Twitter Denies Intelligence Community Fire Hose Access Via Dataminr

A Twitter business partner, whose service sifts through Twitter’s so-called fire hose of tweets as well as data from other sources to ascertain patterns in breaking news events, has been told to no longer provide its services to the U.S. intelligence community. The Wall Street Journal on Sunday...

Confusion Reigns Over FBI's Plans for National Security Letter Gag Orders

The way that National Security Letters are approved and used is one of the government’s more opaque processes. Now, you can add some more confusion into the mix, courtesy of some new comments from the FBI about when recipients are able to disclose the fact that they have received an NSL. More tha...

FBI Director: 'High Confidence' in North Korea Attribution

When the FBI publicly announced that the North Korean regime was responsible for an embarrassing compromise of corporate networks at Sony Pictures Entertainment, security experts remained skeptical. FBI Director James Comey doubled down on the assertion yesterday at the Fordham University...

Lame Duck Senate to Vote on NSA Reforming USA FREEDOM Act

The United States Senate will move to vote on the USA FREEDOM Act before the current congressional session closes at the end of the year, a move that pleases digital rights groups. In its current form, the bill would ban the bulk collection of Americans’ private records while granting the...

EFF Sues NSA, ODNI Over Zero-Day Disclosure Processes

The Electronic Frontier Foundation wants a peek behind the curtain of the government’s Vulnerabilities Equities Process. The advocacy group on Tuesday filed a Freedom of Information Act FOIA lawsuit against the National Security Agency and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence hopin...

White House Releases Plan to End Section 215 Bulk Collection

The White House today unveiled a five-point plan to end the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of phone call metadata, preserving what it says is a balance between the intelligence community’s national security needs and the public’s desire to maintain its privacy. The proposal ends the...

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...

Oversight Board Calls NSA Metadata Collection Illegal

Another independent review board investigating the National Security Agency’s collection of phone records metadata has come down hard on the program, calling it illegal, recommending the government end the program, and questioning its effectiveness in ferreting out terrorists. The Privacy and Civ...

NSA Officials Say Snowden Used Legitimate Access to Steal Data

It’s taken more than six months, but top officials at the National Security Agency are finally discussing some of the details of how former agency contractor Edward Snowden got access to all of the documents he stole and what kind of damage they believe the publication of the information they...

NSA Director to Retain Cyber Command Role

Since its inception in 2009, the U.S. Cyber Command has been run by the director of the National Security Agency. The two organizations are intertwined and even share the same space in Maryland. The continuous leaks of NSA documents this year has led some politicians and critics to argue that the...

HTTPS, SSL Minimal Security, Privacy Standard for Email

Yahoo is being second-guessed more today than a mediocre baseball manager. Two days after announcing it would finally turn SSL on by default for its email users starting in January, the company is getting a halfhearted pat on the back from the security industry, which can’t help but ask: “What to...

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 using Browser Cookies to track Tor Users

Yesterday a new classified NSA document was leaked by Edward Snowden - titled 'Tor Stinks' in which ideas were being kicked around for identifying Tor users or degrading the user experience to dissuade people from using the Tor browser. The NSA had a very hard time while tracking down all Tor...

NSA Director Alexander Confirms Cell Location Pilot Program

In between pleas to end the government shutdown that has upwards of 70 percent of the intelligence community furloughed until further notice, NSA director Gen. Keith Alexander and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper spent a significant amount of time before a Senate Judiciary Committe...

The Sky is Not Falling--It's Fallen

It’s no fun being a cynic, thinking that everything is bad and getting worse. It’s easy–especially in the security community–but it’s not fun. But, in light of the latest in the interminable string of revelations about the NSA’s efforts to eat away at the foundation of the security industry, the...

Google, Facebook, Yahoo File NSL Transparency Motions

Google, Yahoo and Facebook filed amended requests today with the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court FISC reiterating their desire to publish numbers on requests for user data related to national security. Google, meanwhile, went a step further asking for an open, public hearing with the...

Snowden-Leaked NSA Budget Shows Code-Breaking Investments

New documents leaked by Edward Snowden quantify the resources supporting an extensive intelligence community crypto-cracking program. Tens of thousands of people and billions of dollars are behind the Consolidated Cryptologic Program, as reported yesterday by The Washington Post. Signals...

Congress Warns Section 215 May Not Be Renewed

Incensed at the way that the Department of Justice and the intelligence community have used the controversial section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, members of the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday angrily questioned Justice and NSA officials about their surveillance of U.S. citizens and said that...

Politics, Uncertainty Slowing Down U.S. Response to Cyber Threats

WASHINGTON–The shift in the last few years to cyberespionage and online attacks against the nation’s critical infrastructure have left the United States government lagging behind, and “a day late and a dollar short”, the former director of the National Security Agency said. The ongoing campaigns...

Israel preparing Cyber Iron Dome Shield

Israel's Prime Minister officially opened a new national program to train teenagers in the art of cyberwarfare. The program named "Magshimim Le'umit", is to prepare them for their future role in the military and intelligence community. Israel Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said the country's...