More than six months after pleading guilty to hacking into the Houston Astros’ front office computer network, a former St. Louis Cardinals executive has been sentenced to 46 months in federal prison. [More]
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Senator Holds Up Intelligence Authorization Bill Over FBI Digital Surveillance Provisions
By 6.28.16
Two kinds of bills run the world, or at least the American slice of it: appropriations acts, which give agencies their budgets, and authorization acts, which tell them how to use them and what they are allowed to do. The bill that authorizes all of the United States’ intelligence activities has been making its way through Congress all year, but now has hit a major roadblock in the Senate, as one Senator has taken a stand against some of its surveillance provisions. [More]
Senate Fails To Approve Bill Allowing FBI Searches Of Web, Phone Records Without Court Order
By 6.22.16
Earlier this week, in response to the recent massacre of 49 people at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Senators John McCain of Arizona and Richard Burr of North Carolina introduced a controversial piece of legislation that, if approved, would allow federal law enforcement to perform searches of suspects’ electronic and online records without a traditional court order. However, this morning the Senate narrowly failed to approve the bill. [More]
FBI Wants Computers To Scan Your Tattoos To Learn All About You
By 6.6.16
Law enforcement has long used tattoos as a way to identify people (“The suspect has the name ‘Marge’ on his forearm”), or as an indicator of group membership (“All members of the gang had the same exact tattoo on their forearms”), but the FBI’s in-development tattoo recognition program seeks to create an algorithm to make instant inferences about a person’s behavior based on their tattoos.
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Bill Requiring Security Backdoors On Phones & Other Devices Appears To Be DOA
By 5.27.16
Last month, Senators Diane Feinstein of California and Richard Burr of North Carolina were set to bring forth legislation that would end the debate on whether companies like Apple should help law enforcement unlock users’ devices, by requiring them to do so. In spite of the bipartisan, high-level sponsorship and the spotlight of the disputes between Apple and the Justice Department, it looks like this controversial legislation may never even be formally introduced. [More]
Defendant: Geek Squad Employee Was Paid FBI Informant, Searched Devices Illegally
By 5.23.16 — Updated: 1.8.17
A doctor in California claims that there are real secret agents in the Geek Squad, and that a paid FBI informant turned him in after finding suspicious material on his hard drive in 2012. While the FBI doesn’t deny that the Geek Squad employee did contact them about the contents of the defendant’s hard drive and that they did pay him, the Bureau insists that it didn’t employ informants working in the Geek Squad repair center to comb users’ computers for porn. [More]
FBI Lends FAA Drone Detector For Tests At Kennedy Airport
By 5.17.16
Birds pose a danger to commercial aircraft, but unauthorized drones are also a threat. Fortunately for everyone, we don’t yet know what would happen if a solid unmanned aerial vehicle collided with a jet or flew into its engine. The Federal Aviation Administration doesn’t want to find out, which is one of the reasons why they tested an FBI drone-detection system to prevent crashes. [More]
Court Rejects Twitter’s Transparency Lawsuit Against Justice Dept.
By 5.3.16
Twitter has hit a substantial roadblock in its nearly two-year legal battle against restrictions on what it can reveal to users about requests for data from federal law enforcement agencies. Yesterday, a U.S. District Court dismissed a substantial chunk of Twitter’s case, though the social media platform will be given an opportunity to try again. [More]
Secretive U.S. Spy Court Approved All 1,457 Surveillance Requests In 2015
By 5.2.16
The federal court set up to review government requests for surveillance involving issues of national security is either rubber-stamping everything that it sees, or the FBI and the National Security Agency are incredibly good at filing these requests. A new report claims that the court approved every single one of the 1,457 requests it received last year. [More]
Why Won’t The FBI Tell Apple How It Unlocked iPhone?
By 4.26.16
A month ago, the FBI dropped its legal effort to compel Apple to unlock a dead terrorist’s iPhone after a third party provided the agency with a way to bypass the device’s encryption. While the federal law enforcer is okay with using what it learned to aid other criminal investigations, it doesn’t look like the FBI is jumping at the chance to let Apple in on the secret. [More]
The End Is Just The Beginning In The Apple Vs. DOJ Legal Battle Over Encryption
By 4.25.16
As you may have heard, on Friday afternoon the U.S. Department of Justice backed off its efforts to compel Apple to aid in unlocking a criminal suspect’s iPhone — for the second time in only a few weeks. While some have heralded this as a significant victory for Apple (or at least as a loss for the government), it’s really just a tiny, unresolved spat in what looks to become a protracted legal battle for both sides. [More]
Apple: Why Should We Help Unlock iPhone Of Someone Who Has Already Pled Guilty?
By 4.18.16
With the U.S. Department of Justice still attempting to compel Apple to unlock the iPhone of a drug suspect, the tech giant is asking the court why this is so important when the former owner of that iPhone has already pled guilty. [More]
Petition Against Encryption-Weakening Bill Crosses 40,000 Signatures In Two Days
By 4.14.16
Usually, D.C. moves slowly. There’s a kind of plodding, methodical rhythm to Congress and the federal agencies, and very little turns on a dime. So it stands out that less than 48 hours after introducing a bill into the Senate, over 42,000 people have already objected to basically everything about it. [More]
4 Things You Need To Know About New Bill Requiring Weak Encryption On Devices
By 4.13.16
A week after it was first reported that Senators Dianne Feinstein (CA) and Richard Burr (NC) were prepping a bipartisan bill that would compel tech companies to build their devices and software with weakened encryption or built-in backdoors for law enforcement, the actual bill has been introduced. Here’s what you need to know about why consumer and privacy advocates are concerned.
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DOJ Still Pushing Apple To Unlock Drug Suspect’s iPhone, In Spite Of Judge’s Ruling
By 4.8.16
In February, while a federal court in California was pondering whether or not to compel Apple’s assistance in unlocking a terrorist’s iPhone, a federal magistrate judge in New York ruled — in a drug-related case — that the government couldn’t force Apple to defeat its own encryption. In spite of that ruling, the Justice Department now tells the court that it is going ahead with its effort to require Apple’s help. [More]
Report: New Bill Would Let Judges Order Tech Companies To Break Encryption; White House Not Thrilled
By 4.7.16
The public fight Apple and the FBI recently had over one particular phone may have resolved itself, but the national discussion over encryption is just warming up. Now there’s a bipartisan effort to make a decision wandering through Congress… but the politics of it say that this particular bill is going to go nowhere fast. [More]
Facebook’s WhatsApp Messaging Service Bolsters Encryption Amid Law Enforcement Scrutiny
By 4.5.16
Even though the FBI has figured out a work-around that — for now — allows the agency to bypass an iPhone’s encryption, the debate still continues about which is more important: privacy for all consumers, or ready-but-limited access for law enforcement? Today, Facebook-owned messaging service WhatsApp made it clear which side of that argument it comes down on. [More]
FBI Now Helping Other Law Enforcement Agencies Bypass Apple’s iPhone Security Measures
By 3.30.16
One of Apple’s biggest concerns about being compelled to assist the FBI in bypassing the security measures on the iPhone was that it would be just the first of many requests to get around the device’s encryption, thus increasing the odds of this work-around getting into the hands of hackers. Now comes news that the FBI — which was able to crack the iPhone lockdown without Apple’s assistance — is offering to unlock Apple devices for other law enforcement agencies. [More]
