Ryan Gallagher reports: The National Security Agency is secretly providing data to nearly two dozen U.S. government agencies with a “Google-like” search engine built to share more than 850 billion records about phone calls, emails, cellphone locations, and internet chats, according to classified documents obtained by The Intercept. The documents provide the first definitive evidence that…
Category: Govt
“Checks and balances” thrown in the garbage: A new out-of-control spying loophole
Emptywheel’s Marcy Wheeler writes on Salon: It has been a month since former State Department section chief for Internet freedom John Napier Tye wrote a Washington Post Op-Ed warning about Executive Order 12333 — the order the executive branch uses to self-authorize spying overseas. “The order as used today,” Tye wrote, “threatens our democracy.” Since that time, his concerns…
For sale: Systems that can secretly track where cellphone users go around the globe
Craig Timberg reports: Makers of surveillance systems are offering governments across the world the ability to track the movements of almost anybody who carries a cellphone, whether they are blocks away or on another continent. The technology works by exploiting an essential fact of all cellular networks: They must keep detailed, up-to-the-minute records on the…
Media spotlight without facts makes mHealth privacy a tougher task
Senator Schumer got a lot of positive media coverage for asking the FTC to investigate whether fitness apps are selling personal information. But in naming FitBit, Schumer may have pointed the finger at a company that does not sell personal information. Judy Mottl writes: …. The lawmaker, Chuck Schumer (D), is obviously acting in best…