Technology

The U.S. Justice Department proposed on Wednesday that Congress take up legislation to curb protections big tech platforms like Alphabet's Google and Facebook have had for decades, a senior official said, following through on U.S. President Donald Trump's bid to crack down on tech giants.

Zoom Video Communications Inc is planning to offer all its free and paying users end-to-end encryption for video calls and will launch a trial version in July, the video conferencing provider said on Wednesday.

The U.S. Justice Department proposed on Wednesday that Congress take up legislation to curb protections that big tech platforms like Alphabet's Google and Facebook have had for decades, a senior official said, following through on U.S. President Donald Trump's bid to crack down on tech giants.

The use of a new range of surveillance cameras to check adherence to rules in the wake of the novel coronavirus outbreak risks undermining the fabric of democracy, France's data privacy watchdog CNIL said on Wednesday.

Spain will trial a new smartphone app aimed at helping to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus on one of the Canary Islands, authorities said on Wednesday.

The U.S. Justice Department will propose legislation as soon as Wednesday to try to remove protections that big tech platforms like Alphabet's Google and Facebook have had for decades, a department official said on Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Hackers posed as recruiters working for U.S. defence giants Collins Aerospace and General Dynamics on LinkedIn to break into the networks of military contractors in Europe, cybersecurity researchers said on Wednesday.

China's Oppo cancelled the live online launch of its flagship smartphone in India on Wednesday after a border clash between the two countries that has renewed calls from local Indian trader groups to shun Chinese products.

Despite coronavirus lockdowns hitting global supply chains and construction projects, telecommunication firms have continued to contract equipment from Chinese technology giant Huawei [HWT.UL], Finland's Nokia and Sweden's Ericsson to build fifth-generation technology (5G) networks, which are expected to power everything from high-speed video transmissions to self-driving cars.

French police pushed back several hundred people jostling to get their hands on cut-price PlayStation 4s at the launch of a new Lidl supermarket outside Paris on Wednesday.

Germany's smartphone app to help trace coronavirus infections has been downloaded 6.5 million times in the first 24 hours since its launch, the chief executive of software company SAP said on Wednesday.

Building robots and drones is messy: Developers must pull together sensors to be the eyes and ears, chips for the brains and motors to make the device move, tying them all together with several kinds of software.

Japanese bank Nomura Holdings Inc and cryptocurrency partners Ledger and CoinShares launched Komainu, a custodian to safeguard digital assets for financial institutions, on Wednesday.

Facebook Inc said on Tuesday it would affix labels to political ads shared by users on their own feeds, closing what critics have said for years was a glaring loophole in the company's election transparency measures.

Alphabet Inc's Google on Wednesday introduced new advertising features intended to help local businesses get more customers and recover from the coronavirus pandemic.

Environmental campaigners delivered a 12-foot (3.6-metre) tall mock-up of an Amazon parcel to the French finance ministry on Wednesday to demand that the government rein in the e-commerce giant's expansion in France.

A new U.S. rule regarding China's Huawei Technologies Co Ltd is a needed "clarification" to help develop standards, U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said on Wednesday, adding that security concerns remain over the telecoms equipment maker.

Contentful, a startup based in Berlin and San Francisco, said on Wednesday it had raised $80 million from investors led by Sapphire Ventures to scale up its content management systems for commercial websites.

For the past seven years, a Munich-based firm called riskmethods has tried to interest companies in buying software that allows them to track all their suppliers in a way that minimizes risks in operating globally spread supply chains.

U.S.-Israeli Pagaya, which uses artificial intelligence (AI) to manage institutional money, said on Wednesday it raised $102 million in a private funding round led by Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC [GIC.UL].