The Switchboard: Tech execs flex political muscles - but lose - in Silicon Valley race "In May of last year, a group of powerful tech executives gathered for a $2,600-a-head fundraiser in San Francisco to support a former Obama administration official they hoped would unseat Rep. Mike Honda, the Democratic congressman who had represented Silicon Valley since 2000," reports The Washington Post's Andrea Peterson. Tech cranks up pressure on Obama for immigration order "The tech industry is dialing up the pressure on President Obama over immigration, arguing moves to free up more work visas should be among his executive actions," reports The Hill's Mario Trujillo. TechNet, which counts many Silicon Valley companies as members, said it respected Obama's decision to delay the immigration moves until after the election, but said the time for action has come. Consider whether APIs can be copyrighted, computer activist group urges U.S. Supreme Court "It's possible the question of whether application programming interfaces (APIs) can be copyrighted may eventually end up in the highest court in the land," reports Forbes' Joe McKendrick. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) reports that it has filed a brief with the Supreme Court of the United States, asking the justices to review a 'disastrous' appellate court decision finding that APIs are copyrightable (Oracle v. Google). Silk Road, other Tor "darknet" sites may have been "decloaked" through DDoS "Last week's takedown of Silk Road 2.0 wasn't the only law enforcement strike on 'darknet' illicit websites being concealed by the Tor Project's network of anonymizing routers," reports Ars Technica's Sean Gallagher. While 17 arrests were made, some operators of sites taken down by the worldwide sweep remain at large. One of them - the co-operator of Doxbin, a site that allowed others to post personal identifying information frequently used for intimidation, identity theft, or other malicious purposes - has shared details of his site's takedown with Tor developers in hopes they'll find ways to protect other users of the network. An apparent distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack against Doxbin may have been used to uncover its actual location, and the same approach may have been used to expose other darknet servers seized by law enforcement. Twitter teams with women's group on anti-harassment tool "One of the groups behind the #FBrape campaign, which compelled Facebook to change its policy on the posting of "cruel and insensitive content" on the world's top social network, has partnered with Twitter to study how the microblogging service can better police sexual harassment on its site," reports CNET's Edward Moyer. Women, Action & the Media (WAM) said this week that it's created an online form that lets 'users report gendered harassment details that have never before been tracked and analyzed.'