37486845
submission
wiedzmin writes:
US House of Representatives voted 301-118 today, in favor of extending the FISA Amendments Act until December 31st, 2017, effectively reauthorizing the broad electronic eavesdropping powers that largely legalized the George W. Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program.
32279365
submission
wiedzmin writes:
The House approved Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act with a 248 to 168 vote today. CISPA allows internet service providers to share Internet "threat" information with government agencies, including DHS and NSA, without having to protect any personally identifying data of its customers, without a court order. It effectively immunizes ISPs from privacy lawsuits for disclosing customer information, grants them anti-trust protection on colluding on cybersecurity issues and allows them to bypass privacy laws when sharing data with each other.
29282935
submission
wiedzmin writes:
TSA agents in Dallas singled out female passengers to undergo screening in a body scanner, according to complaints filed by several women who said they felt the screeners intentionally targeted them to view their bodies. Allegedly, women with "cute bodies" were directed through the body scanners up to three times over by female agents, who appeared to be acting on a request from male agents viewing the scans in a separate room. Apparently this was done because the scans were "blurry", possibly due to autofocus problems with agents' smartphone cameras.
23004048
submission
wiedzmin writes:
A California appeals court is striking down a voter-approved measure requiring every adult arrested on a felony charge to submit a DNA sample. Court questioned the extent to which technology can be permitted to diminish the privacy guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment. More than 1.6 million samples have been taken following the law’s 2009 implementation. Only about a half of those arrested in California are convicted.
16020328
submission
wiedzmin writes:
"This month, officials from the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), armed with fingerprinting machines, iris scanners and cameras hooked to laptops, will fan out across the towns and villages of southern Andhra Pradesh state in the first phase of the project whose aim is to give every Indian a lifelong Unique ID (UID) number for "anytime, anywhere" biometric authentication. While enrolling with the UIDAI may be voluntary, other agencies and service providers might require a UID number in order to transact business. Usha Ramanathan, a prominent legal expert who is attached to the Center for the Study of Developing Societies in the national capital, said that, taken to its logical limit, the UID project will make it impossible, in a couple of years, for an ordinary citizen to undertake a simple task such as traveling within the country without a UID number." Next step, tying that UID number and biometric information to to their RIM BlackBerry PIN number.
15818976
submission
wiedzmin writes:
Public broadcaster ARD's show 'Plusminus' teamed up with a known hacker organization "Chaos Computer Club" (CCC) to find out how secure the controversial new radio-frequency (RFID) chips were. The report shows how they used the basic new home scanners that will go along with the cards (for use with home computers to process the personal data for official government business) to demonstrate that scammers would have few problems extracting personal information. This includes two fingerprint scans and a new six-digit PIN number meant to be used as a digital signature for official government business and beyond.
7104044
submission
wiedzmin writes:
DeCODE Genetics, a genetics research firm from Iceland has filed for bankruptcy in the U.S. and Saga Investments, a U.S. venture capital firm, has already put in a bid to buy deCODE’s operations, raising privacy concerns about the fate of customer DNA samples and records. The company hasn’t disclosed how many clients signed up for its service, but provides a number of customer testimonials on its site, including Dorrit Mousaieff, Iceland’s first lady.
