Sad to see the court continue it, but not unexpected. I would expect we'll continue to hear how at risk we are from (insert name of Islamic fanactical group here - ISIS currently) etc. by the intelligence establishment in a building crescendo to the renewal date (as a justification, even though it didn't help a whit with Boston or prior events) - cause here's the thing, IMHO, 95% of U.S. politicians are cowards and the cowardly view on this is the following: If I vote against renewing mass surveillance and then some attack happens (cause of all this ISIS stuff I keep hearing about), there goes my next re-election - standing up for privacy of the citizens I "represent" isn't worth it...

JMHO, because everybody would think it was Gmalto's fault that they let their keys get stolen (read the Intercept article, some of the security in transferring the key numbers to clients was really no security) and they should replace our SIM's for free - which would then bankrupt (or do something very severe to the company). So, the telling / facing the truth means severe pain for Co (or Bankruptcy) and top execs getting fired or just say everything is okay and act like they didn't really loose anything and hope it blows over - betting top execs go for option #2 (screw the truth or the potential security of customers).

VirnetX, whom Apple lost a patent case to previously, had direct ties to the intelligence community of the U.S. Government - they sued to prevent Apple from using point to point encrypted communication with no encryption keys going to Apple (for their Facetime and iChat products - if memory serves)...afterward Apple was forced to change to a client server client model (where the encryption keys were held on Apple's servers - reachable via NSL's - the goal).

VirnetX also sued Microsoft and Cisco on these same patents. Just the NSA arranging the board so they could run it going forward. Software shouldn't have patents IMHO...simply because of the documented abuse of the U.S. government's proxy in these matters. Supposedly the NSA has other proxy patent holding companies as well.

Very intriguing article, but it makes one wonder about the landing pad being at the launch site - normally the main booster is a good ways away from the main launch site and moving rapidly away (that's why the floating landing pad was 500 miles downrange from the launch site)...this would appear that SpaceX would carry enough fuel to turn the booster back around (from mach whatever) and fly all the way back to the launch site (would seem to be alot of fuel) - I would have expected landing on a floating landing pad or construct such a landing area on an island(s) that isn't too far from the parabolic fall area of the booster (i.e. where the floating pad would be).

Looking forward to more details....

Yeah the listing page is not very well designed (as in tear up the initial listing page design and start over from scratch) - they definitely need to go for a much more condensed main listing page (currently I can see 2 listings on a 27 inch display) and maybe red / green light metaphor for whether things are okay or not (bit sad this is the best the EFF could do on a first swipe from a web page design perspective). That said, they'll make it better with time and I'm glad it exists.

Good for Canada, your neighbors to the south have something else to be jealous about.

Down south here, our chief regulation of the ISP's, the head of the FCC - also the former CEO of the Cable Lobbying Organization as well as former CEO of the Wireless Lobbying Org appointed by President Obama - just announced that we'd have net nuetrality down here but the companies could pay each other for faster access, but this would be okay cause they could ask the FCC to look at the prices...with big strong guys like the former head of the Cable Lobbying Organization in charge of the FCC, what's to worry?

I doubt the creator of PGP would be in on that conspiracy - since he's at the top of the company. I would expect that if the NSA didn't like that company (and they don't), they would do whatever they could to sabotage their commercial success, particularly via word of mouth.

As for mobile phones, you really need to go back far enough before location information was integrated into them (long before smartphones).

Um, because one of the guys at the top of that company is Phil Zimmerman who created PGP? And they moved the company to Switzerland to avoid the entangling fingers of the U.S. government surveillance state.

As to fixing bugs, that will always be an ongoing process. I'd like it better if they were open source, but I'd trust them better than most companies. JMHO...

I definitely want one. The NSA is workig to be in the BIOS / radio firmware etc., but this is a very good first step, besides looking gorgeous with a replaceable battery and a DVD drive...take me there.

"Or, instead of trying to generally extend/eliminate the statute of limitations, they may change the law to suspend the clock when encryption is used, so the time it takes from the day the evidence is seized or sniffed to the day it is decrypted doesn't "count.""

As part of the 2015 Intelligence Authorization Act (believe that was the right name), the NSA's agents in the House and Senate inserted language into the bill (the President signed it shortly thereafter so its law now) at the last minute basically legalizing the U.S. government to vacuum up all electronic communications (i.e. all the stuff they've been doing clandestinely) and if its of interest to the intelligence establishment or it is encrypted (it specifically mentions it) then they can keep it forever (no time limits).

https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

As the large software company most in cahoots with the NSA from what we know (pre-encryption access Skype, Outlook.com, Hotmail.com etc.):

http://www.theguardian.com/wor...

They could, reasonably, provide the NSA a good platform to plant back doors within commonly used software installed on all platforms. This should be assumed.

Always good to keep in mind with Skype, courtesy of Edward Snowden, Microsoft, as a partner to the NSA, rewrote it and coded in pre-encryption access for the NSA for all Skype communications (video, audio and text). Microsoft has never said it has taken them out. So always assume that whatever you do on Skype is getting recorded and kept, for future use, by the NSA or one of the other five eyes agencies.

http://www.theguardian.com/wor...

As others have pointed out, last week the U.S. passed a law (and the President signed it), which got no press, authorizing all U.S. citizen communications can be recorded without a warrant and that information can be passed from the NSA (which was created only to spy on external threats...not anymore), kept for as long as the NSA would want and passed directly to law enforcement agencies when they want it. Its not that President Obama won't do anything with your skype communications, its what the future Nixon, McCarthy or (FBI) Hoover, or worse, will do with them.

https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

I think you're getting it - in the end they want a daily log from every system in the U.S., all citizens (otherwise known as suspects) and eventually the world - they only need time to get there. Given the language here, it seems an okay for the govt to plant malware in all citizen systems for use "when needed".

It's rather hard to see how we get out of this spiral towards a surveillance state.

Privacy of Skype communications is very important for Microsoft and always good to keep in mind (probably all logged and kept forever):

http://www.theguardian.com/wor...

Probably need to change the name to IBC and drop the M as they are rapidly on that road to not really building/creating anything anymore - and just being another offshoring consulting firm (once they offshore the managers they could change it to Indian Business Consultants).