Alex Hern reports: The British government has been accused of breaking the law by forcing telecoms and internet providers to retain records of phone calls, texts and internet usage, months after Europe’s highest court said that such data retention breaches citizens’ fundamental right to privacy. Now it could face a high court challenge that would…
Category: Govt
Microsoft’s Smith calls for new privacy push in Congress
Grant Gross reports: Congress needs to do more to protect the private data of U.S. citizens from government surveillance and the misuse of technology by companies, a top Microsoft executive said Tuesday. Read more on Computerworld.
Police Story: Hacking Team’s Government Surveillance Malware
Raphael Satter of Associated Press reports: Law enforcement agencies across the globe are taking a page out of the hacker’s handbook, using targets’ own phones and computers to spy on them with methods traditionally associated with cybercriminals, two computer security groups said Tuesday. Drawing on a cache of leaked documents and months of forensic work,…
Court renews NSA phone program
Julian Hattem reports: The federal court overseeing the country’s spy agencies renewed an order Friday allowing the National Security Agency to collect phone records of people in the United States. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court’s renewal of the contested program, authorized under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, comes as lawmakers continue to debate reform…