Items tagged with NSA
The numbers from Pinterest’s data request transparency report are either impressive or laughable, depending on your point of view. Although the tech industry is rising up in force in reaction against the NSA’s spying tactics and forceful and shadowy means of “requesting” data from major...
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The United States Government has filed a lawsuit against Sprint Communications requesting triple damages to the tune of $63M. Sprint's crime? Overcharging the NSA, FBI, and various other government agencies for the cost of spying on millions of Americans and turning their data over to the government. This is another...
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If you’ve ever wondered how exactly NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden was able to access as much as he did, it’s apparently because he had help. According to an L.A. Times report, at least three other NSA workers helped him--wittingly or not. An NSA memo says that one of the three was an active-duty...
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It didn't take long after NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden revealed his employer's nefarious deeds for other nations to begin reevaluating how they go about working with the US. As a side-effect, some now wonder if the US has a little too much influence on certain matters that affect the entire world, such as with...
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Last summer, and not too long after Edward Snowden exposed the extent of NSA's spying tactics, The Guardian newspaper in the UK was forced to destroy all of the data that had been provided to it. At the time, I don't remember this news gaining much traction, but it's an important blip on the timeline to note. No...
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You'd have to imagine that the birds in Angry Birds are some of the angriest around, but last night, a "friend" of the hacking group Syrian Electronic Army saw it fit to add to their angst. For an undetermined amount of time, an image was plastered on the main Angry Birds site that changed the name to "Spying Birds"...
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Much has been made of the NSA’s domestic spying program and how the agency has culled data from major Internet companies, and rightly so, but Apple CEO Tim Cook says that his company is having none of it. In an interview with ABC News, Cook was emphatic. “Much of what has been said isn’t true,”...
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As the Guardian broke the news that that the NSA was harvesting nearly 200 million text messages per day (per its investigation in collaboration with the UK’s Channel 4 News into NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s leaked materials), President Obama said in a speech at the Justice Department that the U.S...
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Facebook is facing a lawsuit from two users who allege that the company's "private" messaging is anything of the sort. We've seen a number of these cases over the years, going all the way back to Google's ad-crawling for Gmail, and it's generally known that if you use a service, company's are going to attempt to monetize your input. In Facebook's...
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A fresh set of allegations and disclosures by der Spiegel claim that the NSA operates a Tailored Access Operations program designed to dig into spy targets conventionally perceived as "ungettable" for the purpose of extending the institutions global reach. The program has targeted individuals, companies, government...
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RSA decided to publicly address recent reports alleging it inked a $10 million contract with the National Security Agency (NSA) to use what's considered a flawed and broken encryption standard called elliptic curve cryptography. In an attempt to set the record straight, the RSA stated in a blog post that it's all a...
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According to a new report, the NSA once paid the RSA Security $10M to implement a flawed security standard as the default protocol in its products. This new information builds on allegations from September that claimed the RSA had deployed a flawed, broken cryptographic standard. The new allegations, like much of what...
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We've seen a lot of strange information come out of the Snowden leaks, much of it deeply worrying. We've learned that the government allegedly has enormous siphoning capability, and sucks up data from the Internet at will, gains access to the entire database of cell phone metadata on everyone in the United States, and...
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Following news that tech giants Google, Facebook, and Yahoo were taking measures to shore up their encryption and other ways to thwart spying from the likes of the NSA, Microsoft is taking the same bull by the horns. The company announced that it will be expanding the encryption of its services, “reinforcing...
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A new report from the Dutch news site NRC Handelsblad (NRC for short) is claiming that the NSA has used its own malware to infect and compromise some 50,000 additional networks. The revelation apparently comes courtesy of the treasure trove of documents Snowden released, though the NSA has refused to confirm or deny...
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When the NSA forced several major tech companies including Facebook, Google, and Yahoo to cough up data on their users, one got the sense that it was a situation of an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object. The first round of that battle went to the NSA because it had (some shadily-acquired) court documents...
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The CIA is paying AT&T some $10 million a year for access to certain customer call data that includes international-to-international calls as well as some domestic-to-international calls, according to a New York Times report citing information from “government officials”. The CIA’s involvement is part of an overseas counterterrorism...
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Like many other tech companies, Apple is publishing a data request transparency report so its users will have a better sense of the number of inquiries law enforcement makes about the company’s users and their data, and like those other companies, Apple is somewhat hamstrung, bound by law to keep details about...
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Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt has never been one to hold back from uttering his true feelings, which is led to him making news with a recent comment regarding the ongoing NSA fallout. As the agency comes under continued fire for seemingly unchecked spying across all sorts of digital properties, Google has...
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Following an eight-year stint as the man in charge of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), Army General Keith Alexander has decided to step down effective next March or April. So will his civilian deputy, John "Chris" Inglis, who is planning to retire by the end of the year. The NSA came under heavy media and public scrutiny after former...
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This summer, company founder Ladar Levison shut down his secure email service, Lavabit, rather than comply with data requests from the NSA. There is a widespread assumption that Lavabit was the email service used by whistleblower Edward Snowden, so any requests that Lavabit received were perhaps more targeted than...
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Payback? Perhaps. With the National Security Agency in the wrong kind of spotlight of late, this is probably sweet for many to read. What's being described as "chronic electrical surges" at an NSA data-storage facility have "hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of machinery and delayed the center's opening for a...
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