Privacy

People Are More Scared of Hacking than Tracking

According to a November survey of 1,000 voters, people are more creeped out by the possibility of a person or group ascertaining their personal information, than the idea that someone might be following their online movements and habits. The study, conducted for the Computer and Communications Industry Association by Benenson Strategy Group and American Viewpoint,…

Crossword Puzzle: What Did We Learn About the NSA This Year?

We’ve certainly learned a lot this year about the surveillance state. Thanks to the cache of intelligence documents leaked by Edward Snowden, as well as the hoards of legal records we liberated through our Freedom of Information Act lawsuits, we’ve had immense amounts of new information to consume and process. But how many of the…

What Do Your Android Reader Apps Know About You?

When you read a book or an article on your Android device, how much power—and access to your personal data—are you giving the app? A new comparison of 17 of the most popular reader apps, compiled by Matt Bernius, answers that question, and in some cases users may be revealing much more than they think.…

Obama’s NSA Advisory Board: No More Phone Records, No More Backdoors

The wait is finally over! Despite having said it would come out in January, the Obama Administration hustled and released a report from the advisory committee set up to recommend changes to the NSA. And, my, are those changes many. The report outlines over 40 recommendations to modify the NSA’s counterterrorism program. They run the…

Private Reading: Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Best Books of 2013

At the end of each year, EFF puts together a list of some of the interesting and noteworthy books that have been published in the past 12 months or so. We don’t endorse all of their arguments, but we find they’ve added some valuable insight to the conversation around the areas and issues on which…

Don’t Believe a Word of Last Night’s 60 Minutes NSA Interview

Last night, CBS ran a 60 Minutes special about the ongoing NSA debacle. It claimed to give “unprecedented access to the agency’s HQ” and “for the first time” explain “what it does and what it says it doesn’t do: spy on Americans.” It was also, incidentally, a pile of steaming bull. The problems arose even…

Google Removes New Android Privacy Feature, Says It Was an Accident

Yesterday, we published a blog post lauding an extremely important app privacy feature that was added in Android 4.3. That feature allows users to install apps while preventing the app from collecting sensitive data like the user’s location or address book. https://gizmodo.com/the-awesome-privacy-tools-in-android-4-3-1481775527 After we published the post, several people contacted us to say that the…

The Awesome Privacy Tools in Android 4.3+

To date, there has been no way to run apps on Android with real and reliable privacy controls. Android version 4.3 and higher take a huge step in the right direction, letting users install apps while denying some of the apps’ attempts to collect the user’s data. Android was built from scratch to have quite…

The NSA Reads Your Google Cookies to See if It Should Hack You

The Washington Post is reporting that the NSA has a simple way to work out if you’re worth hacking or not: it just reads your Google cookies. Leaked slides from an internal presentation reveal that the NSA use the cookies and location data from Google to pinpoint targets for government hacking. The Post explains: According…

TSA Seizes Tiny Toy Gun From Stuffed Monkey, Threatens to Call Cops

Thanks to the ever-diligent men and women of the United States Transportation Security Administration, we can all rest a little bit easier tonight. Yesterday at approximately 17:00 hours, a one Mr. Rooster Monkburn was successfully disarmed when a TSA agent confiscated the monkey sock puppet’s two-inch, vaguely gun-shaped piece of plastic—and then threatened to call…

Cops Made Over 1 Million Requests for Cell Phone Data Last Year

Police don’t have much trouble getting access to your cell phone data. Location data, call records, text messages—it’s all up for grabs, often without a warrant. In fact, last year alone, law enforcement authorities made at least 1.1 million requests to mobile carriers for your information. That’s the bad news. Eight major cell phone providers…

Report: The NSA Has Undercover World of Warcraft Agents

For the NSA, you real life isn’t enough. No, as well as reading your emails and monitoring your phone calls, its agents have been deployed inside MMORPGs like World of Warcraft and Second Life, as well as Xbox Live. A briefing uncovered by the Guardian reveals that the NSA—and its UK sister agency GCHQ—have infiltrated…

Google, Microsoft and More Launch Campaign to Reform NSA Spying

Eight of the largest companies in tech have joined forces to battle the NSA’s spying, demanding sweeping reforms of the US Government’s surveillance policies. AOL, Apple, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Twitter, and Yahoo have written and signed a letter to President Obama and Congress, which you can read online. According to The Hill, it will…

FBI can secretly turn on laptop cameras without the indicator light

Scary. Insane. Ridiculous. Invasive. Wrong. The Washington Post reports that the FBI has had the ability to secretly activate a computer’s camera “without triggering the light that lets users know it is recording” for years now. What in the hell is going on? What kind of world do we live in? Marcus Thomas, the former…

Oh Great, the NSA’s Tracking Your Cell Phone’s Every Move, Too

If you’re an American abroad, the NSA could find out where you are right now, if they wanted to. According to documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the agency’s collecting 5 billion records a day on cell phone locations around the world. Some of those are from “incidentally” domestic cell phones. The Washington Post just published…

The NSA’s Thanksgiving Dinner Talking Points: A Play in One Act

Today, purported talking points instructing NSA workers on how to effectively communicate with angry family members emerged on the internet. Following is an imagined conversation using said talking points. All emphasis is original to the document. UNCLE TED – An NSA Employee MOM – A mom DAD – A dad SON – A son KEITH…

Report: The NSA Spied on Porn Habits to Discredit ‘Radicalizers’

When you’ve got the world’s internet habits at your fingers, what should you start by looking at? Porn habits, obviously—especially if they’ll discredit the the people you’re snooping on in the first place. Huffington Post has unearthed NSA documents, provided by Edward Snowden, which describe how “personal vulnerabilities” could be learned through electronic surveillance, then…

The NSA May Have Penetrated Internet Cables to Spy on Google and Yahoo

It recently came to light that the NSA snooped on the communications of Google and Yahoo users without ever breaking into a data center. Now, the New York Times is reporting, it appears that could be because it penetrated fiber optic cables. The newspaper cites “people knowledgeable about Google and Yahoo’s infrastructure” who believe that…

Swathes of PSN users are having the passwords changed—which is, according to Sony, a “purely a precautionary measure” for “routine protection.” Which sounds slightly suspicious.

Debunking Eight Common Excuses for NSA Mass Surveillance

We’ve heard from lots of folks whoare passionately concerned about the NSA’s mass spying, but are struggling to get their friends and family to understand the problem and join the over a half-million people who have demanded change through stopwatching.us and elsewhere. Of course, you can show them the Stop Watching Us video and this…