Aug 20
The digital carnage continues as yet another online service shuts down rather than face NSA scrutiny. Fearing for its email security, the legal site Groklaw shut its doors on Tuesday
     |
Aug 20
After the closures of Lavabit and Silent Circle, we had wondered which online service would be next to wind down after Edward Snowden’s PRISM revelations. Turns out that we’re losing Groklaw, the technology and law blog, which is stopping operations from today. In an impassioned sign-off, founder Pamela Jones has said that she cannot keep running the site knowing the extent to which her private communications are subject to public scrutiny. She has also advised others to spend less time on the internet and use Kolab, a Swiss email service, which is apparently safe from the NSA — at least for now.
Filed under: Internet
Via: TechDirt
Source: Groklaw
Aug 18
A year ago, pod-shaped recycling bins were installed all over the UK by Renew London. The so-called “smart bins” definitely look better than your average trash can. Now, you might be wondering, why would trash cans have Wi-Fi capabilities and an LCD installed on front?
The answer, my friends, is advertising. Targeted advertising.
The bin looks for smartphones nearby that have their Wi-Fi turned on. It then logs their MAC address and calculates the “proximity, speed, duration and manufacturer” of each device. It tracks the phone owner’s actions to then display targeted adverts on the screen, which will play as they walk past the bin.
Sounds smart, right? Yeah, definitely, but it’s rubbing a lot of people the wrong way because of privacy issues. To be honest, I’d be pretty irked, too, if this phone was tracking what I was doing just so it could show me an ad or two when I walk past the bin.
So it was only a matter of time before the bins had their Wi-Fi and tracking capabilities pulled. The City of London has called on Renew to stop recording people’s movements, so Londoners can breathe a sigh of relief now.
The City of London released the following statement:
We have already asked the firm concerned to stop this data collection immediately. We have also taken the issue to the Information Commissioner’s Office. Irrespective of what’s technically possible, anything that happens like this on the streets needs to be done carefully, with the backing of an informed public.
[via C|NET]
Aug 15
The Washington Post dropped two reports that exposes the recklessness of the NSA’s spying program. The first report is insane: the NSA has "broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority" thousands of times a year and the second report explains the insanity: the FISC court that’s supposed to be in charge of government spying programs has said that "its ability do so is limited and that it must trust the government" to report when the government has screwed up.
| |
Aug 15
Google’s coasting on the wave of cyber anxiety following the NSA leaks with some new encryption features. From now on everything you put on Cloud Storage will be automatically encrypted on Google servers. Which raises the question: Why isn’t everything encrypted on Google servers?
| |
Aug 15
Facebook’s Graph Search now makes it possible for others to see which apps you use. Disable that functionality with a few steps.
| |
Aug 15
It’s been two months since President Barack Obama first said that he welcomes a debate about NSA surveillance, which he once again reiterated last week at his press conference. Unfortunately, it’s very hard to have a real debate about a subject when the administration constantly and intentionally misleads Americans about the NSA’s capabilities and supposed legal powers.
| |
Aug 14
Between constant password breaches
| |
Aug 13
If you recall, earlier this month the encrypted email service Lavabit abruptly shutdown, killing the service for over 400,000 users in one swoop. Following that, another encrypted email service run by Silent Circle was preemptively shutdown. Although Ladar Levison, the creator of Lavabit, is under a gag order that prevents him from talking about the […]
Aug 13
Google has been caught up in a legal battle that claims the Internet giant uses Gmail as a “secret data mining machine,” something it is fighting against. In a legal briefing the company filed, it contends something that has caused users and others to get a bit riled: that individuals who send emails to a […]
Who's in charge here?
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.