"Russia is advancing a new law allowing it to take control of the local businesses of western companies that decide to leave in the wake of Moscow's invasion of Ukraine," reports Reuters, "raising the stakes for multinationals trying to exit." The law, which could be in place within weeks, will give Russia sweeping powers to intervene where there is a threat to local jobs or industry, making it more difficult for western companies to disentangle themselves quickly unless they are prepared to take a big financial hit. The law to seize the property of foreign investors follows an exodus of western companies, such as Starbucks, McDonald's and brewer AB InBev, and increases pressure on those still there.

It comes as the Russian economy, increasingly cut-off due to western sanctions, plunges into recession amid double-digit inflation.... The bill paves the way for Russia to appoint administrators over companies owned by foreigners in "unfriendly" countries, who want to quit Russia as the conflict with Ukraine drags down its economy. Moscow typically refers to countries as "unfriendly" if they have imposed economic sanctions on Russia, meaning any firms in the European Union or United States are at risk.

The European Commission proposed toughening its own stance on Wednesday to make breaking EU sanctions against Russia a crime, allowing EU governments to confiscate assets of companies and individuals that evade restrictions against Moscow.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for submitting the story.

An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from an opinion piece, written by Macworld's Michael Simon: Apple killed its Touch Bar on the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro last year, but PC makers seem determined to prove the company wrong. First Dell introduced the XPS 13 Plus which sports a "new capacitive touch experience that allows you to switch between media and function keys easily." The laptop is available for purchase but back-ordered for weeks, and there haven't been any reviews so we don't know for sure how it will be received, but Dell's touch bar concept seems even less useful than Apple's: the buttons are static, they merely float above the actual keyboard, and they don't appear to add any functionality. Then Dell added a touch bar to the trackpad on the Latitude 9330. [...]

Now there's a new PC touch bar, this time on the Voyager a1600, Corsair's first-ever gaming laptop. Corsair hasn't named or even officially announced the new feature -- it only appeared as a sneak peek -- but the company told The Verge that the strip features "10 easy-access customizable S-key shortcut buttons." [...] Corsair's Touch Bar doesn't replace the row of function keys but it is in an odd location -- on the hinge below the display. Even in pictures, it looks incredibly uncomfortable to reach. According to renders, you can still access the Touch Bar when the laptop is closed, which seems like an accident waiting to happen (not to mention a battery drain).

But the biggest question I have is: why? No one shed a tear for the Touch Bar when it was killed. While it has its merits, it was never a proper pro-level feature and the implementation didn't evolve past the original idea. It was too skinny, lacked tactile feedback, required constant scrolling, and didn't actually save time. It looked nice, but even Apple didn't seem to know what to do with it. The MacBook Pro Touch Bar was one of Apple's most polarizing features and it never really caught on with developers. Maybe a niche use like gaming or video conferencing will have better results, but ultimately the Touch Bar, Apple's or otherwise, is a failed concept that should stay in the past.

A new website that published leaked emails from several leading proponents of Britain's exit from the European Union is tied to Russian hackers, according to a Google cybersecurity official and the former head of UK foreign intelligence. From a report: The website - titled "Very English Coop d'Etat" - says it has published private emails from former British spymaster Richard Dearlove, leading Brexit campaigner Gisela Stuart, pro-Brexit historian Robert Tombs, and other supporters of Britain's divorce from the EU, which was finalized in January 2020. The site contends that they are part of a group of hardline pro-Brexit figures secretly calling the shots in the United Kingdom. "I am well aware of a Russian operation against a Proton account which contained emails to and from me," said Dearlove, referring to the privacy-focused email service ProtonMail.

The Spanish government on Tuesday announced plans to invest $13.2 billion to build microchips in the country and "help reduce the dependence of Span and the European Union on other suppliers," reports the Associated Press. From the report: Speaking in Madrid, Deputy Prime Minister and Economy Minister Nadia Calvino said the five-year plan is aimed at enabling Spain to cover every area in the design and production of microchips, which are now considered key to all areas of modern industry. She said the plan was among the most ambitious of the Spanish government's projects to reboot the economy after the COVID-19 pandemic and that it would have an effect on other sectors.

The project was directed at boosting the EU's weak position in microchip production, which Calvino said represented some 10% of the world total. She said this led to a great dependence on a small number of major producers such as Taiwan, the United States, South Korea, Japan and China. Calvino added that "the war in Ukraine makes it a priority to reinforce strategic autonomy in energy, technology, food production as well as cyber security."

All new buildings in the EU would be fitted with solar panels on their roofs under plans to turbocharge a drive for renewable energy to replace the continent's need for Russian oil and gas. From a report: The European Commission wants half the bloc's energy to come from renewable sources by 2030, more than double the current figure. The total cost of achieving this would reach hundreds of billions of euros but be offset by an annual $88.6bn saving on imported fuel, according to a copy of the plan seen by the Financial Times and dubbed RepowerEU. One proposal is to "introduce an obligation to have rooftop solar installations for all new buildings and all existing buildings of energy performance class D and above [the most energy-intensive]." The original EU plan to cut carbon emissions by 55 per cent of their 1990 level by 2030 called for a target of 40 per cent renewables. But the war in Ukraine has spurred Brussels to seek energy independence from Russia, which accounts for 40 per cent of the region's gas and about 20 per cent of its oil supplies. Householders will pay an average of $326 extra a year under the plans.

"The developer of the open source email client FairEmail pulled all of his applications from Google Play and announced that he would stop development," reports gHacks. The announcement comes shortly after the developer received an email from Google stating that they believed the app was spyware. From the report: FairEmail was a popular email client for Google's Android operating system that was free to use. It was privacy-friendly, had no limitations in regards to email accounts that users could set up in the app, supported unified inbox, conversation threading, two-way synchronizing, support for OpenPGP, and a lot more. Marcel Bokhorst, the developer of the application, announced major changes to the project yesterday on XDA Developers.

Earlier that week, Bokhorst received a policy violation email from Google stating that Google believed that the FairEmail application was spyware. The full statement has not been published, but Bokhorst believes that Google might have misinterpreted the use of favicons in the app. He resubmitted a new version of the application that had the use of favicons removed. The appeal he received as a response "resulted in a standard answer". While the content of the answer is unclear, it appears to have been a generic answer that Google Play Store developers have been frustrated with for a long time. Bokhorst decided to pull the application and all of his other applications from the Google Play Store. The apps won't be maintained and supported anymore according to the info.

Other factors played a role in Bokhorst's decision, including the discrepancy between answering thousands of support questions per month and the application's revenue, and the inability to do something against unfair reviews in the Google Play Store. He considered keeping the applications on GitHub, but this would result in an 98% loss of audience. Google also recently forced Total Commander's developer to remove the ability to install APKs from the File Manager.

If you're looking for an alternative email client, gHacks recommends the open-source app K-9 Mail.

Microsoft is relaxing business terms for its cloud computing service in an attempt to appease complaints from rivals and avoid a full antitrust probe in Brussels. Financial Times: The move follows concerns from rival cloud providers that Microsoft is using anti-competitive practices to draw customers to its Azure cloud computing platform and away from competitors. On Wednesday, Microsoft president Brad Smith said the tech giant was taking steps that were "very broad but not exhaustive" as he sought to address concerns from regulators and competitors. Smith said the changes being introduced were "grounded in feedback" he had received from multiple cloud providers across Europe.

In a blog post, he wrote: "Some of the most compelling feedback for me personally came from a CEO who said that he felt that he 'was a victim of friendly fire in Microsoft's competition with Amazon.' It was hard to hear this -- but he was right." [...] Under the new terms, customers will not be forced to buy an additional licence if they have already purchased Microsoft's cloud services. These new rules only apply if the services are moved to a European cloud provider and not to US rivals such as AWS and Google's cloud services. Smith said that in its fight against AWS, which dominates the cloud market, Microsoft had overlooked the effects some of its business terms were having on its cloud provider clients.

Tracking, marketing, and analytics firms have been exfiltrating the email addresses of internet users from web forms prior to submission and without user consent, according to security researchers. Some of these firms are said to have also inadvertently grabbed passwords from these forms. The Register reports: In a research paper scheduled to appear at the Usenix '22 security conference later this year, authors Asuman Senol (imec-COSIC, KU Leuven), Gunes Acar (Radboud University), Mathias Humbert (University of Lausanne) and Frederik Zuiderveen Borgesius, (Radboud University) describe how they measured data handling in web forms on the top 100,000 websites, as ranked by research site Tranco. The boffins created their own software to measure email and password data gathering from web forms -- structured web input boxes through which site visitors can enter data and submit it to a local or remote application.

Providing information through a web form by pressing the submit button generally indicates the user has consented to provide that information for a specific purpose. But web pages, because they run JavaScript code, can be programmed to respond to events prior to a user pressing a form's submit button. And many companies involved in data gathering and advertising appear to believe that they're entitled to grab the information website visitors enter into forms with scripts before the submit button has been pressed.

"Our analyses show that users' email addresses are exfiltrated to tracking, marketing and analytics domains before form submission and without giving consent on 1,844 websites in the EU crawl and 2,950 websites in the US crawl," the researchers state in their paper, noting that the addresses may be unencoded, encoded, compressed, or hashed depending on the vendor involved. Most of the email addresses grabbed were sent to known tracking domains, though the boffins say they identified 41 tracking domains that are not found on any of the popular blocklists. "Furthermore, we find incidental password collection on 52 websites by third-party session replay scripts," the researchers say.

Apple is testing future iPhone models that replace the current Lightning charging port with the more prevalent USB-C connector, Bloomberg reported Friday, citing people with knowledge of the situation, a move that could help the company conform with looming European regulations. From the report: In addition to testing models with a USB-C port in recent months, Apple is working on an adapter that would let future iPhones work with accessories designed for the current Lightning connector, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the matter is private. If the company proceeds with the change, it wouldn't occur until 2023 at the earliest. Apple is planning to retain the Lightning connector for this year's new models.

EU countries and lawmakers agreed on Friday to tougher cybersecurity rules for large energy, transport and financial firms, digital providers and medical device makers amid concerns about cyber attacks by state actors and other malicious players. From a report: The European Commission two years ago proposed rules on the cybersecurity of network and information systems called NIS 2 Directive, in effect expanding the scope of the current rule known as NIS Directive.

The new rules cover all medium and large companies in essential sectors - energy, transport, banking, financial market infrastructure, health, vaccines and medical devices, drinking water, waste water, digital infrastructure, public administration and space. All medium and large firms in postal and courier services, waste management, chemicals, food manufacturing, medical devices, computers and electronics, machinery equipment, motor vehicles, and digital providers such as online market places, online search engines, and social networking service platforms will also fall under the rules.

Google has signed deals to pay more than 300 publishers in Germany, France and four other EU countries for their news and will roll out a tool to make it easier for others to sign up too, the company told Reuters. From the report: The move to be announced publicly later on Wednesday followed the adoption of landmark EU copyright rules three years ago that require Google and other online platforms to pay musicians, performers, authors, news publishers and journalists for using their work. News publishers, among Google's fiercest critics, have long urged governments to ensure online platforms pay fair remuneration for their content. Australia last year made such payments mandatory while Canada introduced similar legislation last month. The blog did not say how much publishers were being paid. Two-thirds of this group are German publishers including Der Spiegel, Die Zeit and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. "So far, we have agreements which cover more than 300 national, local and specialist news publications in Germany, Hungary, France, Austria, the Netherlands and Ireland, with many more discussions ongoing," Sulina Connal, director for news and publishing partnerships, said in blog post. "We are now announcing the launch of a new tool to make offers to thousands more news publishers, starting in Germany and Hungary, and rolling out to other EU countries over the coming months," Connal said in the blogpost.

The European Commission has proposed controversial new regulation that would require chat apps like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger to selectively scan users' private messages for child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and "grooming" behavior. The proposal is similar to plans mooted by Apple last year but, say critics, much more invasive. From a report: After a draft of the regulation leaked earlier this week, privacy experts condemned it in the strongest terms. "This document is the most terrifying thing I've ever seen," tweeted cryptography professor Matthew Green. "It describes the most sophisticated mass surveillance machinery ever deployed outside of China and the USSR. Not an exaggeration." Jan Penfrat of digital advocacy group European Digital Rights (EDRi) echoed the concern, saying, "This looks like a shameful general #surveillance law entirely unfitting for any free democracy." (A comparison of the PDFs shows differences between the leaked draft and final proposal are cosmetic only.) The regulation would establish a number of new obligations for "online service providers" -- a broad category that includes app stores, hosting companies, and any provider of "interpersonal communications service."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Sky News: The UK, US and EU have formally accused Russia of being behind a cyber attack targeting a satellite communications network used in Ukraine. Businesses and individuals using routers made by Viasat, an American business that provides broadband-speed satellite internet connections, were knocked offline just before tanks began to roll into the country.

"The cyberattack took place one hour before Russia's unprovoked and unjustified invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, thus facilitating the military aggression," the EU said in its statement. "Although the primary target is believed to have been the Ukrainian military, other customers were affected, including personal and commercial internet users," the Foreign Office added. As a result of the attack 5,800 wind turbines in Germany were knocked offline as they depended upon Viasat routers for remote monitoring and control. The company said in total tens of thousands of its terminals were effectively destroyed and needed to be replaced. UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said: "This is clear and shocking evidence of a deliberate and malicious attack by Russia against Ukraine which had significant consequences on ordinary people and businesses in Ukraine and across Europe. We will continue to call out Russia's malign behavior and unprovoked aggression across land, sea and cyberspace, and ensure it faces severe consequences."

The attack was described as "yet another example of Russia's continued pattern of irresponsible behavior in cyberspace, which also formed an integral part of its illegal and unjustified invasion of Ukraine," in the EU's statement.

"Such behavior is contrary to the expectations set by all UN member states, including the Russian Federation, of responsible state behavior and the intentions of states in cyberspace. Russia must stop this war and bring an end to the senseless human suffering immediately," the EU added.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: The U.S. Copyright Office has launched a public consultation to evaluate whether it's wise to make certain technical protection measures mandatory under the DMCA. The Office hopes to hear all relevant stakeholders and the public at large in what may become a de facto review of the recently introduced SMART Copyright Act. [...] Following repeated nudges from Senators Thom Tillis and Patrick Leahy, the Copyright Office started looking into automated tools that online services can use to ensure that pirated content can't be easily reuploaded. This "takedown and staydown' approach relies on technical protection tools, which include upload filters. This is a sensitive subject that previously generated quite a bit of pushback when the EU drafted its Copyright Directive. To gauge the various options and viewpoints, the Copyright Office launched a consultation last year, which triggered a wave of objections and opposition.

Last week, the Office followed up with yet another consultation, asking for input on shortcomings in the current DMCA legislation and what alternatives could help to improve things. As things stand, online services are allowed to implement their own upload filters, which many do. Scanning uploads for potentially copyright-infringing content isn't mandatory but that could change in the future. The consultation outline mentions several potential changes to the DMCA's Section 512, such as online services losing their safe harbor protection if they fail to implement specific "standard technical measures" (STMs). "Is the loss of the section 512 safe harbors an appropriate remedy for interfering with or failing to accommodate STMs?" the Copyright Office asks. "Are there other obligations concerning STMs that ought to be required of internet service providers?" the list of questions continues.

Stakeholders are asked to share their views on these matters. While it is uncertain whether any measures will be made mandatory, the Copyright Office is already looking ahead. For example, who gets to decide what STMs will be mandatory, and how would the rulemaking process work? "What entity or entities would be best positioned to administer such a rulemaking? What should be the frequency of such a rulemaking? What would be the benefits of such a rulemaking? What would be the drawbacks of such a rulemaking?"

Israeli spyware company NSO Group has stonewalled questions over whether it is operating legally, according to consultants acting on behalf of the controversial company's owners. From a report: Berkeley Research Group, the US consultancy that was last year put in charge of the private equity fund that owns 70 per cent of NSO, has told EU lawmakers that its inquiries about NSO's "lawfulness" have been "ignored and/or frustrated by NSO Group's management team." Concerns remain about âoethe historical management of the NSO Group" and "possible ongoing activities in relation to which [BRG is] being kept in the dark," BRG's lawyers wrote in a letter to MEPs. BRG's complaint is a further escalation of the controversy surrounding NSO, which was once a highly prized asset that Israel used as a diplomatic calling card, but is now facing lawsuits from Meta and Apple and has been blacklisted by the US. NSO's Pegasus software can infiltrate a smartphone and mirror its encrypted contents. It was last year found to have been used to target smartphones belonging to 37 journalists, human rights activists and other prominent figures.

Elon Musk likened Apple and its App Store to the equivalent of a "30% tax on the Internet" and said the fee is "10 times higher than it should be," in a series of tweets responding to a Slashdot tweet about the European Union's latest antitrust complaint against the tech giant .

PayPal helped spur a formal antitrust complaint against Apple and its iPhone payments system by raising concerns with the European Commission, Bloomberg reported, citing people with knowledge of the matter. From the report: European regulators hit Apple with a so-called statement of objections on Monday, arguing that the iPhone maker abuses its control over mobile payments. The complaint centers on the company reserving the iPhone's tap-to-pay abilities for its own Apple Pay service, rather than letting rival payment platforms use the feature. PayPal, which has its own payment service, was one of multiple companies making informal complaints about the situation to the commission, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions were private. PayPal offers a tap-to-pay option on Android phones and wants to be able to offer the same feature on Apple's iPhone.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Spanish authorities have detected "Pegasus" spyware in the mobile phones of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and Defense Minister Margarita Robles, the government minister for the presidency, Felix Bolanos, said on Monday. Bolanos told a news conference Sanchez's phone was infected in May 2021 and at least one data leak occurred then. He did not say who could have been spying on the premier or whether foreign or Spanish groups were suspected of being behind it.

"The interventions were illicit and external. External means carried out by non-official bodies and without state authorization," he said, adding that the infections had been reported to the justice ministry, and the High Court would be in charge of the case. [...] The European Union's data watchdog has called for a ban on Pegasus over allegations it has been abused by client governments to spy on rights activists, journalists and politicians.

Alphabet's Google lashed out at the European Union for doling out a "quasi criminal fine of very large proportions" for allegedly thwarting advertising rivals on websites. From a report: At a hearing at the bloc's General Court on Monday, the search giant said the 2019 decision by the EU's antitrust arm to issue the 1.49 billion-euro ($1.6 billion) fine was riddled with errors and should be struck down. The case is the last of a trilogy of EU court fights over cases that set the course for antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager's bid to rein in Silicon Valley. It focuses on Google's role as an ad broker for websites, targeting exclusivity agreements for online ads with its AdSense for Search product. In its decision, the EU accused the company of imposing a number of restrictive clauses in contracts with third-party websites which prevented Google's rivals from placing their search adverts on these websites. The European Commission analysis includes "errors of characterization" that led it "to proceed on a false basis in its assessment of the clauses and they have resulted in material errors of analysis," said Josh Holmes, one of the lawyers for Google appearing in court.

Brussels regulators have charged Apple with breaking EU competition law by abusing its dominant position in mobile payments to limit rivals' access to contactless technology. From a report: Antitrust investigators are concerned that the US tech group is preventing competitors from accessing "tap and go" chips or near-field communication (NFC) to benefit its own Apple Pay system, the European Commission said in a statement on Monday. Margrethe Vestager, the EU's executive vice-president in charge of competition policy, said Brussels had "indications that Apple restricted third-party access to key technology necessary to develop rival mobile wallet solutions on Apple's devices." She added that the commission had "preliminarily found that Apple may have restricted competition, to the benefit of its own solution Apple Pay." If confirmed, "such a conduct would be illegal under our competition rules," Vestager said. The company could face fines worth up to 10 per cent of global turnover if the charges are upheld.