Mike Pompeo was sworn in late Monday by U.S. Vice President Mike Pence as the new director of the Central Intelligence Agency, amid protests from surveillance critics who worry about his conflicting views on a number of key issues.
John Ribeiro | 24 Jan | Read more
Microsoft’s lawsuit objecting to the indiscriminate use by U.S. law enforcement of orders that demand user data without the opportunity to inform the customer may run into questions about the software giant's standing to raise the issue on behalf of its customers.
John Ribeiro | 20 Jan | Read more
The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency on Wednesday updated rules relating to the collection, retention and dissemination of information of U.S. persons, including putting a limit of five years on holding certain sensitive data and introducing restrictions for querying the data.
John Ribeiro | 19 Jan | Read more
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and senior members of his campaign team allegedly knew and supported the leak of emails of the Democratic National Committee, according to unsubstantiated documents leaked by a news outlet on Tuesday.
John Ribeiro | 11 Jan | Read more
A bill has been reintroduced in the House of Representatives that would require that law enforcement agencies get a warrant before they poke around users’ emails and other communications in the cloud that are older than 180 days.
John Ribeiro | 10 Jan | Read more
Visitors to the U.S. under a visa waiver program are being asked by the Department of Homeland Security for information on their social media accounts, a plan that had drawn criticism from civil rights groups for its potential encroachment on privacy.
John Ribeiro | 23 Dec | Read more
Privacy groups have complained to the Federal Trade Commission that Google is encroaching on user privacy through a policy change in June that allows it to combine personally-identifiable information with browsing data collected by its DoubleClick digital advertising service.
John Ribeiro | 20 Dec | Read more
Lynda.com, the online skill learning unit of LinkedIn, has reset passwords for some of its users after it discovered recently that an unauthorized external party had accessed a database containing user data.
John Ribeiro | 19 Dec | Read more
Evernote has reversed proposed changes to its privacy policy that would allow employees to read user notes to help train machine learning algorithms.
John Ribeiro | 16 Dec | Read more
Intel’s plan to spin out its security business under the McAfee name could run into rough weather with security expert John McAfee asking a court in New York to order an injunction on the deal until a dispute over the use of his personal name for another company is resolved.
John Ribeiro | 14 Dec | Read more
President-elect Donald Trump added 131 votes to his winning margin in a recount in Wisconsin of ballots cast in the state for the U.S. presidential elections, but a significant part of the recount was not by hand.
John Ribeiro | 13 Dec | Read more
Internet companies should not be required to monitor third-party terrorist content that they host or transmit, nor should they face direct or indirect liability from governments for such content, according to a new study.
John Ribeiro | 30 Nov | Read more
A judge in Wisconsin has refused to order a recount by hand of ballots cast in the state for the U.S. presidential elections, shooting down a petition by Green Party candidate Jill Stein that the use of automatic tabulating equipment, identified as potential targets of foreign government agents, “risks tainting the recount process.”
John Ribeiro | 30 Nov | Read more
The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency said late Monday that no data had been accessed from its servers in a ransomware attack on the Muni transit system and the agency has never considered paying the ransom asked by the attacker.
John Ribeiro | 29 Nov | Read more
San Francisco’s Muni transit system was reportedly hit by ransomware since Friday, leading to the message “You Hacked, ALL Data Encrypted” being displayed on the computer screens at stations, according to newspaper reports.
John Ribeiro | 28 Nov | Read more