Privacy and data protection

George Bush: No regrets over PRISM spy program

Former President George W. Bush defended the surveillance measures put in place during his tenure as necessary to fight terrorism.

In a CNN interview published Monday, Bush did allow that there needed to be a balance in the tradeoff between greater security and privacy concerns.

"I think there needs to be a balance, and as the president explained, there is a proper balance," Bush said. Referring more specifically to the disclosures about the National Security Agency's surveillance activities in its PRISM spy program, Bush said, "I put that program in place to protect the country. One … Read more

Ex-Stasi boss green with envy over NSA's domestic spy powers

For Wolfgang Schmidt, it was just bad luck that he was 20 years too late and living on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain.

The former head of the Stasi, which was East Germany's secret police force, betrayed a fair bit of envy about the powers enjoyed by his former Cold War nemesis in the aftermath of revelations about the extent of the National Security Agency's surveillance powers.

"You know, for us, this would have been a dream come true," he said in a wide-ranging interview with McClatchy.

As a former top spook in his … Read more

Defense Department building its own secure 4G network

The U.S. Department of Defense is building its own secure 4G network to improve collaboration among separate branches of the military, according to the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The network is part of an effort dubbed "Joint Information Environment," which will consolidate 15,000 Defense Department networks in the cloud, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey said in a speech (PDF) delivered Thursday at the Brookings Institute, an influential think tank based in Washington, D.C. In addition to greater collaboration, the new network will be "significantly more secure, helping ensure the integrity … Read more

Student group files complaint against U.S. firms over NSA data snooping

A student group has charged several U.S. technology companies with violations of European law for allegedly cooperating with the NSA to collect data on private citizens.

Known as Europe-v-Facebook (EVF), the group of Austrian students announced Wednesday that it filed formal complaints with the EU against Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Skype, and Yahoo. The group contends that since the five companies do business in Europe through subsidiaries, they fall under European privacy laws.

Such laws allow the export of data only if the company's European subsidiary can guarantee an "adequate level or protection" in the home country. … Read more

A modest proposal for privacy control

Privacy policies, with disclosures about what kind of information Internet services collect about you and how to manage your online profile, are notoriously obtuse, incomplete, and difficult to master.

They aren't as obtuse as the National Security Agency is about its data collection policies, but the vast majority of online users have little interest in trying to parse the language or even in trying to actively manage their profiles with the tools offered today.

The companies that collect data, of course, want to assure you that whatever they collect is in pursuit of creating a better experience for you … Read more

Ad group blasts cookie-privacy project from Mozilla, Stanford

The Interactive Advertising Bureau, a group that represents hundreds of Internet advertisers, has attacked Mozilla's involvement in a Stanford Law School privacy project to judge whether individual Web sites can be trusted to set behavior-tracking browser cookies.

The IAB doesn't like the Cookie Clearninghouse, which Stanford's Center for Internet and Society and Mozilla announced on June 19. The project aims to rate individual to bring privacy ratings for browser cookies -- the small text files that Web site operators can store on people's computers. Cookies can be useful for remembering that you're logged into a … Read more

China targets U.S. products, calls them 'terrible security threat'

China's government-friendly media outlets have taken aim at Cisco and other U.S. companies after NSA leaker Edward Snowden revealed sensitive information on alleged spying on Chinese networks.

According to IB Times, which earlier reported on the claims, Chinese daily Sina cited eight companies, including Cisco, IBM, Google, and Apple, as the firms that are used by the U.S. government to spy on China. Another news outlet, Global Times, said that the country should reduce its reliance on American companies, adding that they pose a "terrible security threat."

The U.S. companies, of course, have never … Read more

Australian AG scraps ISP data retention plans

Australian Attorney General Mark Dreyfus has said that the government will not pursue a proposal to require Internet service providers (ISPs) to retain customer data for up to two years.

The parliamentary committee investigating the data retention proposal and a number of other proposed legislative changes to telecommunications and national security legislation today issued its report, and put the decision on whether to progress with a mandatory data retention scheme back on the government.

Law enforcement agencies have pushed for the scheme, as they have said that much of the so-called metadata — such as information about when a call is … Read more

Whistle-blower update: Snowden lands in Moscow; WikiLeaker's Gmail searched

Several stories involving whistle-blower/espionage suspect Edward Snowden cropped up over the weekend, including word of a U.S. demand for his extradition and that he flew to Moscow Sunday, and is likely heading for another destination. And news of a Justice Department search of a former WikiLeaks volunteer's Gmail account has also surfaced. Here's a quick summary:

Snowden was allowed to leave Hong Kong because a U.S. extradition request did not fully comply with Hong Kong law. He landed in Moscow early Sunday morning, but his final destination is unclear. According to a report in the New York Times, … Read more