Hasta La Gadget!

Everybody knows that this year’s NSA revelations are a big deal. The whole debacle’s already prompted the president to order reforms and internet companies to fight back. Activists want to push the outrage further. They want us to believe that this scandal is as bad as Watergate.

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We can’t say as though we’re particularly surprised to see such numbers, but, well, at least they’re finally coming to light. According to The Washington Post, newly declassified court documents highlight how the NSA collected up to 56,000 e-mails per year, over a three year period. The docs detail why the collection of such “wholly domestic” information was ruled unconstitutional by a judge in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, though the NSA stated that the surveillance was unintentional, adding that it reported said information to the court. As part of the ruling, the intelligence agency was required to investigate limits to its data collection — the NSA claims to have since addressed the problem. The newly available information was made public thanks to a recently field EFF lawsuit.

Update: Want to crawl through some of that information? The White House has begun posting key docs to Tumblr, of all places.

Filed under: Internet

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Source: EFF, The Washington Post

Welcome to the wild world of security and surveillance. From CCTV to massive government spying initiatives, there’s no escaping it. Recent high-profile leaks have served as a sobering reminder of just how present it is in all of our lives, so we figured what better time to take a deep dive? We kick things off with one of the strangest (and raciest) segments in Engadget Show history: a visit to the set of John McAfee’s latest web video. The one-time security software guru and fugitive discusses the state of antivirus, bath salts and offers some unsolicited advice to Edward Snowden, one exile to another. Trevor Timm of the Electronic Frontier Foundation sits down for an animated discussion of recent NSA surveillance revelations, including a breakdown of which major tech companies are doing right by their user base.

Boing Boing editor, sci-fi author and privacy activist Cory Doctorow climbs a tree in San Diego to discuss Wikileaks, the NSA, the “surveillance state” and more. “Edward Snowden is a hero,” he begins, not speaking on behalf of the EFF, mind you — and things get really good from there. Cryptographer and computer security specialist Bruce Schneier also chimes in on wiretapping, whistleblowing and “security theater.”

Next up, we pay a visit to The New Yorker‘s midtown office to talk Strong Box, the magazine’s secure deposit box for anonymous whistleblowers. The team behind Ubisoft’s Watch Dogs joins us to discuss partnering with computer security company Kaspersky to bring a realistic portrait of the world of hacking to its much anticipated title. And one-time hacker turned head of security community outreach at Microsoft, Katie Moussouris, discusses Redmond’s Bluehat bounty program and working with the hacking community to build safer software.

All that, plus the usual prognosticating from resident philosopher John Roderick in this month’s Engadget Show, just after the break.

Filed under: Cameras, Gaming, Wireless, Internet, Software, Microsoft

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Earlier today, the Electronic Frontier Foundation sued the Obama administration over concerns surrounding the NSA’s extensive surveillance programs, just weeks after the ACLU did the same. Filed on behalf of human rights, religious and environmental activist groups, the suit argues that the federal government’s so-called Associational Tracking Program is inherently unconstitutional because it threatens stipulations found in the Bill of Rights, like freedom of speech and the right to assembly. The list of plaintiffs is extensive, and the suit has united groups with varying mission statements, like Human Rights Watch, Greenpeace and the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. To read the complaint in full, head on over to the source link below.

Filed under: Misc, Internet

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Via: Bloomberg

Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation

The FBI has been sued by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) for access to its biometrics database, arguing that the US agency has failed to comply with Freedom of Information Act requests and is gathering face-recognition data, among other things, with no external governance. The lawsuit, which follows grudging FBI confirmation that it is deploying

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