Almost 1 in 5 websites now blocked by censorship filters in the UK
Browse the web in the UK, and sooner or later there’s a good chance you’ll stumble across a website that’s been blocked. Sites like The Pirate Bay, Fenopy and H33t are no longer viewable due to court orders preventing access, and other sites -- many perfectly legitimate -- are being blocked by censorship filters.
It’s not exactly like living in China, but according to a new project by the Open Rights Group, ISPs are currently blocking 19 percent of tested websites.
US Marshals Service has no idea how email works
A list of prospective bidders for a significant haul of US-government seized bitcoins has been leaked by the very administration that is organizing the auction.
The US Marshals Service accidentally revealed the confidential email addresses of interested parties when messaging them about the process and it has already apologized for the mistake that "was in no way intentional".
US Department of Defense gives nod of approval to five Samsung Galaxy devices
South Korean manufacturer Samsung announced, earlier today, that five of its Knox-enabled Galaxy smartphones and tablets have been approved by the US Department of Defense for use on its unclassified defense networks.
The devices in question are the Galaxy S4, Galaxy S4 Active, Galaxy Note 3, Galaxy Note Pro 12.2 and Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 Edition, running Android 4.4 KitKat, with Knox 1.x in tow. The company's latest smartphone flagship, the Galaxy S5, as well as other Android handsets sporting Knox 2.x have not received the nod of approval from the DOD, which would have allowed them to be included in the Defense Information System Agency's Approved Product List (APL).
How five Chinese hackers stole secrets from some of America's largest companies
208 Datong Road is a nondescript concrete high rise on one of Shanghai's busiest roads. Amid the lingering smog rising like mist off the honking lines of traffic, and the trains screeching to a halt in the nearby main railway station, this building doesn't look like much. But this is exactly where five members of an elite People's Liberation Army group codenamed Unit 61398 were assigned to hack into some of the largest companies in the United States of America.
According to an indictment unveiled on Monday, "the co-conspirators used email messages known as 'spearfishing' messages to trick unwitting recipients into giving the co-conspirators access to their computers”.
Angry Cisco CEO calls on Obama to rein in surveillance
Cisco's head has called on President Barack Obama to stop bugging his company's networking equipment.
John Chambers was reacting to the emergence of pictures showing National Security Agency (NSA) workers breaking open Cisco networking equipment in order to install surveillance tools in them. These devices would subsequently be resealed and sent out to customers, including Internet service providers and other major tech companies.
Microsoft openly offered cloud data to the NSA
Microsoft’s cooperation with the NSA and FBI on the controversial Prism program has been laid bare in a new book written by an American journalist who brought it to public attention in the first place.
Glenn Greenwald, the American journalist who worked extensively with Edward Snowden, wrote in a new book that Microsoft’s cloud services allowed the National Security Agency [NSA] to collect data from a range of its different cloud options.
UK parliament calls for overhaul of the way intelligence agencies handle data
MPs want a complete overhaul of the way that UK intelligence agencies handle data after the "embarrassing" way in which Edward Snowden’s revelations have brought to bear the weak oversight and legal accountability of the country’s security and intelligence agencies.
The reforms, which have been proposed by the parliamentary cross-party home affairs select committee, would involve immediate changes to the way intelligence agencies handle data in the future and the oversight that comes with MI5, MI6 and GCHQ.
Government requests at Google increase 120 percent -- your privacy is under attack
When you choose to establish a relationship with a company, there is a certain level of trust. You hope that the company "has your back". However, you can never be 100 percent sure. After all, companies are run by real people and human beings are not infallible. Things get muddied further when governments get involved. Quite often, a company may be forced to do something against its users' wishes, due to a government order. Even worse, the same government may ban the company from speaking about it.
Google is a company that many users trust. Nowadays, you almost have to, as the company's tentacles expand to the furthest reaches of the Internet. While Google allegedly participated in the NSA Prism program, it still seems to have its users' privacy in mind. To showcase its commitment, the search-giant began publishing a transparency report in 2009, which highlighted the number of government requests. Today, the company announces that those types of requests have skyrocketed a staggering 120 percent since the report began.
Google and New York City could ruin communities and lower property values
Poverty tends to breed crime. While I am not defending criminals, the financial status into which a person is born has a huge impact on their likelihood to become a criminal. Being born poor does not guarantee a person will be a criminal, but it definitely increases the odds. Being born into a wealthy family definitely lessens a need to steal. Not only that, but the wealthy can afford a better education for their children.
Sadly, this often becomes a vicious cycle -- poverty is handed down from generation to generation. For example, a poor person is more likely to steal, and people that are caught stealing are more likely to end up in jail, which will give them a criminal record. Last year, New York City passed a law requiring the creation of a crime map. The city partnered with Google, to accomplish the goal. Unfortunately, this is a horrible idea which can potentially ruin communities and lower property values.
Grandfather of computing Alan Turing granted posthumous royal pardon
Dr Alan Turing, the mathematician who helped to crack the Enigma code during the second world war, has been granted a royal pardon 59 years after he took his own life. His crime? Homosexuality. In spite of his role in code cracking -- which is widely regarded as having helped to shorten the war -- he was convicted for engaging in homosexual activity, and underwent experimental chemical castration as "cure" and punishment in 1952. Two years later he killed himself aged just 41.
It was the illegality of homosexuality that meant Turing's relationship with a man led to a criminal record, and this in turn meant that he was no longer permitted to continue his work at GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters). The UK's justice secretary, Chris Grayling requested the pardon which was then granted under the Royal Prerogative of Mercy. Grayling said:
Tech giants' surveillance reform rally is disingenuous and self-serving
I'll be brief, because I'm seven days now with the flu and don't feel much like writing. But today's "open letter" for global government surveillance reform demands rebuke.
I'm all for curbing government snooping, but what about corporations collecting information? Tech Giant's -- AOL, Apple, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Twitter, and Yahoo -- reform rally is disingenuous and self-serving. These same companies collect mountains of personal information for profit. So, what? It's okay for them to snoop, but not governments?
The Google File System makes NSA’s hack blatantly illegal and it knows it
The latest Edward Snowden bombshell that the National Security Agency has been hacking foreign Google and Yahoo data centers is particularly disturbing. Plenty has been written about it so I normally wouldn’t comment except that the general press has, I think, too shallow an understanding of the technology involved. The hack is even more insidious than they know.
The superficial story is in the NSA slide (above) that you’ve probably seen already. The major point being that somehow the NSA -- probably through the GCHQ in Britain -- is grabbing virtually all Google non-spider web traffic from the Google Front End Servers, because that’s where the SSL encryption is decoded.
How Big Data is destroying the US healthcare system
One thing I find ironic in the current controversy over problems with the healthcare.gov insurance sign-up web site is that the people complaining don’t really mean what they are saying. Not only do they have have little to no context for their arguments, they don’t even want the improvements they are demanding. This is not to say nothing is wrong with the site, but few big web projects have perfectly smooth launches. From all the bitching and moaning in the press you’d think this experience is a rarity. But as those who regularly read this column know, more than half of big IT projects don’t work at all. So I’m not surprised that there’s another month of work to be done to meet a deadline 5.5 months in the future.
Yes, the Obama Administration was overly optimistic and didn’t provide enough oversight. Yes, they demanded fundamental changes long after the system design should have been frozen. But a year from now these issues will have been forgotten.
Why the Obamacare website Healthcare.gov had zero chance of success
If you wanted to build a case study in the perfect recipe for IT project disaster, you wouldn't have to look any further than the new official Obamacare website, Healthcare.gov. The site, which was supposed to be the official gateway for Americans to purchase cheap (now clearly up for debate) health insurance, has become an overnight poster child for just how bad the government can fumble a well-to-do technology implementation. The common symptoms are all present: budget overruns, too little time to test, poor design & planning, and you can take it from there.
So when the President came out for an impromptu press conference about the disaster this past Monday, it struck me a little odd at how he addressed the situation. He went on to describe the numerous problems plaguing the website, and then turned course to let us know that the feds were calling in the "best and brightest" in the tech industry to help solve the woes. Verizon was publicly mentioned -- which I'm not sure why that namedrop really mattered, since I didn't know Verizon's mobility expertise really had much of anything to do with a large federal website catastrophe.
Windows Phone 8 is one step closer to enterprise and government adoption
Microsoft can pop the champagne. The software giant has scored a major win in its uphill battle for Windows Phone 8 enterprise and government adoption -- its smartphone operating system is officially FIPS 140-2 certified. The accreditation was given by a joint effort between the US National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Communications Security Establishment Canada, called Cryptographic Module Validation Program.
The FIPS 140-2 accreditation, which was received earlier this month according to official documents, makes it possible for Windows Phone 8 users to handle sensitive information on their devices, when working in regulated industries -- financial and health-care institutions and for the Canadian and US governments, for instance.
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