U.S. Soldier Charged in AT&T Hack Searched “Can Hacking Be Treason”

A U.S. Army soldier who pleaded guilty last week to leaking phone records for high-ranking U.S. government officials searched online for non-extradition countries and for an answer to the question "can hacking be treason?" prosecutors in the case said Wednesday. The government disclosed the detai...

AT&T Paid a Hacker $370,000 to Delete Stolen Phone Records

A security researcher who assisted with the deal says he believes the only copy of the complete dataset of call and text records of “nearly all” AT&T customers has been wiped—but some risks may remain...

Crooks Steal Phone, SMS Records for Nearly All AT&T Customers

AT&T Corp. disclosed today that a new data breach has exposed phone call and text message records for roughly 110 million people -- nearly all of its customers. AT&T said it delayed disclosing the incident in response to "national security and public safety concerns," noting that some of the...

The Sweeping Danger of the AT&T Phone Records Breach

Telecom giant AT&T says a major data breach has exposed the call and text records of “nearly all” of its customers, epitomizing the dire state of data security...

“Nearly all” AT&T customers had phone records stolen in new data breach disclosure

In a déjà-vu nightmare, US phone giant AT&T has notified customers that cybercriminals managed to download phone call and text message records of "nearly all of AT&T cellular customers from May 1, 2022 to October 31, 2022 as well as on January 2, 2023". In a filing with the Securities and Exchang...

Secretive White House Surveillance Program Gives Cops Access to Trillions of US Phone Records

A WIRED analysis of leaked police documents verifies that a secretive government program is allowing federal, state, and local law enforcement to access phone records of Americans who are not suspected of a crime...

Tracking Down a Suspect through Cell Phone Records

Interesting forensics in connection with a serial killer arrest: Investigators went through phone records collected from both midtown Manhattan and the Massapequa Park area of Long Island--two areas connected to a "burner phone" they had tied to the killings. In court, prosecutors later said the...

EFF Blasts DEA in Ongoing Secret 'Super Search Engine' Lawsuit

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is accusing the Drug Enforcement Agency of improperly withholding documents in a court case that hopes to reveal details about the government’s controversial surveillance program known as Hemisphere. The EFF, which is suing the DEA as part of a Freedom of...

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...

Leahy Introduces Bill to End Bulk Call Record Collection

Sen. Patrick Leahy has introduced an updated, tougher version of the USA FREEDOM Act that would end the bulk collection of data under Section 215 of FISA and also would require the appointment of a panel of special legal advocates who would represent the interests of individual privacy and civil...

White House Proposal Would End NSA Metadata Program

Privacy advocates are cautiously applauding the reports that the Obama administration will unveil a legislative proposal to end the National Security Agency’s collection of Americans’ bulk phone records, but are concerned what the fine print on that proposal might hold. “Given all the various way...

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...

EFF: Congress Has Opportunity to Stop Mass Surveillance

Since the leaks of NSA surveillance methods began in June, there has been a flurry of activity in Congress, with members scurrying to line up on either side of the issue, either defending the agency’s methods or condemning them. That mad scramble also has included the introduction of a number of...

FISA Court renews NSA surveillance programs exposed by Snowden

The secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court FISA gave the green light to the Obama administration by renewing the government's authority Friday to continue the collection of millions of Americans' telephone records. The order by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has been in place...

EFF, Eclectic Group of Organizations Sue NSA Over Data Collection

If politics makes strange bedfellows, as the saying goes, wholesale government surveillance takes that to an entirely new level. The clearest evidence yet of the broad and diverse set of groups opposed to the NSA’s domestic spying programs came Tuesday when the EFF said that is representing a...

STOP using Facebook and Google and if you fear US spying

Edward Snowden, a former NSA systems analyst, have revealed the NSA's sweeping data collection of U.S. phone records and some Internet traffic and the programs target foreigners and terrorist suspects mostly overseas.According to the Constitution of all countries, capturing and reading emails or...

NSA Whistleblower Snowden on PRISM, surveillance, privacy

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden said a “continuing litany of lies” from senior U.S. leaders prompted his public uncovering of widespread surveillance of Americans’ phone calls and alleged data sharing between large technology companies and the government. In a two-hour online question-and-answer...