Privacy

Spain on Monday met US Ambassador James Costos, summoned to explain the latest revelations in a growing scandal over the US snooping on telephone and online communications of ordinary citizens and world leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The news emerged as a European Parliament delegation was to begin a three-day mission to Washington to probe the impact of the surveillance on EU citizens' "fundamental rights" and discuss suspending an EU-US agreement on the transfer of bank data in the wake of the scandal.

acebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg sometimes speaks quickly and his statements on Internet privacy are not always clear, so researchers have created an archive to collect everything the executive has said publicly, aimed at gaining a better understanding of where the company stands on privacy.

In recent months, I’ve started to take my own digital security much more seriously. I encrypt my e-mail when possible, I’ve moved away from Gmail, and I’ve become much more vigilant about using a VPN nearly all the time. Just as cryptographers and security researchers are auditing tools like TrueCrypt, I’ve started to kick the tires of the products that I rely upon on daily basis.

Wanting to gather more information on China, the US National Security Agency (NSA) approached the Japanese government in 2011 to allow it to tap the international fibre-optic cables that traverse the country and carry much of the traffic across East Asia.

Citing a lack of legal framework and personnel, the Japanese government rejected the NSA requests to provide communication data, including internet activity and phone calls, sources told The Japan Times over the weekend.

LinkedIn has responded to criticism over its new Intro product, stating that many things that have been said are "not correct or purely speculative".

Last week, the company launched the service, which acts as a proxy service between a user and an email provider, intercepting emails in order to inject LinkedIn information for them.

You have a pile of DVDs with sensitive information on them and you need to safely and effectively dispose of them so no data recovery is possible. What’s the most safe and efficient way to get the job done?

SuperUser reader HaLaBi wants to know how he can safely destroy CDs and DVDs with personal data on them:

    I have old CDs/DVDs which have some backups, these backups have some work and personal files. I always had problems when I needed to physically destroy them to make sure no one will reuse them.

A site founded by a former moderator of one of the most popular file-hosting and uploader hangouts has admitted today that his site was a honeypot setup to capture data on pirate activity. WDF, a former senior staff member at popular discussion forum WJunction, says that in the 12 months since his site went online he’s been grabbing information about uploaders and file-hosts. “I suckered shitloads of you,” he said today as he announced the acquisition of his site by a U.S.-based anti-piracy company.

Attaching a GPS to a car without a search warrant is unconstitutional, the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled [click here for PDF] on Tuesday.

The decision comes as a victory for the privacy groups that filed an amicus brief [click here for PDF] in November 2012, asking that the court consider whether law enforcement agents should have to obtain a warrant based on probable cause before attaching a GPS tracker to a car and tracking its movements. The case involves a GPS tracker that police attached to a car belonging to Harry Katzin.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel complained to President Barack Obama on Wednesday after learning that U.S. intelligence may have targeted her mobile phone, saying that would be "a serious breach of trust" if confirmed.

You know you shouldn't post potentially damaging data on Facebook, but more often that not, your friends don't think twice about it, and this can impact you even more than you think. At the Hack In The Box conference in Kuala Lumpur, security consultants Keith Lee and Jonathan Werrett from SpiderLabs revealed how a simple tool can enable anyone to find a comprehensive amount of data on any user.