US

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.

If you call yourself a hacker online you automatically lose rights under the US constitution, a court has ruled.

The US District Court for the State of Idaho ruled that an ICS product developer's computer could be seized without him being notified or even heard from in court.

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.

A consumer VPN service called CryptoSeal Privacy has shut down rather than risk government intrusions that could cost the company money in legal fees and threaten user privacy.

CryptoSeal will continue offering its business-focused VPN, but the consumer service is done, the company announced:

Chinese telecom firm Huawei continues to try to clear its name and compete as a respected vendor in the worldwide market, after the U.S. House Intelligence Committee last October warned that Huawei poses a security risk. The Committee advised U.S. businesses involved in critical infrastructure, such as financial and utilities, not to use components from Huawei or ZTE, another Chinese firm.

Is information technology provider Huawei being held to a "higher bar" for cybersecurity than other companies? An executive from the China-based company thinks so, as Huawei released on Friday a new white paper on its cybersecurity policies and its recommendations for global standards.

The leaders who run the internet’s technical global infrastructure say the time has come to end U.S. dominance over it.

In response to leaks by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, Fadi Chehadé, who heads the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, and others have called for “an environment, in which all stakeholders, including all governments, participate on equal footing.”

Northeast Utilities in Connecticut Tuesday confirmed that it plans to turn over part of its IT operations to two India-based outsourcing firms, despite a recent push by state lawmakers to keep it from doing so.

NU says it employs some 400 IT workers, and "will retain about half of those employees" after turning some operations over to outsourcers Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services, two of India's largest IT firms.

More information has come to light regarding the US government's recent seizure of funds from online accounts belonging to Mt. Gox, the world's largest Bitcoin exchange.

El Reg reported in May that the Department of Homeland Security had frozen an account with mobile payment processor Dwolla belonging to Mutum Sigillum LLC, a subsidiary of Tokyo, Japan–based Mt. Gox.

Two "security experts" from the British intelligence agency GCHQ have overseen the destruction of hard drives owned by The Guardian, the newspaper that has published leaked NSA documents describing the work of US and UK intelligence agencies.

The revelations are in a column published Monday afternoon by the newspaper's editor, Alan Rusbridger. In it, he describes the escalating concerns of the British government about the leaks given to The Guardian by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.