Wayne Rash

Lawyers for Microsoft say they will appeal a federal judge’s order that they turn over the contents of a customer’s email that’s stored on a server in Ireland. But if Microsoft were to comply with the order, it appears that the company would be in violation of both Irish and European laws. “It’s the business […]

WASHINGTON—A panel of legal experts says that a case in which federal prosecutors are demanding email data from Microsoft that resides on a server in Ireland could result in violations of the U.S. Constitution as well as international law and a variety of treaties. The case, in which the Department of Justice is trying to […]

In a rare display of bipartisanship, the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate passed identical versions of a bill that overturns a ruling by the Librarian of Congress that made it illegal to unlock your cell phone. The bill, S. 517, otherwise known as the “Unlocking Consumer Choice and Wireless Competition Act” is pretty […]

When Apple CEO Tim Cook discussed his company’s earnings July 22, he noted that iPad sales were lower than some analysts had expected. Cook also said he wasn’t worried about those numbers and, in fact, said sales were in line with Apple’s expectations. But Cook’s statement that the company is happy with iPad sales hasn’t […]

Apple iPhones cost too much. There, I’ve said it. But this isn’t the first time I’ve said this. In fact, I’ve said many times that Apple needs to develop a lower-cost version of the iPhone if the company expects to dominate sales beyond North America and Europe. The last time I wrote about this, which […]

WASHINGTON, D.C.—It was impossible to escape the feeling as I joined the folks from DarkTrace for lunch at the Blue Duck Tavern here in Washington, D.C., that I was seated next to George Smiley, author John LeCarre’s legendary spymaster. While Andrew France, formerly of the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), doesn’t claim to be a […]

A sure signal of the reasoning behind Microsoft’s decision to lay off some 18,000 employees is to take a look at what’s being dumped. The quick look will tell you that it’s the low end of the business—cheap mobile phones, mostly. The biggest share of the cutbacks came from Microsoft’s devices business, much of which […]

For all of those people out there who seem shocked by their joint announcement that Apple and IBM would team up to bring IBM’s enterprise and big data applications to the iOS platform, they probably haven’t been paying attention to IBM lately. The only thing that’s really new in the announcement is that it formalizes […]

Talks between two non-U.S. carriers are well along in paving the way for a merger of two U.S. wireless companies. The two companies, Softbank of Japan and Deutsche Telekom of Germany, have apparently agreed that Softbank will buy a majority of shares in T-Mobile U.S. via its Sprint subsidiary. According to unsourced stories released by […]

Recent data breaches have made U.S. consumers wary of old-fashioned credit and debit cards with magnetic stripes, according to a survey of 1011 American adults conducted by Vision Critical 2014. The survey found that 64 percent of the respondents are more likely to pay in cash than they were previously. However, nearly the same percentage […]

As I write this, I can see the dual progress bars crawling with seeming infinite slowness across the screen attached to the Hewlett-Packard workstation on my right. I keep wondering how a computer that’s supposed to be so fast seems to be installing Windows 7 so slowly. Yes, that’s right, a computer I’ve had for […]

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Pretty much everyone has heard about the massive data breach that hit retail giant Target at the end of 2013, and there have been any number of people (including me) who have discussed ways in which the problem could have been avoided. What no one realized at the time is that Target’s intrusion detection […]