Federal police are increasingly gaining real-time access to Americans' social-network accounts -- such as Facebook, Google+, and Twitter -- without obtaining search warrants, newly released documents show.
The numbers are dramatic: live interception requests made by the U.S. Department of Justice to social-networking sites and e-mail providers jumped 80 percent from 2010 to 2011.
Seven rent-to-own companies and a software developer have settled federal charges that they used spyware to monitor the locations, passwords, and other intimate details of more than 420,000 customers who leased computers.
Facebook today denied news reports of a major privacy breach involving users who saw their private messages from 2009 and before suddenly appearing on their viewable timelines as messages posted by their friends.
Indonesia, a country that's basically an archipelago of more than 70,000 islands that has infrastructure issues in electricity and limited bandwidth, is rolling out the world's most ambitious biometrics-based national identity card project for its citizens.
It's been the FBI's dream for years -- to do near-instant DNA analysis using mobile equipment in the field -- and now "Rapid DNA" gear is finally here.
The idea is that you simply drop into the system a cotton swab with a person's saliva, for example, and the "Rapid DNA" machine spits out the type of DNA data that's needed to pin down identity. Now that such equipment exists, the FBI is pushing to get it into the hands of law enforcement agencies as soon as possible.
Another Scottish council faces an embarrassing investigation after an unsecured laptop was stolen from the home of a consultant working on child fostering cases for Edinburgh City Council.
The unencrypted laptop is believed to have contained details of “dozens” of fostering cases going back some years, including notes on reviews carried out on foster and adoptive parents.
Google has finally added support for the DNT (Do Not Track) header to their latest developer build of Chrome. The modification is likely to make it into an official release of Google's popular web browser before the end of the year.
Do Not Track is a feature that allows users to express a simple yes or no preference about being tracked online.
Foreign journalists in Beijing have been targeted by two very similar malware attacks in just over two weeks in the lead-up to China's once-in-a-decade leadership transition.
The emails - one appearing to come from a Beijing-based foreign correspondent and the other from a Washington-based think tank - both contained an attachment with the same type of malware, according to independent cyber security expert Greg Walton who reviewed the files.
The University of Miami Hospital has fired two employees suspected of stealing and possibly selling the personally identifiable information (PII) of patients.
The health system announced the breach last week -- the second to occur there this year -- and began notifying those affected. A website detailing the incident also was set up.
Thanks to the FBI, the United States government will soon have a nationwide system in place capable of monitoring and identifying “persons of interest” virtually anywhere. The Next Generation Identification (NGI) system is designed to aid the FBI in tracking down and capturing criminals.
Fingerprints have been the primary unique identifier for law enforcement agencies of all levels for a century. Even with billions of samples on record, no two fingerprints have ever been found to be alike.
