was slipped into the US government's budget legislation.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Republican of Wisconsin, inserted the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) into the Omnibus Appropriations Bill—which includes some $620 billion in tax breaks for business and low-income wage earners. Ryan's move was a bid to prevent lawmakers from putting a procedural hold on the CISA bill and block it from a vote. Because CISA was tucked into the government's overall spending package on Wednesday, it had to pass or the government likely would have had to cease operating next week.

Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat of Oregon, said the CISA measure, which backers say is designed to help prevent cyber threats, got even worse after it was slipped into the 2,000-page budget deal (PDF, page 1728). He voted against the spending plan.