Yahoo Asks Government to Clarify Whether it Ordered Email Scanning
In an odd twist to an already odd story, Yahoo officials have asked the Director of National Intelligence to confirm whether the federal government ordered the company to scan users’ emails for specific terms last year and if so, to declassify the order. The letter is the result of news reports earlier this month that detailed […]
Recording Keystroke Sounds Over Skype to Steal User Data
Researchers have known for a long time that acoustic signals from keyboards can be intercepted and used to spy on users, but those attacks rely on grabbing the electronic emanation from the keyboard. New research from the University of California Irvine shows that an attacker, who has not compromised a target’s PC, can record the acoustic […]
The Infowar Shaping the Election
Depending upon your definition of the word, this presidential campaign cycle has included perhaps more surprises than any other in recent memory. Leaked videos, tax returns, and other data dumps have turned the 2016 campaign into the first to be defined by a modern information war. Political campaigns by their very nature always have been […]
On the Wire Podcast: Cindy Cohn
Few people have been more deeply involved in the fight to protect strong encryption than Cindy Cohn. Beginning in the early 1990s when she was brought in as an outside counsel to help the EFF in the Bernstein v. Department of Justice case, and extending through the current conflict between law enforcement and technology vendors over […]
Signal Adds Expiring Messages to Encrypted Chats
The steady march toward greater use of encryption and increased privacy in mobile communications has taken another step forward with Signal, the encrypted messaging app, introducing disappearing messages. The newest version of Signal for both iOS and Android, as well as the desktop app, include the feature, which enables users to set timers for when […]
Wyden, EFF Say Yahoo Mail Scanning Order Should be Released
The secret order the Department of Justice served on Yahoo last year to get the company to scan incoming emails for specific terms should be declassified and made public under the terms of the USA Freedom Act, experts say. Sometime in the early part of 2015, the Justice Department reportedly went to Yahoo officials with […]
Open Whisper Systems Makes the Case Against Data Retention
The continued success of the modern web relies on nothing so much as data, great roiling rivers of information produced by billions of users and trawled constantly by the network’s insatiable predators. They take in and store as much of that data as possible, and dissect, analyze, and categorize it every which way from Sunday. […]
Senators Demand Answers of Mayer on Yahoo Data Breach
Six Democratic senators are demanding answers from Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer about the massive data breach that the company disclosed last week. The legislators want to know when Yahoo discovered the breach, which occurred in 2014, and why it took so long to disclose it to the public. The Yahoo data breach involves information from […]
‘Putting in a Back Door Isn’t the Solution’ to Encryption Debate
Rep. Michael McCaul, the chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, said forcing vendors to install backdoors or intentionally weakened encryption in their products is not the solution to the disagreement over law enforcement access to encrypted devices and said there needs to be international standards for how the problem is handled. McCaul (R-Texas), speaking […]