Articles about Privacy

The battle between the FBI and Apple over access to the San Bernardino shooter's iPhone is turning into little more than a battle of wills. Both sides are using the case to make a point; Apple posits that unlocking the phone would set a dangerous precedent, the FBI says not unlocking the phone amounts to aiding terrorists.

There have been heavy words thrown from both sides, and the latest round of blows sees Apple claiming that the FBI could follow up its phone unlocking demand with a demand to switch on iPhone cameras and microphone for the purposes of spying on users. "Where will this stop?" asks Eddy Cue. "Some day, someone will be able to turn on a phone's microphone. That should not happen in this country".

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Your CCTV camera might make you feel physically safer, but after reading this article, it will sure make you feel virtually vulnerable. New research from cloud-based video surveillance company Cloudview suggests that the majority of CCTV systems can be hacked, providing an open door to cyber attackers.

The report, entitled Is your CCTV system secure from cyber attack?, says there are "major vulnerabilities" in both traditional DVR-based CCTV systems, as well as cloud-based video systems. Hackers can "easily" hijack connections to the device’s IP address, putting a lot of people, their properties and data at risk.

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What happens in Vegas may stay in Vegas, but what happens online is yours forever. Things posted don't simply go away -- a problem many of today's youth will face in the future. However, it's also a problem people have to come to terms with right now, even when it's not online intentionally.

That's the case with sportscaster Erin Andrews, who was videotaped naked in her hotel room through the peephole of the room's door. Yes, it made for huge views and sensational news, but it also damaged a human being.

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The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has announced that it has found Verizon Wireless to have deliberately violated the privacy of its users.

Verizon Wireless is the largest US carrier with over 100m subscribers, but failed to disclose the practice of using supercookies in order to violate their users privacy from late 2012 until 2014, violating a 2010 FCC regulation on Internet transparency.

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A secret court accepted changes to the rules governing the FBI's access to NSA data about US citizen's international emails and phone activity. The Guardian received confirmation from US officials that the classified changes were made to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa).

The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Group (PCLOB) has previously revealed that the FBI was able to search through NSA's collection of trawled data about international communication. The classified nature of the latest changes mean it is impossible to know exactly what they entail, but they are described as being a step towards "enhancing privacy".

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We've become used to the idea of online surveillance thanks to Edward Snowden blowing the lid off the activities of the NSA and GCHQ. While it's easy and natural to bemoan the infringement of privacy such surveillance entails, no one ensures as limited and controlled an internet as the Chinese.

There's the famous Great Firewall of China for starters, and as part of a counter-terrorism program the country also passed a law requiring tech companies to provide access to encryption keys. Now the Communist Party has ordered one of its defense contractors to develop software that uses big data to predict terrorist activity.

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In the run-up to the presidential election, few days go by when Donald Trump isn't hitting the headlines for something he's said or done. The bombastic billionaire looks set to become the republican candidate, and his journey towards the White House is littered with offense and controversy, and back in December Anonymous declared war on him.

The loose collective of hackers and activist made its declaration after Trump announced plans to ban Muslims from entering the US. One of the alleged first strikes in Anonymous' war sees the group hacking the businessman's voicemail and leaking the messages. The messages appear to show that Trump had a surprisingly cosy relationship with the more left-leaning section of the media than one might imagine.

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Google is updating its approach to delisting search results in Europe under the Right To Be Forgotten. At the moment, people are able to request that search results do not link to articles that are "inadequate, irrelevant, no longer relevant or excessive, and not in the public interest" but there have been ways for searchers to bypass these delistings.

While Google may remove a search result from all European Google domains, there's nothing to stop people from using non-European versions of the search engine to access otherwise-hidden data. Starting next week, Google is going to start using geolocation data to crack down on this practice.

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Amazon has came out in support of encryption, following Apple's recent legal battles with the US government, saying that it "plays a very, very important role" in protecting customer data.

But you might be surprised to learn that Amazon has also decided to quietly drop support for full disk encryption on its Android-based Kindle Fire tablets. Since it is portraying itself as an encryption and consumer advocate, its decision to go in the opposite direction strikes me as sheer hypocrisy.

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Twitter has long-battled trolls and after launching various tools to help combat abuse, the social network is lending its support to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in the UK. The social network is to work with prosecutors to provide training that will help the CPS to fight revenge porn, stalking and other forms of online abuse.

The move comes after a marked increase in the use of social media to perpetrate attacks on individuals, particularly women. But while levels of technical nous have generally increased, legal services have been slow to keep up with the latest changes. With new guidelines set to be published covering the persecution of women through social media, prosecutors are ready to call on Twitter's experience.

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Ever since it was announced that all iPhones would be encrypted by default with no reasonable way for Apple to unlock them, the FBI has been locked in an ever more acrimonious deadlock with the company. In the latest and most explosive development, the FBI has chosen its battle well: could there be a more emotive subject, or seemingly good reason for Apple to comply, than a demand to decrypt a single phone that belonged to a known terrorist?

By drawing its battle-lines in this way, the FBI achieves two things. On a basic level, it makes Apple look unreasonable for refusing, and therefore makes it easy to paint Apple as the "bad guy" who is preventing the "good guys" from protecting the American people against terrorists. This is a powerful argument, and certainly seems to have persuaded all front-running politicians.

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Healthcare organizations average about one cyber attack per month and almost half say they have experienced an incident involving the loss or exposure of patient information during the last year, leaving patients at risk of identity theft.

These are among the findings of a survey by security company ESET and the Ponemon Institute into cyber security in the healthcare sector.

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The UK's controversial Snooper's charter (or draft Investigatory Powers Bill) has been updated to grant the police sweeping new powers. The new legislation will permit authorities to not only access the browsing histories of suspected criminals, but also to remotely hack into computers and phones in certain circumstances.

Previous version of the bill had limited such powers to the investigation of "serious crime", but the updated version expands this dramatically. Home Secretary Theresa May is hoping to push the draft Investigatory Powers Bill through parliament later this year. The bill has already met with strong criticism from not only privacy groups, but also governmental advisers. While there are some concessions to protect unbreakable encryption, the latest changes will do little to assuage concerns with the bill.

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Parents with younger children may well be concerned about the type of content their offspring could stumble across online. While it is possible to enable the Safe Search feature of Google, this is not 100 percent reliable, and more adult content can slip through the net. A new 'visual search engine for kids', Kiddle, launched this week to plug the gap.

Although nothing to do with Google, Kiddle apes the colorful logo of the famous search giant, and also relies on Google Safe Search for some of its results. The bulk of the first ten results returned by any search, however, are handpicked by editors to ensure they are safe for children and easy to read. There are also some automatic filters in place that prevent searches for 'bad words' and the like and, interestingly, treat searched for homosexuality and heterosexuality in completely different ways.

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A New York judge has rejected an FBI demand for Apple to bypass the lock screen of a seized iPhone. Judge James Orenstein ruled that the FBI may not use the All Writs Act to force Apple to "bypass the passcode security" of an iPhone 5S running iOS 7 in a drug case.

This is not the only iPhone the FBI is seeking to have unlocked, and many are looking to the New York case as a precursor to a similar case involving the San Bernadino shooter's iPhone which is set to be heard next month. Talking about the California case, Tim Cook has liken complying with the FBI demands to create a backdoor as the "equivalent of cancer", and Judge Orenstein appears to have recognised that the New York drugs case could be seen to set a precedent.

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