01.23.14
Privacy Watch: Today’s Stories of Interest
-
Apple accused of selling customers’ personal information
Apple has been hit with a hefty class action lawsuit, courtesy of three men from Massachusetts who say the computer company illegally collected and sold its customers’ personal information.
-
What’s happening to your medical records and how you can opt out
The NHS has been going through some fairly radical changes. This will affect who can see your medical records and what they can do with them.
-
Programmer Claims Chrome Browser Lets Sites Listen In on Users
This is the kind of charge that gives people like Richard Stallman fits. Basically, if you have a microphone connected to your computer Chrome accesses it through a Web Speech API and is capable of performing speech-to-text tasks. The claim is that these features can be hijacked through pop-under windows for eavesdropping purposes.
-
Facebook will lose 80% of users by 2017, say Princeton researchers
Forecast of social network’s impending doom comes from comparing its growth curve to that of an infectious disease
-
Surveillance watchdog concludes metadata program is illegal, “should end”
-
US government privacy board says NSA bulk collection of phone data is illegal
The US government’s privacy board has sharply rebuked President Barack Obama over the National Security Agency’s mass collection of American phone data, saying the program defended by Obama last week was illegal and ought to be shut down.
-
US privacy watchdog advises NSA spying is illegal
The bulk collection of phone call data by US intelligence agencies is illegal and has had only “minimal” benefits in preventing terrorism, an independent US privacy watchdog has ruled.
-
U.S. privacy board says NSA phone program illegal, should end
The U.S. National Security Agency’s bulk collection of phone records provides only minimal benefits to countering terrorism, is illegal and should end, a federal privacy watchdog said in a report to be released on Thursday and reviewed by Reuters.
-
4 Specific Ways the NSA’s Phone Dragnet Is Illegal
The federal agency that declared the NSA’s telephone dragnet illegal has now released its 238-page report. One of its best features is a succinct presentation of 4 specific reasons that the program cannot be justified even under the PATRIOT Act. “There are four grounds upon which we find that the telephone records program fails to comply with Section 215,” the text states. Here are those reasons:
-
Gov’t watchdog calls NSA’s call records collection illegal
-
Independent panel denounces ‘chilling’ NSA program as illegal, demands end
-
13-year-old filmmaker’s documentary on NSA spying
Pitched to us as an entry in a C-Span competition about what issues Congress should deal with in 2014, Data Obsession breaks down the controversy over domestic surveillance with help from AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein.
-
Why Germany Feels Strongly About NSA Surveillance
You see, spying is kind of a sensitive topic in the reunified Germany. Before the reunification in 1990, citizens of Communist East Germany grappled with spying on one’s own friends, family and colleagues, under orders by the Stasi secret police.
-
Swedish FM to head new inquiry into NSA revelations
An new commission to be headed by Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt is set to investigate the implications of the US snooping affair for the future of the internet.
-
The Inside Story of Tor, the Best Internet Anonymity Tool the Government Ever Built
Tor, an acronym for “the onion router,” is software that provides the closest thing to anonymity on the Internet. Engineered by the Tor Project, a nonprofit group, and offered free of charge, Tor has been adopted by both agitators for liberty and criminals. It sends chat messages, Google (GOOG) searches, purchase orders, or e-mails on a winding path through multiple computers, concealing activities as the layers of an onion cover its core, encrypting the source at each step to hide where one is and where one wants to go. Some 5,000 computers around the world, volunteered by their owners, serve as potential hop points in the path, obscuring requests for a new page or chat. Tor Project calls these points relays.
-
Some States Have a Sneaky Plan to Stop the NSA
So far, six states (Missouri, California, Oklahoma, Kansas, Washington, and Indiana) have introduced bills that target the NSA. Though they all differ somewhat, each state’s bill would impede NSA operations within their boundaries.
-
BREAKING: Tennessee files historic legislation; Takes aim at state’s NSA facility
-
Jesselyn Radack: Why Edward Snowden Wouldn’t Get a Fair Trial
-
President Obama: Guarantee due process for Edward Snowden
Edward Snowden risked everything to expose the secret NSA spying program of our calls and emails. Now he’s been formally charged with violating the Espionage Act—the same law used to charge Bradley Manning, who provided information to WikiLeaks.
Content is available under CC-BY-SA