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Posts Tagged ‘Internet privacy’

Facebook Lawsuit Shows How Outdated Our Privacy Laws Are

December 31, 2014 Comments off

wallstcheatsheet.com

The latest lawsuit filed against social networking giant Facebook may ultimately lead to change in how social networks can collect and use our communications, but in the meantime serves to highlight the obsolescence and vagueness of the legislation that protects the personal data we share via social networks and email.

Re/code reports that Facebook will face a class-action lawsuit that accuses it of violating users’ privacy by scanning the messages that they send to other users of the social network. U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton dismissed some state-law claims against the company but denied Facebook’s bid to dismiss the lawsuit, which will now seek to establish how routine the process of scanning messages is to the tech firm’s business.

Facebook has argued that the alleged scanning of users’ messages was covered by an exception under the federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) for interceptions by Read more…

Categories: Facebook Tags: , ,

Facebook can see what users type even if status is not posted

December 18, 2013 Comments off

latimes.com

Facebook

Facebook said tracking users’ activity even if they decide not to post a status or comment falls within the company’s terms of service. (Daniel Acker / Bloomberg / December 9, 2013)

By Salvador Rodriguez

Facebook has said that it is within its terms of service to see what users are typing even when the status or comment is never posted on the social network.

The Menlo Park, Calif., company confirmed that it can track users’ unpublished posts after two Facebook researchers disclosed that they had tracked the activity of about 5 million random Facebook users in the U.S. and England.

The researchers’ study looked at how often these users censored themselves while typing posts and comments on Facebook. If users typed more than five characters, the content was tracked. It was considered to be self-censored if it was not published within 10 minutes of being typed.

Facebook said the study did not track the exact words and letters that users typed, but whether or not they typed something. The methodology for the study also kept the Read more…

Categories: Facebook Tags: , , ,

FBI pressures Internet providers to install surveillance software

August 5, 2013 Comments off

cnet.com

CNET has learned the FBI has developed custom “port reader” software to intercept Internet metadata in real time. And, in some cases, it wants to force Internet providers to use the software.

FBI headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C.FBI headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C.

(Credit: Getty Images)

The U.S. government is quietly pressuring telecommunications providers to install eavesdropping technology deep inside companies’ internal networks to facilitate surveillance efforts.

FBI officials have been sparring with carriers, a process that has on occasion included threats of contempt of court, in a bid to deploy government-provided software capable of intercepting and analyzing entire communications streams. The FBI’s legal position during these discussions is that the software’s real-time interception of metadata is authorized under the Patriot Act.

Attempts by the FBI to install what it internally refers to as “port reader” software, which have not been previously disclosed, were Read more…

Categories: Privacy, United States Tags: , , , , , ,

NSA Whistleblowers: NSA Collects ‘Word for Word’ Every Domestic Communication

August 3, 2013 2 comments

washingtonsblog.com

Anyone Who Says the Government Only Spies On Metadata Is Sadly Mistaken

PBS interviewed NSA whistleblowers William Binney and Russell Tice this week.

Binney is the NSA’s former director of global digital data, and a 32-year NSA veteran widely regarded as a “legend” within the agency.  Tice helped the NSA spy with satellites.

Binney and Tice confirmed that the NSA is recording every word of every phone call made within the United States:

[PBS INTERVIEWER] JUDY WOODRUFF:   Both Binney and Tice suspect that today, the NSA is doing more than just collecting metadata on calls made in the U.S. They both point to this CNN interview by former FBI counterterrorism agent Tim Clemente days after the Boston Marathon bombing. Clemente was asked if the government had a way to get the Read more…

Categories: Big Brother, Privacy Tags: , , ,

Google: FBI watching you on internet

March 8, 2013 Comments off

indiatimes.com

(Google says the FBI is monitoring…)

WASHINGTON: Google says the FBI is monitoring the Web for potential terrorist activity. But it can’t say how extensive the surveillance is.

As part of the Google Transparency Report, the Internet giant this week released data on so-called National Security Letters — official requests for data under the Patriot Act passed after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

But Google said it was only allowed to provide broad ranges of numbers: in the years from 2009 to 2012, for example, it received between zero and 999 requests. The requests affected between 1,000 and 1,999 accounts, except in 2010 when the range was 2,000 to 2,999 accounts, Google said.

“You’ll notice that we’re reporting numerical ranges rather than exact numbers. This is to address concerns raised Read more…

Categories: FBI Tags: , , , ,

How secretly developed software became capable of tracking people’s movements online

February 12, 2013 Comments off

The U.S. government can track where you are, who you’re with, what you look like, and where you’ll likely be next thanks to a tool created by defense contractor Raytheon.

The tool, called Riot, or rapid information overlay technology, looks at your Twitter, Facebook, Gowalla, and Foursquare to determine Read more…

Categories: Privacy Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Big Google is watching you

January 16, 2013 Comments off

businessspectator.com

While travelling overseas at Christmas we naturally turned off mobile data on our phones to avoid being ripped off by the phone companies’ rapacious data roaming charges.

Instead, everywhere I went I asked for the Wi-Fi password and sometimes didn’t even need one. No problem, although using Google maps to get around in the street was impossible.

 

In fact with all three phone networks in Australia whacking up their data prices, I’m thinking of turning off mobile data at home as well. There’s more and more public Wi-Fi around and although the domestic Read more…

Categories: Privacy Tags: , , , , , , ,

Is Privacy Dead? 4 Government and Private Entities Conspiring to Track Everything You Do Online and Off

September 12, 2012 Comments off

alternet.org

Americans’ personal privacy is being crushed by the rise of a four-headed corporate-state surveillance system.  The four “heads” are: federal government agencies; state and local law enforcement entities; telecoms, web sites & Internet “apps” companies; and private data aggregators (sometimes referred to as commercial data warehouses).

Conventional analysis treats these four domains of data gathering as separate and distinct; government agencies focus on security issues and corporate entities are concerned with commerce. Some overlap can be expected as, for example, in case of a terrorist attack or an online banking fraud.  In both cases, an actual crime occurred.

But what happens when the boundary separating or restricting corporate-state collaboration, e.g., an exceptional crime-fighting incident, erodes and becomes the taken-for-granted operating environment, the new normal?  Perhaps most troubling, what happens when the traditional safeguards offered by “watchdog” courts or regulatory organizations no longer seem to matter?  What does it say that the entities designed to Read more…

Categories: Privacy Tags: , , , , ,

Cispa approved by House but critics urge Senate to block ‘horrible’ bill

April 27, 2012 Comments off

guardian

cispa wikipedia

Cispa has undergone several amendments, but Michelle Richardson of the ACLU said: ‘Cispa goes too far for little reason’. Photograph: Rex Features

Free speech advocates are calling for the Senate to block controversial cybersecurity legislation they claim will give the US authorities unprecedented access to online communications.

The House of Representatives on Thursday ignored the threat of a White House veto to pass the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (Cispa). The bill aims to make it easier for companies to share information collected on the internet with the federal government in order to help prevent electronic attacks from cybercriminals, foreign governments and terrorists.

Sponsors of the bill have made several amendments to Cispa in the past week, but critics say the bill still threatens to overrule existing privacy protections for citizens, and hands the National Security Agency too much power to access and use people’s private information.

The Center for Democracy and Technology said it was “disappointed that Cispa passed Read more…

Categories: internet, Privacy Tags: , ,

Even worse than SOPA: New CISPA cybersecurity bill will censor the Web

April 4, 2012 1 comment

rt.com

An onrush of condemnation and criticism kept the SOPA and PIPA acts from passing earlier this year, but US lawmakers have already authored another authoritarian bill that could give them free reign to creep the Web in the name of cybersecurity.

As congressmen in Washington consider how to handle the ongoing issue of cyberattacks, some legislators have lent their support to a new act that, if passed, would let the government pry into the personal correspondence of anyone of their choosing.

H.R. 3523, a piece of legislation dubbed the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (or CISPA for short), has been created under the guise of being a necessary implement in Read more…

Categories: Big Brother, internet Tags: , , , , ,