NSA to Destroy Bulk Collection of Surveillance Data

The National Security Agency will restrict access to, and ultimately destroy, millions of US phone records previously collected by the spy agency, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence ODNI announced Monday. The federal law was passed in June ending the NSA’s bulk collection of U.S...

EFF Hopeful Car Hacking Demo Could Help Yield DMCA Exemption

The latest car hacking research from Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek has elicited a broad spectrum of reactions: admiration for the skill; outrage at the danger the demo may have put drivers; and even a patch from an automaker. And the EFF is hoping it might also help produce a new exemption to...

Oops! Adult Dating Website Ashley Madison Hacked; 37 Million Accounts Affected

"Life is short. Have an affair," but always remember "Cheaters never prosper." AshleyMadison.com, an American most prominent dating website, that helps married people cheat on their spouses has been hacked, potentially putting very private details of Millions of its users at risk of being exposed...

Samy Kamkar's ProxyGambit Picks Up for Defunct ProxyHam

Without fail in the weeks leading up to Black Hat and DEF CON, there are inevitably talks that are either pulled by organizers, cancelled by presenters, or strong suggestions are made that the talks don’t happen. This year’s first casualty, Ben Caudill’s scheduled DEF CON demonstration of ProxyHa...

New Snowden Documents Outline Govt. Memos on Expanded Spying

A new set of memos uncovered by Edward Snowden and shared with the New York Times and ProPublica this week reveal how the Obama administration narrowed its search for hackers and expanded its warrantless surveillance program. The two memos, which date back to May and July 2012, enabled the Nation...

Rights Groups Call for More Change Two Years After Snowden Revelations Began

It’s been two years now since the first stories about NSA surveillance capabilities began to appear, and the environment has shifted dramatically in that time. Awareness of and resistance to mass surveillance has increased greatly, but the changes to policy and laws that many observers had hoped...

Final HITECH Act Stage 3 Meaningful Use Rules May Require Annual Risk Analysis plus a Risk Management Component

The comments are in and the HHS is scrambling to review them all before they issue the final Stage 3 Meaningful Use rules later this summer. Comments from entities such as CHIME and HIMSS represent good news and bad news for healthcare providers, depending on how you look at it. The HIPAA Securit...

Sunset of Section 215 Means All Eyes on USA FREEDOM Act

The sun may have set at midnight on Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, putting a temporary halt to the NSA’s bulk collection of phone call metadata, but privacy champions and legal experts point to May 7 as the day the lights dimmed on that facet of the government’s surveillance efforts. On that...

Researchers Wary of Wassenaar Arrangement Proposed Rules

Professional security researchers concerned about proposed changes to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act CFAA that include stiff penalties for what today is considered legitimate offensive research, are worried about another impending punch to the gut. The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry a...

UK Government Rewrites Laws to Let GCHQ Hack Into Computers Legally

The UK Government has quietly changed the Anti-Hacking Laws quietly that exempt GCHQ, police, and other electronic intelligence agencies from criminal prosecution for hacking into computers and mobile phones and carrying out its controversial surveillance practices. The details of the changes wer...

US House Votes to End NSA Phone Records Collection

The U.S. House of Representatives’ resounding vote on Wednesday to end the National Security Agency’s collection of phone metadata and business records shifts the Senate focus squarely onto the shoulders of Kentucky Republican Senator, Mitch McConnell. McConnell is a staunch defender of the...

Court's Ruling a 'Clear Signal' About Mass Surveillance Programs, Experts Say

The ruling last week by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals that the NSA’s years-long bulk collection of phone metadata is illegal is a “clear signal” that courts are moving in the direction of striking down some mass surveillance programs, experts say. The decision, issued Thursday, is among the...

Appeals Court Rules NSA Metadata Collection Not Authorized by Section 215

The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled Thursday that the Patriot Act does not authorize the bulk collection of phone records by the NSA. The ruling undermines the key foundation upon which the federal government’s phone metadata surveillance program is built, Section 215 ...

US Court Rules NSA Phone surveillance Program is illegal

US Court rules NSA Phone surveillance Program is illegal United States’ National Security Agency NSA Spying program that systematically collects data about Millions of Americans' phone calls in bulk is illegal – Yes illegal. The NSA Phone surveillance program, first disclosed by the former NSA...

NSA Whistleblowers, Civil Liberties Groups Urge Congress to Oppose USA Freedom Act

As the expiration date for the controversial Section 215 of the Patriot Act draws near, the voices opposing a renewal of the surveillance powers the measure grants the NSA are growing louder. The latest entry is a letter sent to members of Congress by a long list of privacy, civil liberties, and...

Tech Companies, Privacy Advocates Call for NSA Reform

A group of technology companies, non-profits and privacy and human rights organizations have sent a letter to President Barack Obama, the director of national intelligence and a wide range of Congressional leaders, calling for an end to the bulk collection of phone metadata under Section 215 of t...

White House Creates Cyber Governance Unit Within OMB

With the framework explained for a number of government cybersecurity-related initiatives, now it’s time to talk money. The White House anted up strong in 2015 with proposals for a new data breach notification standard, as well as plans to facilitate information-sharing between the public and...

Affordable Care Act Phishing Campaign

US-CERT is aware of a phishing campaign purporting to come from a U.S. Federal Government Agency. The phishing emails reference the Affordable Care Act in the subject and claim to direct users to health coverage information, but instead direct them to sites which attempt to elicit private...

Indian Government blocks 32 Sites, including GitHub, Pastebin, Imgur and Vimeo

China is known as the nation of 'global internet censorship', and the country proved it many times, in fact when recently it blocked the access to Gmail from the country. Now, it seems that its northern neighbouring country, India doesn't want to get left behind. On Wednesday, the Indian Computer...

FISC Approves 90-Day Extension of Section 215 Surveillance Authority

The secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has authorized a 90-day extension to the Section 215 bulk telephone collection program used by the National Security Agency, giving the agency through the end of February to run the program in the absence of legislation establishing a new...