Anti-Surveillance Measure Quashed: Orlando Massacre Cited as Reason

The House voted Thursday to block passage of an amendment aimed to rein in U.S. domestic mass surveillance by the NSA and protect strong encryption standards citing Sunday’s Orlando tragedy as reason to fight surveillance reforms. The so-called Massie-Lofgren amendment was considered a key privac...

Meaningful Surveillance Reform Risks Defeat Over US House Rules Change

Civil liberties groups are anxiously waiting to see if an anti-surveillance amendment will be added to a Department of Defense spending bill Tuesday. The so-called Massie-Lofgren amendment would rein in U.S. domestic mass surveillance by the NSA and protect U.S. encryption standards. The amendmen...

Microsoft Wins Widespread Support in Privacy Clash With Govt.

Microsoft’s lawsuit against the U.S. government for the right to tell its customers when a federal agency is looking at their emails is getting widespread support by privacy advocates. For many, Microsoft’s stance lends an important and powerful voice to ongoing efforts to reform the Electronic...

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...

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...

AOL Releases Transparency Report Lobbies for USA FREEDOM Act

Noting that Saturday was the 13th anniversary of the passage of the USA PATRIOT Act, the Web giant AOL this week released its latest transparency report, detailing estimations of how many Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act FISA orders and National Security Letters NSLs it’s received in the las...

EFF Launches New Anti-Surveillance Site

The EFF has launched a new site dedicated to educating users about how to resist pervasive surveillance online, through the promotion of encryption and other tools and the publication of first-person stories from people around the world who have fought surveillance in various ways. The new site, ...

September 2014 Yahoo Transparency Report

There was less clamor from governments and law enforcement around the world for data collected and stored by Yahoo, but nonetheless, the technology giant still fielded more than 18,000 data requests over the first six months of the year. Yahoo yesterday released its third Transparency Report, and...

2014 Google Transparency Report Requests for Data Up Again

Against a backdrop of new surveillance programs being uncovered in New Zealand and allegations of the NSA and GCHQ’s penetration of Deutsche Telekom in Germany, Google yesterday published its biannual Transparency Report for the first half of 2014. Google’s numbers reflect not only a continually...

Dropbox Reports 80 Percent of Subpoenas Contain Gag Request

Most U.S. government subpoenas for data on Dropbox users are accompanied with a request not to inform the user in question. Dropbox legal counsel Bart Volkmer said those gag orders are repelled unless there is a valid court order. The revelation accompanied the release of the cloud storage...

In the Wake of the Snowden Revelations, A Wave of Innovation

It was an absurd scene. Keith Alexander, the director of the NSA and a four-star general in the Army, stood alone on the stage, squinting through the floodlights as members of the standing-room-only crowd shouted insults and accusations. Armed men in dark suits roamed the area in front of the...

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...

Government Requests for Google User Data Continue to Climb

While the number of requests for user information that Google receives from governments around the world continues to rise–climbing by 120 percent in the last four years–the company is turning over some data in fewer cases as time goes on. Google received more than 27,000 requests for user...

NSA Surveillance Reform Demonstrate Need for Public Scrutiny

The Snowden leaks and the ensuing critical spotlight shone on the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs have nudged many technologists, privacy hounds and politicians away from their desks and onto the front lines calling for reforms. Two nights ago, the New York Times reported that...

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...

Institute for Electric Grid Cybersecurity Girds Utilities

Critical infrastructure policymakers are advocating the foundation of a new entity, the Institute for Electric Grid Cybersecurity, along with a new set of guidelines, to better protect the North American electric grid from cyber-attacks and determine how to respond if the grid is ever compromised...

RSA Conference 2014 Art Coviello RSA keynote

SAN FRANCISCO – RSA Security executive chairman Art Coviello today at RSA Conference 2014 made his first public comments about the security company’s relationship with the National Security Agency, painting the landmark firm as a victim of the spy agency’s blurring of the lines between its...

Senators Question Intelligence Officials About Snowden, Domestic Surveillance

In a hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee to discuss the public portions of a new national security threat assessment, top intelligence and law enforcement officials said that attacks against financial networks and the critical infrastructure are major threats to the United States’...

Crypto Pioneers Write Letter on NSA Surveillance to Obama

Perhaps the biggest condemnation of President Obama’s address last Friday announcing reforms to the NSA’s surveillance programs was his failure to mention any of the agency’s alleged involvement in subverting cryptography standards and the impact that has had on the trustworthiness of products...

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...