Cheap phones are coming at the price of your privacy, security analysts discovered. At $60, the Blu R1 HD is the top-selling phone on Amazon. Last November, researchers caught it secretly sending private data to China. Shanghai Adups Technology, the group behind the spying software on the Blu R1 HD, called it a mistake. But …
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Requests for Facebook user information from law enforcement agencies around the world increased by 9 percent in the last half of 2016, the company reported Thursday. The figure came as part of Facebook’s global government requests report, which it puts out twice a year. In total, law enforcement asked for user information 64,279 times, compared with 59,229 requests from the …
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If you’re crossing the border into the US, customs officials have broad rights to search your phone, laptop and other electronic devices. You can try to resist. But refusing to tell Customs and Border Protection your password might lead agents to detain you indefinitely, confiscate your devices or send you off to be deported. A bipartisan group of US lawmakers, …
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What do you get for the US president who has everything? According to one report, the perfect present might be a wanted man who’s living in Russia to avoid being tried on charges of espionage and theft. Russia is considering sending Edward Snowden back to the US as a gift for President Donald Trump, NBC reported Friday. The report cites …
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Rep. Mike Pompeo will lead the Central Intelligence Agency, after the US Senate confirmed his nomination Monday evening in a vote of 66 to 32. Pompeo, a graduate of West Point and Harvard Law, currently represents Kansas in the House of Representatives. Casting some of those no votes were senators who raised concerns over Pompeo’s record of supporting increased government …
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More than 1 million people signed onto a petition asking President Barack Obama to pardon Edward Snowden, proponents of the pardon said Friday. The campaign began in September, when Snowden, his attorney Ben Wizner from the ACLU, and other privacy activists announced they would formally petition Obama for a pardon. Snowden leaked classified NSA documents detailing surveillance programs run by …
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Congress has raised a new question about Edward Snowden, who leaked details of secret NSA programs in 2013. Is the fugitive a serial liar? A 33-page report on the House of Representatives intelligence committee questions whether Snowden, a former NSA contractor now in exile in Moscow, took his concerns about intelligence community activities to internal channels for complaints before he …
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The Wikimedia Foundation wants a judge to decide whether a major US surveillance program is constitutional. The US government says the organization has no business bringing the case to court. That was the conflict at the heart of arguments lawyers for both sides gave in a federal appeals court Thursday in Richmond, Virginia. The program, often referred to as “upstream” …
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If you’ve heard of Mozilla, it’s probably because you’ve used its Firefox browser. Now the nonprofit wants to expand out of technology into politics. Mozilla is marshaling public support for political positions, like backing net neutrality, defending encryption and keeping government surveillance from getting out of hand, says Denelle Dixon-Thayer, Mozilla’s chief legal and business officer. The organization is funding …
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Social media is wringing its hands over another potential spying scandal hitting AT&T. This comes almost a decade after the carrier first faced lawsuits over a National Security Agency spy program — and amid a general atmosphere today of privacy worries that wasn’t helped by this month’s accusations that Yahoo had been spying on its users as well. Social Cues …
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