Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) is a very busy man who focuses a lot on issues that concern his constituents in Vermont. However, on a national level, he is taking it upon himself to tackle privacy issues regarding phone use. Sen. Leahy teamed up with Representative James “Jim” Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) to work on legislation that deals…
What the individual thinks is irrelevant. Only what the government thinks and what their perspective that individual and what they are doing is relevant. Just thirty years ago the United States was locked in one of the most epic pissing contests of all time with the United Soviet Socialist Republic. The US stood for the…
It appears that we may finally be making a sliver of progress on the issue of online/digital privacy. The House passed the USA Freedom Act in May, a bill that originally garnered wide support but which quickly become so watered down by more loopholes and loose provisions. It has yet to be passed in the Senate, but so…
On June 2nd, Apple announced it would be updating it’s iMessage feature to allow users to send self-destructing videos, pictures, and audio messages, a clear attempt to share the limelight media-sharing app Snapchat has continued to bask in. Does this bode bad news for Snapchat? Maybe. But for those with concerns about how much and what…
Upon learning last year about how the NSA’s PRISM program had been recording and storing huge amounts of personal information, the internet community’s hackles were decidedly trending upward. The general consensus was that something had gone seriously awry—that questionable judgment calls had been made somewhere up the chain of command—but no one was really sure…
Another year, another round of sobering reminders that we might as well have all the information that flows through our internet endeavors neatly inscribed on our foreheads for all the good standard online security protocols do. 4.6 million users of the carelessness-enabling temporary photo service Snapchat have had their account details partially distributed, while some…
According to the German news site Spiegel, the National Security Agency seems to be particularly fond of the iPhone. No, I don’t mean that people who work at the NSA use iPhones. I mean that the NSA likes the fact that you have an iPhone because it is apparently an information heaven for them. …
In the wake of the Edward Snowden scandal, two of the biggest names in encrypted email have terminated services to prevent government access to their databases. Lavabit And Silent Circle Shut Down Encrypted Email Services When NSA whistle-blower, Edward Snowden, leaked documents detailing the federal government’s data-gathering program, PRISM, he knew there would be consequences…
X-Keyscore collects the widest-reaching collection of data online and it requires no authorization for its searches. The analysts can simply run through emails, online chats, social media activity and one’s browsing history at the flick of their wrist. It also, according to a former Intelligence Community computer engineer ,“[actually] is a massive target[ing capability] that…