Google has started to encrypt its traffic between its data centers, effectively halting the broad surveillance of its inner workings by the joint National Security Agency-GCHQ program known as MUSCULAR. The move turns off a giant source of information to the two agencies, which at one point accounted for nearly a third of the NSA's daily data intake for its primary intelligence analysis database—at least for now.
A coalition of defense lawyers, privacy advocates, and journalists has sued the Dutch government over its collaboration and exchange of data with the U.S. National Security Agency and other foreign intelligence services.
The coalition is seeking a court order to stop Dutch intelligence services AIVD and MIVD from using data received from foreign agencies like the NSA that was not obtained in accordance with European and Dutch law. It also wants the government to inform Dutch citizens whose data was obtained in this manner.
Social networks are great sources of information for cyber criminals and a great way to enter the potential victims’ circle of trust.
An ongoing social engineering campaign targeting LinkedIn users has been using the “professional” social network to popularise a specific dating site but, according to Websense researchers, the final aim of the campaign is likely more sinister.
A hacker group which breached Adobe systems last month appears to have made a huge haul in swiping some 850,000 cleartext records from a limousine service which ferried some of the world's most rich and famous.
Data including the phone numbers and residence of actors, top executives and politicians were now in the hands of crackers along with a quarter of a million cleartext credit card numbers for their limitless or near-limitless American Express accounts and some damning observations taken by drivers of the well-heeled passengers.
Yahoo and Facebook have done it, and now it's Apple's turn to reveal the data requests it gets from the world's governments.
In the latest report released by the Cupertino company, it revealed that in the period between January 1, 2013 and June 30, 2013, law enforcement agencies in the US have made 1,000 to 2,000 account requests that affect 2,000 to 3,000 specific accounts. Of that number, 0 to 1,000 accounts were disclosed, though Apple claims it objected to that same number of requests.
Back in August 2013, one of the myriad of documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden showed that several major telecommunications companies provided British intelligence with direct access to their undersea fiber optic cables.
When Mark Zuckerberg addressed Facebook investors last week, he outlined a goal that sounded more like a philosophical quest than a business plan: A major priority for Facebook, he said, was "understanding the world."
FOR people living under repressive regimes censorship is an everyday reality, and browsing the internet freely is impossible without some serious technical know-how. This week Google threw its weight behind an idea that lets people circumvent censorship by using the internet connection of a friend in a non-censored country.
A collaboration between the University of Washington in Seattle and non-profit firm Brave New Software, uProxy lets users share their internet connection with friends on social networks through a browser extension.
At Wednesday's Inbox Love conference held at Microsoft’s Silicon Valley campus, the founders of Lavabit and Silent Circle announced that they want to change the world of e-mail completely by putting privacy and security at its core.
US President Barack Obama recently ordered the National Security Agency to curtail eavesdropping on the United Nations headquarters in New York as part of a review of US electronic surveillance, according to a US government official.
Obama's order is the latest known move by the White House to limit the NSA's vast intelligence collection, in the wake of protests by allies, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, over US spying on foreign heads of state.
