Oct 02
According to a report by the New York Times, the NSA tested a system to collect location data from American cellphones in bulk back in 2010 and 2011, before ultimately tabling any plans to roll it out. For now, anyway.
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Oct 01
Caspar Bowden spent nearly a decade working for Microsoft, where he held the position of chief privacy adviser. He says he knew nothing of the PRISM data sharing scheme while there, a fact that’s turned him into a code-examining member of the paranoid elite.
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Sep 30
Daily Roundup: Galaxy Note 3 review, Kindle Paperwhite review, McAfee’s NSA-proofing Decentral device and more!
Posted in: Today's Chili
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours — all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Sep 30
The NSA is collecting—and storing for up to 365 days—the metadata of millions of internet users, sometimes even if they’re not connected to a terrorism target. Don’t go gasping with disbelief too quickly. You should be used to this kind of news
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Sep 30
The NSA is hoarding vast quantities of metadata about millions of internet users, piecing together records of their social networking use, locations, and other personal details, it’s alleged, even if those individuals aren’t in any way suspected of illegal activities. The year-long record of user data is gathered as part of a clandestine program called […]
Sep 30
The name McAfee is synonymous with the ubiquitous anti-virus software, but in recent years, John McAfee has kept a relatively low profile in the tech industry, preferring instead to take up leisurely pursuits like yoga and evading Belizean police. Until now. Last Saturday, McAfee took the stage at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center to announce his intention to design and manufacture Decentral, a pocket-sized device priced at around $100 that would, in theory, make it difficult for governmental agencies to snoop on your online activities by creating so-called floating networks. According to the San Jose Mercury News, McAfee told an eclectic crowd of engineers and artists, “There will be no way [for the government] to tell who you are or where you are.” A gadget like Decentral does sound like a bit of a timely pipe dream, and McAfee admits that the prototype has yet to be produced. But, hey, if you can dream it, then maybe, just maybe, McAfee can do it.
Source: San Jose Mercury News
Sep 28
NYT: NSA monitors, graphs some US Citizens’ social activity with collected metadata
Posted in: Today's Chili
Just how does the NSA piece together all that metadata it collects? Thanks to “newly disclosed documents and interviews with officials,” The New York Times today shed light on how the agency plots out the social activity and connections of those it’s spying on. Up until 2010, the NSA only traced and analyzed the metadata of emails and phone calls from foreigners, so anything from US citizens in the chains created stopgaps. Snowden-provided documents note the policy shifted later in that year to allow for the inclusion of Americans’ metadata in such analysis. An NSA representative explained to the NYT that, “all data queries must include a foreign intelligence justification, period.”
During “large-scale graph analysis,” collected metadata is cross-referenced with commercial, public and “enrichment data” (some examples included GPS locations, social media accounts and banking info) to create a contact chain tied to any foreigner under review and scope out its activity. The highlighted ingestion tool in this instance goes by the name Mainway. The NYT article also highlights a secret report, dubbed “Better Person Centric Analysis,” which details how data is sorted into 164 searchable “relationship types” and 94 “entity types” (email and IP addresses, along with phone numbers). Other documents highlight that during 2011 the NSA took in over 700 million phone records daily on its own, along with an “unnamed American service provider” that began funneling in an additional 1.1 billion cellphone records that August. In addition to that, Snowden’s leak of the NSA’s classified 2013 budget cites it as hoping to capture “20 billion ‘record events’ daily” that would be available for review by the agency’s analysts in an hour’s time. As you might expect, the number of US citizens that’ve had their info bunched up into all of this currently remains a secret — national security, of course. Extended details are available at the source links.
Via: The Verge
Source: New York Times
Sep 28
The New York Times is reporting that the NSA is using all the data it’s collecting on US citizens to make giant "social networks" of everyone their targets know.
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Sep 27
Lavabit appeals filing reveals info as government pushes against unsealing request
Posted in: Today's ChiliYesterday, Lavabit — the email service used by Edward Snowden, catapulting it into unwanted fame — filed a request to have its case partially unsealed, allowing for third parties to file amicus briefs. Today, an appeal filing has surfaced revealing some details about what went down with the email service after attracting the government’s attention, […]
Sep 25
Lavabit shutdown case request for unsealing submitted, may shed light on hidden matters
Posted in: Today's ChiliIn the beginning of August, Ladar Levison shut down his Lavabit email service without warning, citing the reasons as being related to the government and a requirement that would make him “complicit in crimes against the American people.” The case has been sealed and Levison is under gag order, greatly limiting any details he can […]
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