Jul 24
Construction is underway for a sprawling and seriously expensive National Security Agency data center in the Utah desert, and a set of floor plans just hit the web. It all looks appropriately intimidating.
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Jul 24
In the 1970s, civilian researchers at places like IBM, Stanford and MIT were developing encryption to ensure that digital data sent between businesses, academics and private citizens couldn’t be intercepted and understood by a third party. This concerned folks in the U.S. intelligence community who didn’t want to get locked out of potentially eavesdropping on anyone, regardless of their preferred communications method. Despite their most valiant efforts, agencies like the NSA ultimately lost out to commercial interests. But it wasn’t for lack of trying.
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Jul 24
In the midst of the revelations about the NSA’s sweeping surveillance program
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Jul 24
According to the Washington Post, Russia has decided to grant Edward Snowden permission to leave the Moscow airport. Though the NSA whistleblower has been offered asylum in Bolivia and Venezuela, he reportedly requested temporary asylum in the Eastern European country last week. While the Putin government didn’t approve Snowden’s application immediately, it’s refused to hand him over to the U.S. since he arrived in Shremetyevo airport from Hong Kong on June 23rd. It’s unclear if and when the country will approve the request, but Snowden’s Russian lawyer said his client’s unique legal situation would keep him in the transit zone for at least one more day. Stay tuned — we’ll be updating as more information becomes available.
Via: Washington Post
Jul 19
On Friday, the secret court that oversees cases related to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act renewed the order that enables the NSA to compel telecom companies to hand over records whenever it wants. Translation: No end in sight to the NSA spying on phone records.
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Jul 17
Google Drive reportedly encrypting files, keeping prying eyes off of your cloud
Posted in: Today's Chili
CNET has learned that Google may be implementing measures to keep the government (or anyone else) out of your Google Drive-stored data. Should this be true, folks concerned about their privacy — everyone, we would hope — might rest easier in a post-PRISM world. According to one of CNET‘s anonymous sources, this isn’t some flight of fancy, either: A small percentage of Drive files are already protected. Of course, even such digital protection is not guaranteed to keep your files private, but it would force those who would like a peek to obtain your login credentials first. Not that Uncle Sam would ever do such a thing without legal permission, right?
Source: CNET
Jul 17
Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and others are forming an alliance to demand more transp
Posted in: Today's ChiliApple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and others are forming an alliance to demand more transparency from the NSA. According to AllThingsD, they’ll ask President Obama to let them do three things in their transparency reports and ask the government to provide their own transparency reports too.
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Jul 17
Automatic license plate readers are the most widespread location tracking technology you’ve probably never heard of. Mounted on patrol cars or stationary objects like bridges, they snap photos of every passing car, recording their plate numbers, times, and locations. At first the captured plate data was used just to check against lists of cars law enforcement hoped to locate for various reasons (to act on arrest warrants, find stolen cars, etc.). But increasingly, all of this data is being fed into massive databases that contain the location information of many millions of innocent Americans stretching back for months or even years.
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Jul 17
It may be the US government generating the most PRISM-related headlines, but the UK authorities have found themselves in plenty of hot water as well. If you were one of her privacy-concerned citizens hoping to see someone at the Government Communications Headquarter (GCHQ) get their comeuppance, then you’re going to be sorely disappointed. The Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) of Parliament has found that the GCHQ was within its legal powers to collect data on citizens. In particular, the committee cited the Intelligence Services Act of 1994 as giving the authority to do so to the GCHQ. This is far from the end of this saga, but for Brits hoping there would be quick legal retribution for those who unceremoniously listened in on your personal communications, it’s a sad day indeed.
Filed under: Internet
Source: BBC
Jul 16
Microsoft asks US Attorney General to intervene on security disclosures, denies assisting with NSA interceptions
Posted in: Today's Chili
Microsoft sits between a rock and a hard place when it comes to privacy — it can’t reveal more about FISA requests, but it’s also accused of assisting with NSA eavesdropping. The company is trying to settle both matters today, starting with a call on the US Attorney General for help. Microsoft hasn’t had a response to its June 19th request to publish aggregate security request data, and it wants the Attorney General to directly intervene by legalizing these disclosures. The government official hasn’t publicly acknowledged the request so far, although we weren’t expecting an immediate answer.
At the same time, Microsoft is expanding its denials of The Guardian‘s recent reporting that it facilitates large-scale NSA snooping. Along with insisting once more that it only offers specific information in response to legal requests, the firm claims that its supposedly eavesdrop-friendly actions were innocuous. Microsoft was only moving Skype nodes in-house rather than simplifying the NSA’s access to audio and video chats, for example. It’s doubtful that the public position will completely reassure doubters given the veils of secrecy surrounding the NSA and its collaborators, but the crew in Redmond at least has a full statement on record.
Filed under: Storage, Internet, Software, Microsoft
Source: Microsoft on the Issues
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