Former Church Committee Members See Need for New Group to Investigate NSA

In a letter sent to President Obama and members of Congress, former members and staff of the Church Committee on intelligence said that the revelations of the NSA activities have caused “a crisis of public confidence” and encouraged the formation of a new committee to undertake “significant and...

Edward Snowden at SXSW Conference: Would I do this again?, I Would!

The Whistleblower and Former National Security Agency NSA contractor Edward Snowden raised his voice and talked about citizen’s privacy once again. Yes, Snowden, whose leaks last year triggered debate on the massive surveillance conducted by the Government worldwide. In an interview, speaking via...

Obama Orders NSA Bulk Metadata Surveillance Reforms

President Obama today announced reforms to the National Security Agency’s bulk metadata collection program under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, ordering a transition that would end the program as it exists today, and prohibit the government from storing and accessing the data without secret cour...

NSA Must Reform Practices, Organization

A presidentially appointed, five member panel issued a more than 300-page report yesterday calling for nearly 50 recommendations for changes in the way that the National Security Agency conducts its increasingly public and controversial sweeping surveillance programs. The entire report hinges on...

Privacy, Human Rights Groups Form New Anti-Surveillance Coalition

A large group of privacy and digital rights organizations has put together a new effort to urge politicians to curtail the mass surveillance operations that have been exposed in the last few months. The new coalition has developed a set of 13 principles for governments to follow in their...

Surveillance Transparency Act Would Limit NSA Spying

There have been countless hearings in both the House and Senate since the Snowden leaks began in June, and there seems to be no end in sight. The latest committee to get in on the action was the Senate Committee on the Judiciary’s Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law, which held a...

Tech Giants Plead for U.S. Surveillance Reforms

Giant technology companies have been vocal about the need for more transparency with regard to the national security requests for user data they receive. But until now, they’ve stayed out of the political fight to address government surveillance, in particular by the National Security Agency...

NSA Director Alexander Denies Spying on Europeans

Intelligence officials appearing before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on Tuesday denied collecting the phone records of citizens in France, Spain and Italy, as recently reported by media outlets in those countries. “The assertions made by Le Monde of France, El Mundo of Spa...

Experts Petition NSA Review Board to Include Technologist

A long list of influential security, privacy and technology experts, largely from academic circles, has petitioned the NSA review board to include a technologist among its ranks. The board, established on Aug. 12 by Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper upon the orders of the...

NSA Director Alexander Asked About Cell Location Collection

Did we hear the next shoe to drop in the NSA surveillance saga? Yesterday before a hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, asked some pointed questions of NSA director Gen. Keith Alexander regarding whether the agency collects cell tower location data in addition t...

UK Cryptographers Call For Publication of Deliberately Weakened Protocols, Products

A group of cryptographers in the UK has published a letter that calls on authorities in that country and the United States to conduct an investigation to determine which security products, protocols and standards have been deliberately weakened by the countries’ intelligence services. The letter,...

Officials Call NSA PRISM Leaks 'Egregious', Say Program Has Foiled Many Terror Plots

Speaking before the House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, senior intelligence and law enforcement officials said that the FISA-authorized collection of telephone records and other data revealed by Edward Snowden’s leaks has prevented more than 50 terror attacks against the United States since...

Always Outmanned, Always Outgunned

We were warned. Over and over again. Not just by privacy advocates and by security experts and by civil liberties organizations and by the guy on the corner in the tin foil hat shouting about the government intercepting his brain waves. We were warned by some of the very people charged with...

Medical Devices Vulnerable to Hacking

A heart defibrillator remotely controlled by a villainous hacker to trigger a fatal heart attack? Yes now its possible, The Government Accountability Office has released a report warning that medical devices are vulnerable to hacking and calling for greater FDA oversight of such devices. The...

More Apps Pulled From Android Market Over Hidden SMS Functionality

There has been another round of malicious apps discovered in the official Android Market, with this wave containing hidden functionality to send SMS messages to premium-rate numbers. The apps, which Google has pulled from the Market already, are counterfeit versions of popular games, including...

Podcast: Culture of Lax Security Prevails Among Medical Device Makers

The news last week was that the U.S. House Energy & Commerce Committee has asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate the security of the software that runs medical devices. But a prominent researcher says that security flaws in such devices are common, and that more federal...

Rep. Bono Mack Requests More Data on Operation Shady RAT

Rep. Mary Bono Mack, chair of the influential House committee that oversees information security, is asking for more information about the Shady RAT attacks that McAfee publicized last week, saying that the “details of the report are alarming at the least,” and asking that researchers brief membe...

The Next Security Scandal Will Be An Attack on High Frequency Trading Systems

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission voted on Tuesday to impose new rules to help oversee what experts warn is a burgeoning and little understood shadow market of ultra high-speed, computer based trading. But one security expert warns that new reporting rules are only part of the problem...

U.S. House Committee Questions Ability to Secure Wall Street Data

Cyber security experts warned on Thursday that the U.S. government is failing to learn the lessons of past computer and intelligence breaches and often exhibits a careless attitude towards securing the data it keeps. The testimony came in a hearing on Thursday before the U.S. House of...

NASA Computer Networks Have Potentially Catastrophic Security Holes !

NASA's internal computer network is full of holes and is extremely vulnerable to an external cyberattack, an audit by the Office of the Inspector General has found. Even worse, it appears several of the vulnerabilities have been known for months, yet remained unpatched. "Six computer servers...