Democrats Ask FCC to Dump Ringless Voicemails
A group of Democrats is asking the FCC to prevent robocalls telemarketers and political candidates from being able to use ringless voicemails to deliver their messages to consumers. The use of ringless voicemails is a controversial technique, because it allows callers to deliver voicemails directly to consumers without actually ringing their phones. Rather than using […]
Government Set to Release Declassified FISC Opinions
The Department of Justice today is set to release a set of documents detailing previously classified opinions from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court regarding government surveillance of U.S. citizens. The release is the result of a FOIA request and lawsuit filed by the EFF in 2016 and the opinions are directly related to the […]
Supreme Court Will Consider Phone Privacy Case
The U.S. Supreme Court will consider a case that has become a privacy touchstone and hinges on whether law enforcement agencies need to get a warrant in order to track a suspect’s movements with cell phone GPS data. The case involves a series of armed robberies and the defendant’s convictions were partially supported by cell location […]
Chrome Will Label More HTTP Pages Insecure
Google is continuing its assault on the unencrypted web, with a change coming to Chrome later this year that will mark any HTTP page on which a user enters data as “not secure”. In January, Google released Chrome 56, the first version of the browser that included a warning for pages that send confidential data […]
Senate Bill Seeks to Reinstate Broadband Privacy Rule
Now that President Trump has signed into law legislation that eliminates an FCC rule that prevented broadband providers from selling users’ private information, some members of Congress have introduced a new bill that would restore the rule. Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) has drafted the bill and introduced it in the Senate in the hopes of […]
Users Face Uncertain Future After Rollback of Broadband Privacy Rule
The House of Representatives on Tuesday to repeal a set of landmark privacy protections for Internet users, issuing a total rebuke of Internet policies enacted under the Obama administration. Privacy advocates had worked frantically to urge voters to contact their representatives about the resolution, which allows broadband providers to sell customers’ data without prior consent. The […]
Congress Asks FCC for Urgent Action on Mobile Security
Congressional leaders are continuing to pressure federal agencies to address shortcomings in the security of the telecommunications infrastructure, specifically to warn consumers about weaknesses that can open them up to remote surveillance. In a letter sent Tuesday, Rep. Ted Lieu and Sen. Ron Wyden asked FCC Chairman Ajit Pai to take “swift action” to resolve […]
US-CERT Warns of Security Impact of SSL Interception
The Department of Homeland Security’s US-CERT group has issued an advisory warning enterprises that many security appliances that perform HTTPS inspection through a man-in-the-middle position don’t correctly verify certificate chains before forwarding traffic, weakening the security benefits of TLS in the process. The advisory comes after a recent paper by security researchers from Google, Mozilla, Cloudflare, […]
Congress Pushes DHS For Answers on SS7 Security
A year after flaws in SS7, one of the underlying protocols in the cell network came to the public’s attention, two powerful members of Congress are asking the secretary of Homeland Security how DHS has addressed the threat and whether the department has sufficient resources to detect and defeat SS7-related attacks. The flaws in SS7, a […]