RECENT HEADLINES WARN that the government now has greater authority to hack your computers, in and outside the US. Changes to federal criminal court procedures known as Rule 41 are to blame; they vastly expand how and whom the FBI can legally hack. But just like the NSA’s hacking operations, FBI hacking isn’t new. In…
Category: Cyber News
Book Review: Playing to the Edge, American Intelligence in the Age of Terror
by Michael V. Hayden Penguin, 448 pp When Michael Hayden was a young air force officer in the 1980s, the military stationed him as an intelligence attaché in Bulgaria. There, the man who would rise to the top of the American intelligence community in the post–September 11 era lived under constant surveillance: he and his…
The Surveillance State: Twitter and Data Mining
Twitter has barred Dataminr, a service that analyzes tweets from across the globe to inform users about news events, from providing its information to US intelligence agencies, according to the Wall Street Journal. The social network has not confirmed that it cut the agencies off from the service, which claims to have informed clients about the…
The Surveillance State: Twitter Lawsuit and FISC Court Updates
A federal judge delivered a blow Monday to Twitter’s drive to release more details on surveillance orders it receives, but the tech firm won a chance to try to reformulate its case. U.S. District Court Judge Yvonne Rogers said the government has the power to prohibit the release of classified information, barring claims Twitter made…
The Surveillance State: Spy Chief Might Reveal Number of “Accidentally Surveilled”” Americans
“U.S. Persons Caught INCIDENTALLY in Internet Surveillance…” HA!! Where have we heard that before? -SF Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said on Monday his office is considering options to obtain and publicly disclose an estimate of the number of U.S. persons caught incidentally in Internet surveillance intended for foreign targets. “We are looking at…
The Surveillance State: FISC Court Rejects Challenge to Warrantless Email Searches
In a just-released court opinion, a federal court judge overseeing government surveillance programs said he was “extremely concerned” about a series of incidents in which the Federal Bureau of Investigation and National Security Agency deviated from court-approved limits on their snooping activities. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court Judge Thomas Hogan sharply criticized the two agencies over…
Cyber-News: How To Hack An Election
Andrés Sepúlveda rigged elections throughout Latin America for almost a decade. He tells his story for the first time. It was just before midnight when Enrique Peña Nieto declared victory as the newly elected president of Mexico. Peña Nieto was a lawyer and a millionaire, from a family of mayors and governors. His wife was…
Cyber-News: FBI Is Pushing Back Against Judge’s Order to reveal TOR Browser Exploit
Last month, the FBI was ordered to reveal the full malware code used to hack visitors of a dark web child pornography site. The judge behind that decision, Robert J. Bryan,said it was a “fair question” to ask how exactly the FBI caught the defendant. But the agency is pushing back. On Monday, lawyers for…