An anonymous reader shares an ArsTechnica report: This fall, Microsoft claimed to have addressed anticompetitive cloud infrastructure complaints from a few smaller cloud services providers in Europe. In a blog, the company announced it would be partnering with small to mid-sized cloud providers to give Microsoft customers more options for non-Microsoft cloud infrastructure. Notably, these Microsoft licensing changes excluded its biggest cloud competitors, Google and Amazon, from participating as partners. This, unsurprisingly, drew prompt criticism from a trade group with members that include both the smaller cloud providers as well as Amazon. The Cloud Infrastructure Service Providers in Europe (CISPE) group claimed that Microsoft's response failed to "show any progress in addressing Microsoft's anti-competitive behavior."

Now, CISPE has filed its own complaint, urging the European Commission to open a formal investigation into how Microsoft is allegedly "irreparably damaging the European cloud ecosystem and depriving European customers of choice in their cloud deployments." According to CISPE, the group had no choice but to file the complaint because Microsoft allegedly has "not provided the detail, clarity or assurance that it truly intends to bring a swift end to its anti-competitive licensing practices." Rather than address complaints from smaller cloud providers like OVHcloud and Aruba -- which are also CISPE members -- CISPE suggests that Microsoft added new unfair practices this fall. These changes, CISPE Secretary General Francisco Mingorance told Ars, created "an existential issue for many of our members and without an investigation and action it could spell the end of a European cloud infrastructure sector."

Microsoft's proposed $69 billion takeover of games developer Activision Blizzard faces an in-depth European Union probe after regulators said they're concerned the software giant could thwart access to blockbuster franchises such as Call of Duty. From a report: The European Commission said in a statement on Tuesday that Microsoft may "foreclose access to Activision Blizzard's console and PC video games, especially to high-profile and highly successful games." The EU's merger watchdog set a March 23 deadline for its so-called phase 2 investigation.

The combination with Activision -- which owns some of the most popular games also including World of Warcraft and Guitar Hero -- would make Microsoft the world's third-largest gaming company and boost the Xbox maker's roster of titles for its Game Pass subscribers. But the deal is already facing protracted scrutiny from antitrust agencies across the globe. Microsoft last month accused the UK's Competition and Markets Authority of relying on "self-serving" input from rival Sony Group in its deliberations. The US Federal Trade Commission is also reviewing the transaction, including looking into how it might impact workers.

Spyware such as Pegasus is being deployed by state-run organizations across the European Union to snoop on politicians and journalists with virtually no EU-level oversight, according to a draft report for the bloc's parliament. From a report: The document on the use of surveillance spyware released on Tuesday said citizens can "safely assume that all EU member states have purchased one or more commercial spyware products" such as Pegasus, developed by Israel-based NSO Group. But, "no meaningful European oversight is in place; not to curb the illegal use of powerful spyware against individuals, nor to monitor the trade in these digital goods," lawmaker Sophie in 't Veld, the report's author, said in a statement. The 159-page document focuses on the use of spyware based on investigations of journalists and civil society groups and the parliament's own research missions.

Guests will soon be able to filter their search results by the total cost of the stay before taxes, which will include additional compulsory charges such as cleaning fees. The Verge reports: The appearance of these fees separate from nightly rates has long been criticized for deceptively making accommodations appear more affordable. Airbnb chief executive Brian Chesky shared the announcement on Twitter along with a video demonstrating how the planned "display total price" switch can be enabled to display the total cost of nightly rates and fees, with that price displaying on search results, map, price filter, and individual listing pages.

A full price breakdown of Airbnb's service fees, discounts, and taxes will also be made available, and the total price of accommodation will be prioritized over nightly rates in the Airbnb search algorithm. "The highest quality homes with the best total prices will rank higher in search results," says Chesky. "We started as an affordable alternative to hotels, and affordability is especially important today. During this difficult economic time, we need to help our Hosts provide great value to you." [...] The transparent pricing toggle is set to roll out sometime in December, alongside new pricing and discount tools for hosts to allow for more competitive rates. In other Airbnb-related news, the European Commission said Airbnb, along with other short-term home rental companies, will have to share data on the number of people using their platforms under proposed EU rules. "The new proposed rules will help to improve transparency on the identification and activity of short-term accommodation hosts, and on the rules they have to comply with, and will facilitate the registration of hosts," the Commission said in a statement.

"They will also tackle the current fragmentation in how online platforms share data and, ultimately, help prevent illegal listings. Overall, this will contribute to a more sustainable tourism ecosystem and support its digital transition," it said.

Geopolitics such as Russia's invasion of Ukraine has led to more damaging and widespread cybersecurity attacks in the year to July, EU cybersecurity agency ENISA said in its annual report on Thursday. From a report: ENISA's study follows concerns about the role of state actors and the growing range of threats to governments, companies and essential sectors such as energy, transport, banking and digital infrastructure. The agency said geopolitical situations - in particular the Russian invasion of Ukraine - were game-changers during the period under review. Zero-day exploits in which hackers exploit software vulnerabilities before developers have a chance to fix the flaws, as well as artificial intelligence-enabled disinformation and deepfakes resulted in more malicious and widespread attacks with more damaging impact, it said.

New EU rules came into force today that could compel Apple to let users access third-party app stores and permit app sideloading on iPhones and iPads, among other sweeping changes designed to make the digital sector fairer and more competitive. MacRumors reports: Under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), the rules will apply to tech giants that meet its "gatekeeper" criteria and force them to open up their various services and platforms to other companies and developers. Apple is almost certain to be classified as a "gatekeeper" due to the size of its annual turnover in the EU, its ownership and operation of platforms with a large number of active users, and its "entrenched and durable position" due to how long it has met these criteria, and will therefore be subject to the rules set out in the DMA.

The DMA could force Apple to make major changes to the way the App Store, Messages, FaceTime, and Siri work in Europe. For example, it could be forced to allow users to install third-party app stores and sideload apps, give developers the ability to closely interoperate with Apple's own services and promote their offers outside the App Store and use third-party payment systems, and access data gathered by Apple. One of the more recent additions to the DMA is the requirement to make messaging, voice-calling, and video-calling services interoperable. The interoperability rules theoretically mean that Meta apps like WhatsApp or Messenger could request to interoperate with Apple's iMessage framework, and Apple would be forced to comply within the EU.

The DMA was proposed by the European Commission in December 2020 and agreed by the European Parliament and the Council in record-time, in March 2022. It now moves into a six-month implementation phase and will start to apply on May 2, 2023. After that, within two months and at the latest by July 3, 2023, potential gatekeepers will have to inform the Commission of their core platform services if they meet the thresholds established by the DMA. Once the Commission has received the complete information, it will have 45 working days to make an assessment as to whether the company in question meets the thresholds and to designate them as gatekeepers. Following their designation, gatekeepers will have six months to comply with the requirements in the DMA, at the latest by March 6, 2024.

"Faced with a squeeze on profits and dwindling share prices, internet service providers are seeking ways of making additional income," reports CNBC.

One example? "Telecom groups are pushing European regulators to consider implementing a framework where the companies that send traffic along their networks are charged a fee to help fund mammoth upgrades to their infrastructure, something known as the 'sender pays' principle." Their logic is that certain platforms, like Amazon Prime and Netflix, chew through gargantuan amounts of data and should therefore foot part of the bill for adding new capacity to cope with the increased strain. "The simple argument is that telcos want to be duly compensated for providing this access and growth in traffic," media and telecoms analyst Paolo Pescatore, from PP Foresight, told CNBC.

The idea is garnering political support, with France, Italy and Spain among the countries coming out in favor. The European Commission is preparing a consultation examining the issue, which is expected to launch early next year.... Meta, Alphabet, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Netflix accounted for more than 56% of all global data traffic in 2021, according to a May report that was commissioned by European Telecommunications Network Operators' Association. An annual contribution to network costs of 20 billion euros ($19.50 billion) from tech giants could boost EU economic output by 72 billion euros, the report added.... U.S. tech giants should "make a fair contribution to the sizable costs they currently impose on European networks," the bosses of 16 telecom operators said in a joint statement last month....

The debate isn't limited to Europe, either. In South Korea, companies have similarly lobbied politicians to force "over-the-top" players like YouTube and Netflix to pay for network access.... Meanwhile, tech giants say they're already investing a ton into internet infrastructure in Europe — 183 billion euros between 2011 to 2021, according to a report from consulting firm Analysys Mason — including submarine cables, content delivery networks and data centers. Netflix offers telcos thousands of cache servers, which store internet content locally to speed up access to data and reduce strain on bandwidth, for free.

Despite warnings from intelligence agencies, Germany's government is set to approve a Chinese takeover of a German company's microchips production facility. Reuters reports: German outlet Handelsblatt reported Thursday that the deal -- which would see a takeover of the semiconductor production of Dortmund-based Elmos by Sweden's Silex, a wholly owned subsidiary of China's Sai Microelectronics -- was set to get the green light against security advice. The deal is currently being reviewed by the German economy ministry. A final decision on approval is expected within the next few weeks.

Elmos is one of Germany's smaller semiconductor companies, which mainly produces chips for the automotive industry. Silex plans to take over the plant for 85 million euros. Elmos will use the investment to give up its own production and instead process chips bought from contract manufacturers. The German government says that the technology Elmos uses is old and not to expect any outflow of critical know-how to China. The German security authorities, on the other hand, argued that they are not only concerned about exiting knowledge, but also that China is systematically increasing its chip production capacities. According to Handelsblatt, they advised the government to block the deal. The president of the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) also recently warned that China is deliberately buying into strategic industries in order to exert pressure on other countries.

The European Parliament and EU member countries have reached a deal to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars and vans by 2035. From a report: European Union negotiators sealed on Thursday night the first agreement of the bloc's "Fit for 55" package set up by the Commission to achieve the EU's climate goals of cutting emissions of the gases that cause global warming by 55 percent over this decade. The European Parliament said the deal is a "clear signal ahead of the UN COP27 Climate Change Conference that the EU is serious about adopting concrete laws to reach the more ambitious targets set out in the EU Climate Law." According to the bloc's data, transport is the only sector where greenhouse gas emissions have increased in the past 30 years, rising 33.5 percent between 1990 and 2019. Passenger cars are a significant polluter, accounting for 61 percent of total CO2 emissions from EU road transport.

A Google regulatory filing appears to have confirmed rumors in recent months that the European Union's competition division is looking into how it operates its smartphone app store, the Play Store. From a report: However TechCrunch understands that no formal EU investigation into the Play Store has been opened at this stage. The SEC Form 10-Q, filed by Google's parent Alphabet, does make mention of "formal" investigations being opened into Google Play's "business practices" back in May 2022 -- by both the European Commission and the U.K.'s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).

Thing is, the Commission's procedure on opening a formal competition investigation is to make a public announcement -- so the lack of that standard piece of regulatory disclosure suggests any EU investigation is at a more preliminary stage than Google's citation might imply. The U.K. antitrust regulator's probe of Google Play is undoubtedly a formal investigation -- having been publicly communicated by the CMA back in June -- when it said it would probe Google's rules governing apps' access to listing on its Play Store, looking at conditions it sets for how users can make in-app payments for certain digital products. While, back in August, Politico reported that the Commission had sent questionnaires probing Play Store billing terms and developer fees -- citing two people close to the matter. And potentially suggesting an investigation was underway.

Europe has more natural gas than it knows what to do with. So much, in fact, that spot prices briefly went negative earlier this week. From a report: For months, officials have warned of an energy crisis this winter as Russia -- once the region's biggest supplier of natural gas -- slashed supplies in retaliation for sanctions Europe imposed over its invasion of Ukraine. Now, EU gas storage facilities are close to full, tankers carrying liquefied natural gas (LNG) are lining up at ports, unable to unload their cargoes, and prices are tumbling. The price of benchmark European natural gas futures has dropped 20% since last Thursday, and by more than 70% since hitting a record high in late August. On Monday, Dutch gas spot prices for delivery within an hour -- which reflect real time European market conditions -- dipped below 0 Euro, according to data from the Intercontinental Exchange.

Prices turned negative because of an "oversupplied grid," Tomas Marzec-Manser, head of gas analytics at the Independent Commodity Intelligence Services (ICIS), told CNN Business. It is a hugely surprising turn of events for Europe, where households and businesses have been clobbered by eye-watering rises in the price of one of its most important energy sources over the past year. Massimo Di Odoardo, vice president of gas and LNG research at Wood Mackenzie, says unseasonably mild weather is largely responsible for the dramatic change in fortune. "In countries like Italy, Spain, France, we're seeing temperatures and [gas] consumption closer to August and early September [levels]," he told CNN Business. "Even in countries in the Nordics, the UK and Germany, consumption is way below the average for this time of the year," he added.

Apple has given its most direct confirmation yet that a USB-C-equipped iPhone will happen, now that the European Union is mandating that all phones sold in its member countries use the connector if they have a physical charger. From a report: When asked by The Wall Street Journal if the company would replace Lightning, Apple's senior vp of worldwide marketing, Greg Joswiak, answered by saying: "Obviously, we'll have to comply; we have no choice."

WSJ brought the law up during a talk with Joswiak and software VP Craig Federighi at the WSJ's Tech Live conference and followed up by asking when we can expect to see USB-C on an iPhone. Joswiak replied, "the Europeans are the ones dictating timing for European customers." Currently, the law dictates that "all mobile phones and tablets" will have to use USB-C by "autumn 2024." Joswiak refused to answer whether the company would include the connector on phones sold outside the EU. But he made it abundantly clear that Apple isn't happy about being legally coerced into making the switch. Before acknowledging that the company must comply with the law, Joswiak went into a long explanation about how Apple has historically preferred to go its own way and trust its engineers rather than be forced into adopting hardware standards by lawmakers.

France has become the latest country to pull out of the controversial energy charter treaty (ECT), which protects fossil fuel investors from policy changes that might threaten their profits. The Guardian reports: Speaking after an EU summit in Brussels on Friday, French president, Emmanuel Macron, said: "France has decided to withdraw from the energy charter treaty." Quitting the ECT was "coherent" with the Paris climate deal, he added. Macron's statement follows a recent vote by the Polish parliament to leave the 52-nation treaty and announcements by Spain and the Netherlands that they too wanted out of the scheme.

The European Commission has proposed a "modernization" of the agreement, which would end the writ of the treaty's secret investor-state courts between EU members. That plan is expected to be discussed at a meeting in Mongolia next month. A French government official said Paris would not try to block the modernization blueprint within the EU or at the meeting in Mongolia. "But whatever happens, France is leaving," the official said. While France was "willing to coordinate a withdrawal with others, we don't see that there is a critical mass ready to engage with that in the EU bloc as a whole," the official added.

The French withdrawal will take about a year to be completed, and in that time, discussion in Paris will likely move on to ways of neutralizing or reducing the duration of a "sunset clause" in the ECT that allows retrospective lawsuits. Progress on that issue is thought possible by sources close to ongoing legal negotiations on the issue.

"Europe is aiming to launch a technology demonstration satellite for secure, quantum-encrypted communications in 2024," reports Space.com, "with a view to developing a larger constellation." The satellite, Eagle-1, will be the first space-based quantum key distribution (QKD) system for the European Union and could lead to an ultrasecure communications network for Europe, according to a statement from the European Space Agency (ESA).

Eagle-1 will spend three years in orbit testing the technologies needed for a new generation of secure communications. The satellite will demonstrate the "feasibility of quantum key distribution technology — which uses the principles of quantum mechanics to distribute encryption keys in such a way that any attempt to eavesdrop is immediately detected — within the EU using a satellite-based system," according to ESA...

"European security and sovereignty in a future world of quantum computing is critical to the success of Europe and its Member States," Steve Collar, CEO of SES, said in the statement. He added that the goal is "to advance quantum communications and develop the Eagle-1 system to support secure and sovereign European networks of the future."
SES will be leading a consortium of more than 20 European countries, according to the ESA's statement: Eagle-1 will demonstrate the feasibility of quantum key distribution technology — which uses the principles of quantum mechanics to distribute encryption keys in such a way that any attempt to eavesdrop is immediately detected — within the EU using a satellite-based system. To do so, the system will build on key technologies developed under ESA's Scylight programme, with the aim of validating vital components supplied within the EU....

It will allow the EU to prepare for a sovereign, autonomous cross-border quantum secure communications network.

The system will initially use an upgraded optical ground terminal from the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) alongside a new optical ground terminal to be developed by a team from the Netherlands. The Eagle-1 platform satellite from Italian company Sitael will carry a quantum-key payload built by Tesat Spacecom of Germany and will be operated by Luxembourg-headquartered SES.

Apple AirTags "are allowed on Lufthansa flights," Lufthansa announced this week — the opposite of their position last Sunday, remembers SFGate: The airline insisted the tech was "dangerous" and referred to International Civil Aviation Organization guidelines (set by the United Nations's specialized agency that recommends air transport policy) stipulating that baggage trackers are subject to the dangerous goods regulations. ["Furthermore, due to their transmission function, the trackers must be deactivated during the flight if they are in checked baggage," Lufthansa added on Twitter, "and cannot be used as a result"]
Ars Technica reports on the public relations debacle that then ensued: Outcry, close reading of the relevant sections (part 2, section C) of ICAO guidelines, and accusations of ulterior motives immediately followed. AppleInsider noted that the regulations are meant for lithium-ion batteries that could be accidentally activated; AirTag batteries are not lithium-ion, are encased, and are commonly used in watches, which have not been banned by any airline. The site also spoke with "multiple international aviation experts" who saw no such ban in ICAO regulations. One expert told the site the ban was "a way to stop Lufthansa from being embarrassed by lost luggage...."

Numerous people pointed out that Lufthansa, in its online World Shop, sells Apple AirTags. One Ars staffer noted that Lufthansa had previously dabbled in selling a smart luggage tag, one that specifically used RFID and BLE to program an e-ink display with flight information. On Tuesday, Apple told numerous publications that it, too, disagreed with Lufthansa's interpretation. It went unsaid but was strongly implied that a company that is often the world's largest by revenue would take something like air travel regulations into consideration when designing portable find-your-object devices....

Representatives from the Federal Aviation Administration and Transportation Security Administration said early this week that Bluetooth-based trackers were allowed in checked luggage. The European Union Aviation Safety Agency said its regulations could "not in itself ban or allow" trackers, but airlines could determine their own guidelines.

On Wednesday, Lufthansa walked back the policy under the cover of "The German Aviation Authorities (Luftfahrtbundesamt)," which the airline said in a tweet "shared our risk assessment, that tracking devices with very low battery and transmission power in checked luggage do not pose a safety risk." This would seem to imply either that Lufthansa was acting on that authority's ruling without having previously mentioned it, or that Lufthansa had acted on its own and has now found an outside actor to approve their undoing.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: The Motion Picture Association (MPA) has sent its latest overview of notorious piracy markets to the US Government. The Hollywood group, which also represents Netflix, lists a broad variety of online piracy threats. Aside from traditional pirate sites, it also includes domain registries, hosting providers, advertisers, and apps. [...] The MPA report typically provides a detailed overview of the piracy landscape. This year, the USTR further asked rightsholders to explain how piracy impacts US workers. According to the movie industry group, the effect is significant. "In 2020, there were an estimated 137.2 billion visits to film and TV piracy sites globally, which cost the U.S. economy at least $29.2 billion in lost revenue each year. Specifically, piracy has been estimated to reduce employment in our industry between 230,000 and 560,000 jobs," MPA writes, citing external research. The MPA notes that piracy is a global problem that requires cooperation from the broader Internet ecosystem. Services that see themselves as neutral intermediaries, operating parts of the core Internet infrastructure, should take responsibility. "All stakeholders in the internet ecosystem -- including hosting providers, DNS providers, cloud services, advertising networks, payment processors, social networks, and search engines -- should actively seek to reduce support for notoriously infringing sites," MPA writes.

The industry group views Cloudflare as part of this group and mentions the US company by name in its submission. "Cloudflare's customers include some of the most notorious, longstanding pirate websites in the world, including the massively popular streaming site cuevana3.me and The Pirate Bay," MPA notes, adding that repeated notices of infringement elicited no action on Cloudflare's part. The notorious markets list is limited to non-US operations, so Cloudflare itself isn't one of the MPA's targets. Various other Internet services are, including several third-party intermediaries. The MPA's list of notorious markets calls out domain name registries, including the Russian .RU registry, and the companies that maintain the records for the .CH, .CC, .IO, .ME and .TO domain names. These continue to keep pirate sites on board, despite numerous complaints. The same is true for the payment provider VoguePay, which is reportedly quite popular among IPTV services. In addition, advertisers such as 1XBET and Propeller Ads are called out as well. The latter company rebutted MPA's accusations last year but that didn't prevent it from being highlighted again.

Hosting companies are also cited as intermediaries that could and should do more. Instead, some find themselves appealing to pirate services with products such as "bulletproof" hosting. Squitter.eu and Amaratu are two such examples, the MPA reports. In addition to third-party intermediaries, there is also a category of services that caters to pirates directly. These "piracy as a service" (PaaS) companies offer tools that allow people to start a pirate site with minimal effort. "PaaS encompasses a suite of often off-the-shelf services that make it easy for would-be pirates without any technical knowledge to create, operate, and monetize a fully functioning pirate operation," MPA writes. [...] Actual pirate sites themselves are also mentioned, including the usual suspects The Pirate Bay, RARBG and YTS. In addition to torrent sites, the MPA also lists direct download hubs, streaming portals and linking sites, including Uptobox.com, Fmovies.to and Egy.best. Various dedicated piracy apps get a mention as well, and the MPA further includes a long list of unauthorized IPTV services. The anti-piracy group says that it has identified more than a thousand pirate IPTV platforms, so the list provided to the USTR is certainly not exhaustive. In fact, the MPA says that all companies, sites, and services are part of a broader piracy problem. Those flagged in the MPA's report are just examples of some of the worst offenders, nothing more. A list of all sites and services that are highlighted and categorized in MPA's notorious markets submission (PDF) can be found in the article.

"Apple won a massive reduction in a 1.1 billion euro ($1.1 billion) antitrust fine from French competition regulators," reports CNBC, "in a blow to the ambitions of European authorities to crack down on the dominance of Big Tech companies." The Paris appeals court on Thursday lowered the fine to 371.6 million euros, roughly a third of the value of the original penalty and a reduction of 728.4 million euros, an Apple spokesperson confirmed.According to Reuters, the amount was slashed because the court decided to drop one of the charges related to price fixing, and lower the rate originally used to calculate the fine....

In 2020, the French competition watchdog fined Apple 1.1 billion euros for allegedly pressuring premium resellers into fixing prices of non-iPhone products, such as its Mac and iPad computers, and abusing the economic dependence of its outside resellers. Tech Data and Ingram Micro, two global electronics wholesalers, were also fined 76.1 million euros and 62.9 million euros, respectively. The regulator accused Apple, Tech Data and Ingram Micro of agreeing not to compete and preventing independent resellers from competing with each other, "thereby sterilizing the wholesale market for Apple products."
Apple response, according to Reuters: "While the court correctly reversed part of the French Competition Authority's decision, we believe it should be overturned in full and plan to appeal.

"The decision relates to practices from more than a decade ago that even the (French authority) recognised are no longer in use."

EU antitrust regulators are asking games developers whether Microsoft will be incentivized to block rivals' access to "Call of Duty" maker Activision Blizzard's best-selling games, according to an EU document seen by Reuters. From the report: EU antitrust regulators are due to make a preliminary decision by Nov. 8 on whether to clear Microsoft's proposed $69 billion acquisition of Activision. The EU competition enforcer also asked if Activision's trove of user data would give the U.S. software giant a competitive advantage in the development, publishing and distribution of computer and console games, the EU document shows. The planned acquisition, the biggest in the gaming industry, will help Microsoft better compete with leaders Tencent and Sony. After its decision next month the European Commission is expected to open a four-month long investigation, underscoring regulatory concerns about Big Tech acquisitions.

Games developers, publishers and distributors were asked whether the deal would affect their bargaining power regarding the terms for selling console and PC games via Microsoft's Xbox and its cloud game streaming service Game Pass. Regulators also wanted to know if there would be sufficient alternative suppliers in the market following the deal and also in the event Microsoft decides to make Activision's games exclusively available on its Xbox, its Games Pass and its cloud game streaming services. They asked if such exclusivity clauses would reinforce Microsoft's Windows operating system versus rivals, and whether the addition of Activision to its PC operating system, cloud computing services and game-related software tools gives it an advantage in the video gaming industry. They asked how important the Call of Duty franchise is for distributors of console games, third-party multi-game subscription services on computers and providers of cloud game streaming services.

The European Union and U.S. moved a step closer to securing the privacy of transatlantic data flows as President Joe Biden moved to end years of uncertainty and allow thousands of companies to legally move customer data across the Atlantic. From a report: Biden signed an executive order Friday that'll create an independent court system in the US for EU citizens who think their data was unlawfully accessed or used by intelligence agencies. Decisions by the Data Protection Review Court will be binding and force the likes of the CIA to limit data collection to the "pursuit of defined national security objectives," according to a White House fact sheet.

The EU Court of Justice in 2020 toppled the so-called Privacy Shield over concerns that user data wasn't safe from prying eyes once on US soil. The ruling meant thousands of businesses that ship commercial data to the U.S. had to figure out an alternative and EU-U.S. negotiators were forced back to the drawing table. The prospect of no accord led Meta Platforms to say it would may have no choice but to pull its Facebook and Instagram services from the EU. The order is designed to address concerns about the ability of American spies to access EU data, which led to two previous data transfer accords being struck down by the bloc's top court. The EU and US have been working on a new deal for months and in March reached a breakthrough with an agreement in principle. The order gives the European Commission a tool to "restore an important, accessible, and affordable" data transfer mechanism while also providing greater legal certainty for companies shipping data across the Atlantic, the White House said.

Members of the European Parliament voted to force companies such as Apple to adapt products that don't already feature a standard USB-C charger to use one. This would include iPhones, in Apple's case. From a report: A total of 602 lawmakers voted for the plan on Tuesday, with 13 against, and eight abstaining. The deal, provisionally agreed in June between the commission and the European Union's 27 countries, still needs to get the final sign-off from the EU member states. The rules are likely to be written into law at the beginning of 2023.