National Journal – “Don’t be fooled: Congress may have finally passed the bill reining in the National Security Agency’s bulk-surveillance programs [USA Freedom Act of 2015], but your data is still being collected on the Internet. Lost in the debate over the NSA is the fact that companies like Google and Facebook continue to vacuum… Continue Reading
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Americans’ Privacy Strategies Post-Snowden
Lee Rainie and Mary Madden: “It has been nearly two years since the first disclosures of government surveillance programs by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden and Americans are still coming to terms with how they feel about the programs and how to live in light of them. The documents leaked by Snowden revealed… Continue Reading
Report – Largest global manufacturer of SIM cards hacked
The Intercept – Jeremy Scahill and Josh Begley – “American and British spies hacked into the internal computer network of the largest manufacturer of SIM cards in the world, stealing encryption keys used to protect the privacy of cellphone communications across the globe, according to top-secret documents provided to The Intercept by National Security Agency… Continue Reading
UK Interception of Communications Code of Practice
Via The Register: “The UK government slipped out consultation documents on “equipment interference” and “interception of communications” (read: computer hacking by police and g-men) on Friday. They were made public on the same day that the Investigatory Powers Tribunal ruled that the spying revelations exposed by master blabbermouth Edward Snowden had accidentally made British spooks’… Continue Reading
EFF – In a First, Government Acknowledges the Limits of Section 215
“Following EFF’s victory in a four-year Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, the government released an opinion, written by the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) in 2010, that concluded that Section 215—the provision of the Patriot Act the NSA relies on to collect millions of Americans’ phone records—does have a limit: census date The Commerce Department… Continue Reading
Privacy Board Renews Call for President Obama to End Bulk Collection
EPIC – “The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board released a report on prior recommendations regarding the NSA’s domestic and global surveillance programs. The Board stated that the Obama Administration has failed to end the domestic telephone collection program. The Board stated, “the Administration can end the bulk telephone records program at any time, without… Continue Reading
How Secure is TextSecure? – Paper
How Secure is TextSecure? Tilman Frosch and Christian Mainka and Christoph Bader and Florian Bergsma and Joerg Schwenk and Thorsten Holz, October 31, 2014. “Instant Messaging has attracted a lot of attention by users for both private and business communication and has especially gained popularity as low-cost short message replacement on mobile devices. However, most popular… Continue Reading
Twitter – Taking the fight for #transparency to court
Twitter news release: ” As part of our latest transparency report released in July, wedescribed how we were being prohibited from reporting on the actual scope of surveillance of Twitter users by the U.S. government. Our ability to speak has been restricted by laws that prohibit and even criminalize a service provider like us from disclosing… Continue Reading
A Public Accountability Defense for National Security Leakers and Whistleblowers
A Public Accountability Defense for National Security Leakers and Whistleblowers, Yochai Benkler. The Harvard Law & Policy Review, Vol 8 No 2. July 2014. “In June 2013 Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and Barton Gellman began to publish stories in The Guardian and The Washington Post based on arguably the most significant national security leak in American history. By leaking… Continue Reading
Social Media and the ‘Spiral of Silence’
“A major insight into human behavior from pre-internet era studies of communication is the tendency of people not to speak up about policy issues in public—or among their family, friends, and work colleagues—when they believe their own point of view is not widely shared. This tendency is called the “spiral of silence.” Some social media creators… Continue Reading
Comparison of House & Senate Versions of the USA FREEDOM Act – CDT
“Today Senator Patrick Leahy introduced a new version of the USA FREEDOM Act. The Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) supports the Senate version of the USA FREEDOM Act and urges Congress to pass the bill quickly without weakening it. This bill addresses many issues identified by CDT as problematic in the House version of the bill, and includes many key changes… Continue Reading
Former State Dept Exec Calls Executive Order 12333 a “Legal Loophole” for Spying on Americans
EFF – “What kind of data is the NSA collecting on millions, or hundreds of millions, of Americans?” That’s the question John Napier Tye, a former StateDepartment section chief for Internet freedom, calls on the government to answer in his powerful op-ed published today by the Washington Post. In it, Tye calls the NSA’s surveillance operations abroad, conducted under Executive… Continue Reading
