The NSA, Germany, and journalism Look at the home pages of two major German news sites today, August 20. The Süddeutsche Zeitung talks about the government forcing the Guardian to destroy computers holding leaked NSA data in “a scene out of a spy novel.” Spiegel Online talks about the UK as “the land of black helicopters.” Now compare them with leading American and British news sites, pictured below. Therein lie two tales, one about Germany and privacy, one about journalism and news judgment; they are linked and mysterious. First, Germany. In the NSA story, we are seeing both traits but, of course, we are mostly seeing the political side in open anger about American and British government attacks on their privacy. But that’s not so much so in the two countries where the story originates, the US and UK (present company of the Guardian excepted, of course). So I don’t understand why editors at the august publications pictured below are not giving the story the prominence the Germans are. Why?
Even in the 1960s, the NSA was sweeping up phone call records 'like a giant vacuum' Face it: the NSA knows plenty about you, and our growing reliance on technology is only making the agency's controversial surveillance efforts easier. But the National Security Agency has been around for a long time, predating the internet and your email inbox by decades. Even when the agency wasn't collecting cell phone records or purposefully looking at your Gmail inbox, its mission was largely the same. The Washington Post recently took a look at the agency's ways of old, and much like today, the NSA's aggressive approach to monitoring international communications often raised eyebrows. During the 1960s, every call placed between the US and Cuba was monitored by NSA staffers.
NSA analysts knowingly broke surveillance rules The National Security Agency acknowledged Friday that some of its analysts knowingly violated the agency’s rules, after the incidents were included in an inspector general report. "Over the past decade, very rare instances of willful violations of NSA’s authorities have been found, but none under FISA or the Patriot Act,” the NSA said in a statement. “NSA takes very seriously allegations of misconduct, and cooperates fully with any investigations – responding as appropriate. “NSA has zero tolerance for willful violations of the agency’s authorities,” the statement said. Bloomberg News reported earlier that a new report by the agency’s inspector general found several cases over the past decade where people deliberately violated internal rules when it came to conducting surveillance. It’s the latest in a stream of black eyes for the agency. Medine said that the NSA, which oversees most surveillance programs, has not updated its guidelines since 1993.
Why we should still be worried about what Google said regarding Gmail privacy Last week a furore erupted over a statement Google made about privacy - it was widely, and incorrectly, interpreted as having said that Gmail users could have no legitimate expectation of privacy. Google was then widely re-interpreted, correctly, as not having said that. So what happened, what did it say, and now that the mistake has been corrected is everything rosy in the garden? On 12 August, Consumer Watchdog issued a press release warning Gmail users who care about privacy to ditch the service. It issued its advice in response to a recently issued legal brief from Google that, in Consumer Watchdog's eyes, showed the search giant admitting that it doesn't care about people's privacy. At the root of their concern was some text taken from a motion to dismiss issued by Google in June in response to a class action lawsuit. The text taken from the motion to dismiss reads as follows (my emphasis): The words of Consumer Watchdog’s Privacy Project director, John M. Well no, I don't think it is.
Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have 'Nothing t... Why 'Nothing to Hide' misrepresents online priv... Health and fitnessapps - harvesting data' 12 min ago | ChinaTechNews.com Alibaba Throws Money At Internet Privacy Hu Xiaoming, Alibaba's vice president for small- and micro-financial group and chief risk officer, announced in Beijing that the company will invest CNY40 million to establish a security fund. Trending on the Topix Network 12 min ago | ComputerWorld Dropbox angling for larger corporate share Dropbox on Tuesday unveiled a new version of its data storage and sharing service for business claimed to provide IT administrators with more control by separating work and personal files. 3 hrs ago | ComputerWorld Data breaches nail more U.S. More U.S. 3 hrs ago | MediaPost Users Trust Online Retailers With Data Privacy, Less Confidence With Advertisers, Marketers Online auctions, banking, social networks, and competitions are taking the brunt of the burden when it comes to data protection. 3 hrs ago | JD Supra Balancing the data privacy debate: The benefits of big (and little) data 7 hrs ago | ComputerWorld 7 hrs ago | Mashable
PRISM Lessons On Privacy, Cloud and US IT Compa... Turn Off Your Smartphone Camera's GPS to Protec... US and UK spy agencies defeat privacy and security on the internet | World news US and British intelligence agencies have successfully cracked much of the online encryption relied upon by hundreds of millions of people to protect the privacy of their personal data, online transactions and emails, according to top-secret documents revealed by former contractor Edward Snowden. The files show that the National Security Agency and its UK counterpart GCHQ have broadly compromised the guarantees that internet companies have given consumers to reassure them that their communications, online banking and medical records would be indecipherable to criminals or governments. The agencies, the documents reveal, have adopted a battery of methods in their systematic and ongoing assault on what they see as one of the biggest threats to their ability to access huge swathes of internet traffic – "the use of ubiquitous encryption across the internet". But security experts accused them of attacking the internet itself and the privacy of all users.
Size doesn’t matter – at least, not quite as much as smartphone privacy Privacy when using potentially data-leaking mobile phone apps is concern Numero Uno for 22% of smartphone users, according to a new study. Privacy, it seems, trumps screen size, camera resolution, or whether a given handset weighs enough to bend your wrist in half. The report - the TRUSTe 2013 Consumer Data Privacy Study, Mobile Edition - surveyed 700 US smartphone users from 12-19 June, 2013. Privacy concern weighs in second only to battery life, which ranks as the primary concern for 46% of users. Smaller slices of the surveyed are primarily concerned with brand or screen size, each of which is the primary concern for 9%. Nearly 8 out of 10 smartphone users in the US steer clear of downloading apps they don't trust. Let us now spend some time nagging the 20% who don't. Dear Twenty-Percenter: If you're not quite sure what a dodgy mobile app looks like, Sophos' Paul Ducklin draws a pretty picture of one subset here, that being Android scareware.
Feds Stalked Airline Passenger Lists to Catch Manning's Friend, Documents Show | Threat Level Federal agents entered the name of a friend of Chelsea Manning into a government watchlist database and waited months for him to leave the country for vacation just so they could nab him when he returned to seize his digital devices, according to documents released this week in a lawsuit. Even though authorities had already questioned David Maurice House after the arrest of former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning (formerly Bradley Manning) in May 2010, House was placed on the watchlist so that authorities could seize his digital media when he returned to the country, under a law that allows warrantless border searches. The documents indicate House was wanted for questioning in relation to the leak of classified material, even though he had already been questioned. Border agents were ordered to conduct a full secondary screening of him and his bags (.pdf) and to “secure digital media” and “ID all companions” with him. House had met Army Pvt. In November 2010 two agents from U.S.
Keen On… The NSA: Can We Trust Silicon Valley With Our Secrets? Best-selling author James Bamford is one of the world’s leading authorities on the NSA. At Disrupt SF 2013, he spoke on a great panel about online security, and afterwards I had the good fortune to interview him. So can we trust Silicon Valley with our secrets, I asked Bamford. Given the NSA’s seemingly infinite appetite to watch and read everything we do online, can we trust the big technology companies to stand up to the snoops? His response wasn’t particularly reassuring. And what about Edward Snowden, I asked Bamford.