Benton RSS Feed
Even as tech companies were given permission to publish some data on national security requests for users’ data, Google said the authorization did not go far enough.
Facebook and Microsoft published data that for the first time included national security requests authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which are broad surveillance orders that prohibit recipients from acknowledging their existence. The companies, led by Google, had publicly pressed the government to let them publish the data, in an attempt to quell anxiety among consumers after revelations of the government’s secret Internet surveillance program. The government gave the companies permission to publish the numbers only if they were grouped with all other government requests, including those from state and local governments and for criminal cases, making it difficult to glean any information about the national security requests. Google already publishes a report that separates requests by country and type, including search warrants, subpoenas and national security letters. The report does not include FISA requests. Google issued a statement saying that publishing data that combines criminal and national security requests would be even less transparent than the data it currently publishes, and that it would continue to push the government for permission to publish the number and scope of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act requests that it receives.
Google Calls U.S. Data Request Disclosures a Step Backward for Users Google Calls Facebook’s Data Disclosure Deal With the Feds “A Step Back for Users” (WSJ)
In less than a week, Google has transformed a public relations nightmare into a crusade for Internet freedom.
The Silicon Valley titan rallied loudest against reports that major Internet companies handed the National Security Agency information on foreign users. It released the first statement distancing itself from any “direct access” the government had to its servers. It made the initial call for transparency on surveillance requests. And so far it’s the only business to outline how it transfers that data to officials. The tech giant may have found its bully pulpit. But it also could have more to lose by staying quiet. Google, which casts itself as champion for free speech, ties the response to its core mission.
Why Google is fighting back
Facebook and Google want people the world over to trust them with the most intimate details of their lives. Now both Silicon Valley companies are fighting to preserve that trust in the wake of damaging revelations that they turned over users' data to the National Security Agency's secret Internet surveillance program.
Facebook and Google each vigorously deny they gave the U.S. government special access to their servers or complied with broad requests for users' information and communications. And they have moved swiftly to quell criticism overseas, exerting public pressure on the Obama administration to shed light on the number and scope of national security requests they get under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. But many say the revelations have already undermined the companies' sweeping international ambitions in the very same countries where they are looking to put down deeper roots. "The implications are not just about what happens to the privacy of Americans and to the future of American political due process," said David Kirkpatrick, author of "The Facebook Effect." "There are potentially vast negative global consequences."
NSA revelations threaten worldwide trust in Facebook, Google
Senators critical of the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs are rushing to introduce legislation to limit the feds’ snooping ability.
Sens. Mark Udall (D-CO) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) are pitching a bill that would require a demonstrated link to terrorists or international spies for the intelligence community to collect phone call data. The legislation would modify the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 by requiring “reasonable grounds” to be shown that data collection is relevant to an “authorized investigation” on foreign terrorists or espionage programs, according to a draft obtained by POLITICO. And Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) dropped a bill much in harmony with the Udall-Wyden legislation, although it goes further by squashing the assumption that people “known to” suspected spies or terrorists are relevant to data-mining investigations. Sen Sanders also seeks to open up reports of these investigations to all members of Congress, rather than just members of intelligence and judiciary committees. Sens Wyden and Udall sit on the Senate Intelligence Committee; Sen Sanders does not.
Bills would clip NSA's wings on phone data
Reps. Mike Capuano (D-MA) and Walter Jones (R-NC) filed legislation that would regulate a new technology that targets television ads to people by observing their activities and conversations while they watch TV via their set-top boxes and DVRs.
Verizon, Intel and other tech companies have developed technology that utilizes infrared cameras and microphones built into cable boxes and DVRs to serve up targeted TV ads to people based on their conversations and activities while watching TV. Verizon had filed a patent application last year for a technology that would allow a set-top box to recognize when people are eating, cleaning, reading, laughing and doing other activities while watching TV and serve relevant ads to them according to that behavior. The application was rejected this past December. In a statement, the two lawmakers said they want to get out ahead of the release of this new technology and pass legislation that ensures it would include beefed up privacy protections for consumers. They added that this legislation is particularly relevant given the recent revelations about the National Security Agency's Internet surveillance programs.
House members introduce bill to stop TV devices from monitoring consumers at home
As Booz Allen profits handsomely from its worldwide expansion, Mike McConnell who once led the National Security Agency (NSA) and pushed the United States into a new era of big data espionage, and other executives of the government contractor — which sells itself as the gold standard in protecting classified computer systems and boasts that half its 25,000 employees have Top Secret clearances — have a lot of questions to answer.
Among the questions: Why did Booz Allen assign a 29-year-old with scant experience to a sensitive N.S.A. site in Hawaii, where he was left loosely supervised as he downloaded highly classified documents about the government’s monitoring of Internet and telephone communications, apparently loading them onto a portable memory stick barred by the agency? The results could be disastrous for a company that until a week ago had one of the best business plans in Washington, with more than half its $5.8 billion in annual revenue coming from the military and the intelligence agencies.
After Profits, Defense Firm Faces Pitfalls of Cybersecurity
Computer programmers believe they know how to build cryptographic systems that are impossible for anyone, even the U.S. government, to crack. So why can the NSA read your e-mail?
During the 1990s, a “cypherpunk” movement predicted that ubiquitous, user-friendly cryptographic software would make it impossible for governments to spy on ordinary users’ private communications. The government seemed to believe this story, too. “The ability of just about everybody to encrypt their messages is rapidly outrunning our ability to decode them,” a U.S. intelligence official told U.S. News & World Report in 1995. The government classified cryptographic software as a munition, banning its export outside the United States. And it proposed requiring that cryptographic systems have “back doors” for government interception. The cypherpunks won that battle. By the end of the Clinton administration, the government conceded that the Internet had made it impossible to control the spread of strong cryptographic software. But more than a decade later, the cypherpunks seem to have lost the war. Software capable of withstanding NSA snooping is widely available, but hardly anyone uses it. Instead, we use Gmail, Skype, Facebook, AOL Instant Messenger and other applications whose data is reportedly accessible through PRISM. And that’s not a coincidence: Adding strong encryption to the most popular Internet products would make them less useful, less profitable and less fun.
NSA-proof encryption exists. Why doesn’t anyone use it?
The typical smartphone user can give off a total of nearly 100 pieces of highly technical data through calls, texts and other activities, according to research by Tracy Ann Kosa, a digital-privacy expert at the University of Ontario. This information includes the time that phones make contact with cellphone towers, the direction of the tower with respect to the phone and the signal strength at the time. Kosa said much of the data is "insignificant on its own." But "every little piece counts," she said. "Think of it like footsteps—or calories."
Phones Leave a Telltale Trail
US regulators are stepping up calls for banks to better-arm themselves against the growing online threat hackers and criminal organizations pose to individual institutions and the financial system as a whole. The push comes as government officials grow increasingly concerned about the ability of a cyberattack to cause significant disruptions to the financial system.
Banks such as J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp. and Capital One Financial have been targeted by cyber assaults in recent years, including potent "denial-of-service" strikes that took down some bank websites off-and-on for days, frustrating customers. Banks have spent millions of dollars responding to or protecting against such attacks, including a wave of attempted online assaults targeting major banks beginning last year that U.S. defense officials say had the backing of the Iranian government. The warnings reinforce the message from Washington that the private sector has primary responsibility for fending off attacks, even from groups the U.S. believes are tied to a foreign government. Some banks have bristled at the suggestion they can fend off a foreign nation and have asked the U.S. to intervene to mitigate such attacks, either by blocking the attacks or moving against those mounting them. A banking industry official said the onus can't just be on banks to combat cyberattacks. "It needs to be collaborative; the industry can't take on foreign countries alone," the official said.
A Call to Arms for Banks
The Koch brothers are firing back at former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Reed Hundt, who last week made a speech at UCLA in which he said he couldn’t “imagine anything good from the Koch family owning the Los Angeles Times."
A statement posted on KochFacts.com written by Mark Holden, Koch Industries' general counsel, said Hundt was being hypocritical. In his remarks, Hundt advocated removing federal regulations that would prevent Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. from acquiring the Los Angeles Times. "I'd rather have Murdoch than the Kochs own The Times, if it came down to that choice," he said. The Koch brothers, he charged, "use money and media to misinform, misdirect and make miserable all of us." The response statement pointed out that when Hundt was chairman of the FCC during the Clinton administration, he made no effort to remove rules that limited common ownership of newspapers and television stations in the same market. It also cited remarks Hundt made in a 2003 interview with Salon in which he advocated keeping the cross-ownership ban in place for the sake of media diversity.
Koch brothers blast Reed Hundt's remarks on newspaper ownership