Ethical Issues In Technology

At twelves miles up the atmosphere things seem pretty quiet. Commercial flights are safely stowed six miles below along with the threat of any turbulence or convection; temperatures are stable, the sun is shining and everything is pretty much still.

The discovery of Heartbleed, a flaw in one of the most widespread encryption standards used online, has panicked webmasters and users alike.

Rumoured to be launching later this year, the Silicon Valley giant's headset is exciting early-adopters, but what about the rest of us? Will it compromise our privacy? What will happen to the data it collects? And, more importantly, does it look a bit lame?

Civl rights advocates have complimented the company on the change to its customer service agreement

ACLU claimed school officials violated student's constitutional rights by viewing Facebook and email accounts without permission

Move follows threats from Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan that he would 'root out' the social media network

Cryptocurrency will not be classified as currency by US tax body in ruling that marks wider attempt at making bitcoin mainstream

Google’s Apps for Education may violate US laws over handling of student’s data. By Alex Hern

iPhone app encourages users to “think of it as the antisocial network” for steering clear of unwanted contacts. By Stuart Dredge

Exclusive: web's inventor warns neutrality under sustained attack from governments and corporations

University admissions service, which reaches million students in market 'worth £15bn', defends £12m advertiser revenue

• Optic Nerve program collected Yahoo webcam images in bulk • 1.8m users targeted by GCHQ in six-month period alone • Yahoo: 'A whole new level of violation of our users' privacy' • Material included large quantity of sexually explicit images

Google isn't doing its consumer launch of Glass just yet, but it is doing the next best thing: Opening up the Glass Explorer program to anyone in the U.S...

In the first such UK conviction, a Luton man has been ordered to pay compensation to victims of a scam that phoned victims to claim their PCs were infected with a virus. By Charles Arthur

News organisations including the Guardian are 'massively over-represented' in attempted attacks by state-sponsored hackers, Google researchers claim. By Alex Hern

Turkish PM's office claim voice recordings posted to video-sharing website created a 'national security issue' leading to ban

"Without much fuss, Twitter has taken another step to be "more like Facebook" and added a photo-tagging feature. And in the best traditions of social media outfits, the privacy-diminisher is switched on by default..."

Advertising Standards Authority agrees Gmail's scanning of email contents to target ads sets it apart from Outlook.com. By Mark Sweney

Like Microsoft, other webmail giants all reserve the right to read user emails, if 'deemed necessary'. By Alex Hern

Smartphones are owned by one in five people and have changed how many of the world's most important industries work – from journalism to farming. But their production carries a cost; using more than 40 elements that are mined with untold environmental and social effects on every inhabited continent on earth. Use our interactive to take a detailed look at positive and negative impacts your smartphone has made on people and planet

Helienne Lindvall: Dispute rages over how royalties should be split in the age of Spotify, Google and Apple

Labour and environmental groups call for chemical safety in manufacturing at Apple factories in China. By Samuel Gibbs

Photographer Kevin McElvaney documents a former wetland in Ghana which is home to the world’s largest e-waste dumping site, and where most of the the boys and men who smash devices to get to the metals end up dying from cancer in their 20s

Digital crooks are exploiting core parts of the web’s infrastructure, and even protocols used by Quake and Steam gamers, to create epic attacks. By Tom Brewster