Dropbox Updates Privacy Policy in Response to Surveillance

The online storage service Dropbox has amended its privacy policy at least in part to better address increased concerns regarding how the service perceives, responds to, and handles government requests for user-data. The new government data requests principles come as part of broader and fairly...

First AT&T Transparency Report Shows 2,000+ NSL Requests

AT&T, in its first transparency report, said that it received at least 2,000 National Security Letters and nearly 38,000 requests for location data on its subscribers in 2013. The new report from AT&T is the latest in a growing list of publications from telecom companies, Web providers and cell...

Dropbox Publishes 2013 Transparency Report

Dropbox yesterday released a new set of principles that explain how it deals with government requests for customer data. The principles were a companion to its 2013 Transparency Report, which for the first time included National Security Letter requests made to the file hosting service. “We belie...

Twitter Transparency Report January 2014 Released

Color Twitter unimpressed with the Justice Department ruling that eased a gag order on technology companies and service providers with regard to the reporting of FISA orders and National Security Letters. Twitter released a transparency report today on government and law enforcement requests for...

Tech Giants Update Transparency Reports with FISA Requests

Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo and LinkedIn wasted little time in disclosing what they could about requests for customer data made under the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. One week after the Justice Department eased a gag order on reporting of FISA requests, the five tech giant...

Microsoft launching 'Transparency Center' for Source code integrity Check

Last Friday at the 50th Munich Security Conference, Microsoft announced to launch 'Transparency centers' around the World, where government customers will be able to verify the source code of Microsoft’s products and can confirm that there are no backdoors. The recent chain of scandals over US...

Gag Order Eased on NSA surveillance Transparency Reporting

A gag order has been eased that prevented technology and telecommunications companies from reporting requests for customer data made under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act FISA. The move comes on the heels of announced surveillance reforms by President Obama on Jan. 17. Obama, during an...

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...

Verizon Releases First Transparency Report, Says Government Requests INcreasing

After months of public calls from privacy advocates and security experts, Verizon on Wednesday released its first transparency report, revealing that it received more than 164,000 subpoenas and between 1,000 and 2,000 National Security Letters in 2013. The report, which covers Verizon’s landline,...

CREDO Mobile Publishes Industry's First Transparency Report

Credo Mobile, the small San Francisco mobile provider that is reportedly the unnamed plaintiff in a suit that challenged the legality of national security letters, yesterday published its first transparency report, the first such report published by a mobile provider. Credo, which has raised tens...

Academics Call for End to Mass Surveillance

A group of hundreds of academics from countries around the world have started a petition that demands Western governments, such as those in the United States and UK, stop the mass surveillance programs they have in place and “effectively protect everyone’s fundamental rights and freedoms”. The...

AT&T, Verizon Announce Transparency Reports in 2014

One by one, the telecommunications giants at the heart of the NSA surveillance scandal are relenting to shareholder pressure and public demands for them to publish reports on government requests for user data. On Friday Verizon and AT&T announced their intent to begin producing transparency repor...

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...

AT&T Refuses to Issue Transparency Report, Cites Privacy

Telecommunications giant AT&T has come under fire from privacy advocates after it acknowledged that it will not publicly disclose any of its dealings with the National Security Agency. The company claimed that protecting customer privacy is at the crux of its decision not to share government...

[Orchid] Tor Client for Java

Orchid is a Tor client implementation and library written in pure Java. It was written from the Tor specification documents, which are available here. Orchid runs on Java 5+ and the Android devices. How can Orchid be used? In a basic use case, running Orchid will open a SOCKS5 listener which can ...

Tech Companies Join Reform Government Surveillance Alliance

Eight massive technology companies including Facebook, Apple and Google make up a new coalition calling for a reform of surveillance practices, which the companies say are undermining trust in not only their respective services, but of the Internet as a medium for communication and commerce. The...

French Government Impersonates Google Digital Certificate

Google last week revoked digital certificates for some of its domains that had been fraudulently signed by an intermediate certificate authority with links to France’s cyber-defense agency. The Agence Nationale de la Sécurité des Systèmes d’Information ANSSI claims that the spoofed Google...

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...

Passive Security Community Turned Activist

Security people like to call themselves a community, but until June some might say its greatest community achievement is turning Twitter into its own private and contentious echo chamber. But since the Snowden leaks, there’s been a palpable change and a marked swell in stand-taking. Tweeters have...

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...