Cybersecurity

British spy agency said to tap world's phone calls, e-mails

Accusations of broad government surveillance have traveled across the pond. Britain's intelligence agency has reportedly been collecting and storing vast amounts of data from the world's telephone calls and Internet traffic -- and sharing that information with the National Security Agency.

Britain's Government Communications Headquarters secretly gained access to fiber-optic cables that carry the world's communications, reports the Guardian. The GCHQ taps into huge amounts of data from these cables and stores it for up to 30 days to be looked over by analysts from GCHQ and the NSA.

The Guardian reported Friday that documents shown … Read more

How Web mail providers leave door open for NSA surveillance

Billions of supposedly private e-mail messages a day flow through unsecured links, where they can be snared in digital dragnets operated by the National Security Agency and other intelligence services.

Recent revelations about NSA surveillance -- including a top-secret document discussing "collection of communications on fiber cables and infrastructure as data flows past" -- have highlighted the ease with which government eavesdroppers can exploit the Internet's infrastructure. Another classified document, which the Guardian published Thursday, mentions network-based surveillance of Hotmail servers.

Over the last decade or so, Web mail providers began to turn on encryption to armor the connections … Read more

North Korea calls U.S 'kingpin of human rights abuses' following NSA leaks

North Korea has pounced on the recent revelations of NSA snooping to take a few digs at the United States.

Minju Joson, the country's state-run newspaper, lashed out at the U.S. in the wake of leaks from National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden that the NSA has been collecting data on U.S. citizens under a secret program known as PRISM. Snowden also said last week that the U.S. has been hacking into computers in China and Hong Kong for the past several years.

A commentary in Minju Joson called the U.S. "a kingpin of human rights abuses … Read more

Kroes: Unify the mobile market or Europe will fall farther behind

Neelie Kroes, the European Commission vice president in charge of the digital agenda, sketched out several steps toward the unified mobile-network market she believes is necessary to keep Europe's economy from falling behind.

In a speech Tuesday, she called for several steps to lower barriers that today make it hard for carriers to expand from one country to another and for customers to use mobile devices outside their home countries. Among the steps she suggested:

A "passport" that let a carrier, once certified to operate a mobile network permission in one country, operate in other countries, too. … Read more

Can you trust the NSA, the Internet giants, or your IT department?

Life is filled with trade-offs, and when it comes to keeping the country secure against terror attacks, Americans largely trust the government with broad access to personal data. Indeed, a recent Pew Research Center survey found that 56 percent of those polled favored the National Security Agency's previously undisclosed phone tracking activities compared with 41 percent who opposed letting the spy agency surveil phone records.

In making their case to the public, government officials tend to put the issue in black-and-white terms: Do you want to be responsible for a terrorist attack because the intelligence community failed to connect … Read more

NSA whistleblower: U.S has been hacking into China, Hong Kong

The U.S. government had been hacking into computers in Hong Kong and China for years, says NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The former CIA employee stirred up a hornet's nest recently when he leaked details about PRISM, a National Security Agency program that collects certain user information from Internet companies and phone service providers in an effort to track down terrorists.

In an interview with the South China Morning Post, Snowden said that PRISM actually extends to people and institutions in Hong Kong and mainland China. The NSA itself has been hacking into computers in Hong Kong and China … Read more

NSA leaker's purported online activity, interests come to light

Scrutiny is coming to the motives and methods of Edward Snowden with the discovery of many years of online postings apparently from the man who said he leaked information on the NSA's electronic surveillance activities.

The 29-year-old former government contractor appears to have published comments and questions hundreds of times on the technology site Ars Technica under the username TheTrueHOOHA, according to reports from Reuters, Ars Technica, and Anthony de Rosa, who's about to join mobile news site Circa. Buzzfeed compiled some highlights, and Reuters also spotlighted some profile information on another site, since removed, called Ryuhana Press. … Read more

Guardian reveals identity of whistle-blower behind NSA leak

The person who revealed the National Security Agency's Internet surveillance program is a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA named Edward Snowden, according to an interview published by The Guardian.

"I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong," he told the newspaper, which said it was publishing Snowden's identity at his request.

"I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions," he said in an interview from Hong Kong. But, he added, "I will be satisfied if the federation of … Read more

After PRISM, 'Boundless Informant' tool comes to light

The stream of leaks revealing the U.S. National Security Agency's secrets carries on with the public outing of a powerful intelligence tracking tool.

In a fresh wave of documents obtained by The Guardian, the details of the NSA's data mining tool "Boundless Informant" are laid out for the world to see.

Whereas PRISM is involved in the collection of data, Boundless Informant focuses on organizing and indexing metadata. The tool categorizes communications records rather than the content of a message itself, such as a text message or phone call.

A leaked fact sheet (PDF) explains … Read more