On Jan. 3, just weeks before U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration, outgoing Attorney General Loretta Lynch signed off on an expansion of inter-agency intelligence sharing, allowing the National Security Agency to share raw "signals intelligence" data with other intelligence community members without "scrubbing" it first. A fact sheet released by the Office of the Director … Continue reading Outgoing Obama administration gives Trump’s intelligence community expanded data sharing powers
Tag: surveillance
A report from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, released last week, provides new details on the federal government's use of "cell-site simulators" -- cell phone surveillance devices also commonly known as Stingrays or IMSI-catchers -- and suggests changes to policies governing their use. The report confirms that federal agencies -- primarily the … Continue reading House Oversight Committee calls for clearer rules on cell-site simulators
Buried on the very last page of a draft document released last month by a somewhat obscure Pentagon research and development agency, the Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office (CTTSO) describes a technology that may soon join US spy agencies' online arsenal: a social media mimicry tool that can effectively pretend to be Facebook, Twitter, SnapChat, … Continue reading Pentagon wants capability to mimic social media sites, search engines
The New York Times is reporting this week that social media giant Facebook has developed a new "censorship tool" for use by the Chinese government, in the company's latest aggressive move to get into the potentially lucrative Chinese market. The news comes as Facebook begins new controversial blocking of "fake news" in the US, a … Continue reading China censorship extends known distance Facebook will go to please governments, maximize profits
At the end of this month, regulations will come into effect requiring defense contractors to implement "insider threat" detection and prevention programs, with the aim of stopping security breaches. Yet the approach the Pentagon is taking seems to favor its larger contractors, while potentially stifling innovation from smaller competitors and contributing to the problem it … Continue reading DoD ‘insider threat’ rules may favor biggest contractors, make problem worse
Following last week's US presidential election, Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who exposed numerous government surveillance programs in 2013 and is now living in Russia, has publicly discussed the results at least twice. "We are starting to substitute open government for sheer authoritarianism, a government based not upon the principle of informed … Continue reading Snowden weighs in on election results
From the late 1990s until just under a year ago, UK intelligence agencies MI5, MI6 and GCHQ illegally collected data on citizens, according to a new ruling from the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, which oversees the spy services. The tribunal found that for 17 years, from the mass surveillance programs' inception in 1998 until last November, … Continue reading UK court rules spy agencies illegally collected data, can continue surveillance
The American Civil Liberties Union of California revealed on Tuesday that it has obtained records from prominent social media companies showing that up until recently they had agreements with a controversial data mining company called Geofeedia that markets its social media surveillance services to law enforcement agencies. The companies named in the ACLU report -- … Continue reading Facebook let surveillance company monitor its favorite protest group
It may not come as a huge surprise that the company embroiled in controversy following today's groundbreaking Reuters report on surveillance is Yahoo, as the internet search and email giant was one of several major tech companies exposed as being accessible to the National Security Agency's Prism program in 2013. It is certainly shocking to … Continue reading Yahoo revelations expand known scope of NSA mass surveillance
Late last week reports surfaced that France and Germany, in the wake of recent terror attacks and Britain's vote to leave the European Union, are forming a joint plan for a potential "relaunch of European defence," which would involve greater security coordination among E.U. countries. The goal of the project is to restructure Europe's defense … Continue reading E.U. eyes security, surveillance centralization in wake of Brexit, terror attacks
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