Timothy B. Lee writes: Testifying before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, Attorney General Eric Holder declared his support for requiring the government to get a warrant before reading Americans’ e-mail. It’s about time. Read more on WonkBlog on Washington Post.
Ben Grubb reports: The federal government has been accused of sneaking mandatory web filtering through the back door after one of its agencies inadvertently blocked 1200 websites using a little-known law. Technology news website Delimiter this week revealed the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) last month used a telco law to ask major internet service providers (ISPs) to [...]
Ryan Gallagher reports: If you are a customer of Verizon Wireless, you might want to consider switching carriers in light of the Associated Press phone snooping scandal. When the feds came knocking for AP journalists’ call records last year, Verizon apparently turned the data over with no questions asked. The New York Times, citing an AP employee, reported [...]
sosadmin writes: Did you know that a private company which hoards detailed information about your driving habits also has plans to create the largest private sector law enforcement database in the world, by combining plate reads with commercial databases, face recognition technology and more? Vigilant Video is a private corporation. It maintains a database called [...]
Choi Yu-bin reports: In 2012 with a presidential election, the National Intelligence Service (NIS) carried out 99% of all wiretapping with the help of telecom companies, according to data provided by the Ministry of Science, ICT & Future Planning and Jinbo Network Center on May 13. NIS wiretapping could actually be more extensive than expected, [...]
Jan Vermeulen reports: The Telkom IP addresses identified by Citizen Lab as command & control servers for the FinFisher spyware are part of the general dynamic pool assigned to ADSL users, a Telkom spokesperson recently told MyBroadband. FinFisher made headlines recently when a Citizen Lab report detailed how the spyware suite was used against political dissidents in Bahrain and Malaysia. Read [...]
Tony Romm writes: Federal law enforcers say they have their hands full with criminals who skirt legal surveillance by using hard-to-wiretap services like Google and Facebook. Now they’re about to inherit a new foe in the fight: Capitol Hill. Some of the top lawmakers closely aligned with civil liberties and Silicon Valley interests are expressing [...]