83496145
submission
erier2003 writes:
Contrary to the claims of America's top spies, the details of your phone calls and text messages—including when they took place and whom they involved—are no less revealing than the actual contents of those communications.
In a study published online Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Stanford University researchers demonstrated how they used publicly available sources—like Google searches and the paid background-check service Intelius—to identify "the overwhelming majority" of their 823 volunteers based only on their anonymized call and SMS metadata.
81382359
submission
erier2003 writes:
A court order forcing Apple to help the FBI access a terrorism suspect's iPhone has drawn responses from leading tech companies, newspaper editorial boards, and security experts. But one major faction is staying largely silent: the computer and smartphone manufacturers who compete with Apple for business and could be subject to similar orders in the future if the company loses its high-profile case.
Silicon Valley software firms have universally backed Apple in its fight against the Justice Department, which won a ruling Tuesday from a California magistrate judge compelling Apple to design custom software to bypass security features on an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters. But Apple's hardware competitors are staying on the sidelines.
81047115
submission
erier2003 writes:
President Obama on Tuesday unveiled an expansive plan to bolster government and private-sector cybersecurity, establishing a federal coordinator for cyber efforts, proposing a commission to study future work, and asking Congress for funds to overhaul dangerously obsolete computer systems.
The Cybersecurity National Action Plan contains initiatives to better prepare college students for cybersecurity careers, streamline federal computer networks, and certify Internet-connected devices as secure. It also establishes a Federal Privacy Council to review how the government stores Americans’ personal information, creates the post of Chief Information Security Officer, and establishes a Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity.
80906583
submission
erier2003 writes:
The United States and the European Union have agreed to a transatlantic data-sharing arrangement to protect U.S. companies' overseas activities and European citizens' privacy, but another initiative—one that's still working its way through Congress—could be just important to U.S.–E.U. relations and transnational privacy rights.
The Judicial Redress Act is considered essential to a broader agreement between the U.S. and Europe over the sharing of data in criminal and terrorism investigations. The negotiations over the newly announced E.U.–U.S. Privacy Shield may have received more attention, but the concerns at the heart of this bill are no less important.
79671089
submission
erier2003 writes:
Amid a torrent of cyberattacks and seemingly endless data breaches, the U.S. Computer Emergency Response Team, the government’s premier cybersecurity monitoring unit, has never been busier. In an interview with the Daily Dot, US-CERT Director Ann Barron-DiCamillo described its structure, its incident-response activities, and its partnerships with frequently targeted industries like the financial sector. She also discussed the evolution of cyber threats over the past decade, as determined hackers have shifted focus from brute-force network penetrations to savvier, more indirect attacks.
77439433
submission
erier2003 writes:
Sen. Bernie Sanders' opposition to the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act in its current form aligns him with privacy advocates and makes him the only presidential candidate to stake out that position, just as cybersecurity issues loom large over the 2016 election, from email server security to the foreign-policy implications of data breaches. The Senate is preparing to vote on CISA, a bill to address gaps in America's cyberdefenses by letting corporations share threat data with the government. But privacy advocates and security experts oppose the bill because customers' personal information could make it into the shared data.
76362837
submission
erier2003 writes:
The Electronic Communications Privacy Act Amendments Act has a simple and vital purpose: making it harder for the government to get your email, instant messages, and Facebook chats. It amends a decades-old law to require government agencies to get a warrant to access the contents of any email or other electronic record—no matter how old those communications are. Sen. Mike Lee, one of the bill's cosponsors, told the Daily Dot why it matters.
71540313
submission
erier2003 writes:
The decision to give a major award to House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy is curious given McCarthy's many questionable stances on Internet-freedom issues. For one thing, the California congressman is an avowed opponent of net neutrality. In May 2014, as the Federal Communications Commission debated new net neutrality rules, McCarthy—then the House Majority Whip, the chamber's third-highest-ranking member—signed a House GOP letter to the FCC warning that Title II regulation represented "a counterproductive effort to even further regulate the Internet."
