In response to Edward Snowden’s mass surveillance revelations, Google is working to make complex encryption tools, such as PGP, easier to use in Gmail. PGP, or Pretty Good Privacy, is an encryption utility that historically has been difficult to break. But Google has “research underway to improve the usability of PGP with Gmail,” according to a person at the company familiar with the matter.
VentureBeat’s source at Google acknowledged that “end-to-end encryption is the best defense for message protection, though it comes at considerable cost in functionality.” PGP is currently compatible with Google’s Gmail service, although it’s widely regarded as unapproachable to a majority of Internet users — like the Tor project.
Read moreA new webmail service called Lavaboom promises to provide easy-to-use email encryption without ever learning its users’ private encryption keys or message contents.
Lavaboom, based in Germany and founded by Felix Müller-Irion, is named after Lavabit, the now defunct encrypted email provider believed to have been used by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
Lavabit decided to shut down its operations in August in response to a U.S. government request for its SSL private key that would have allowed the government to decrypt all user emails.
Read moreThe NSA knew about and exploited the Heartbleed vulnerability for two years before it was publicly exposed this week, and used it to steal account passwords and other data.
Speculation had been rampant this week that the spy agency might have known about the critical flaw in OpenSSL that would allow hackers to siphon passwords, email content and other data from the memory of vulnerable web servers and other systems using the important encryption protocol. That speculation appears to be confirmed by two unnamed sources who told Bloomberg that the NSA discovered the flaw shortly after it was accidentally introduced into OpenSSl in 2012 by a programmer.
Read moreCompanies that provide WiFi on US domestic flights are handing over their data to the NSA, adapting their technology to allow security services new powers to spy on passengers. In doing so, they may be in violation of privacy laws.
In a letter leaked to Wired, Gogo, the leading provider of inflight WiFi in the US, admitted to violating the requirements of the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA). The act is part of a wiretapping law passed in 1994 that requires telecoms carriers to provide law enforcement with a backdoor in their systems to monitor telephone and broadband communications.
Read moreThe former National Security Agency contractor says he voiced his concerns to the agency's oversight and compliance bodies before leaking classified data that set off a global debate on the ethics of government surveillance
Former National Security Agency contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden has insisted he voiced concerns to the NSA over the breadth of its surveillance programs before he decided to leak classified data, in a new interview with Vanity Fair. NSA deputy director Rick Ledgett, who investigated Snowden, has claimed the former contractor never filed a complaint formally, or personally to any of his colleagues.
Read moreEdward Snowden, the former US National Security Agency systems administrator and government whistleblower, today described the fingerprinting technology used by the NSA to identify and collection data about individuals and groups as a threat to civil rights and open to abuse.
Speaking at a Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe hearing on mass surveillance via video link from Moscow, Russia, Snowden said: “This technology represents the most significant new threat to civil rights in modern times.” Snowden also warned that the technology would be particularly dangerous in the hands of “bad actors” as it enables the capturing of significant personal data about individuals or groups with particular interests, preferences or causes, making it a potential tool for persecution.
Read moreCalling Europe’s proposal to build its own integrated communication system “draconian”, the office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) stated on Friday that American tech companies, which are worth an estimated $8 trillion per year, would take a financial hit if Brussels gives the initiative the green light.
"Recent proposals from countries within the European Union to create a Europe-only electronic network (dubbed a 'Schengen cloud' by advocates) or to create national-only electronic networks could potentially lead to effective exclusion or discrimination against foreign service suppliers that are directly offering network services, or dependent on them," the USTR said in its annual report cited by RT’s website on Saturday.
Read moreA leading ally of Angela Merkel has critically responded to the US government to provide adequate guarantees on its spying tactics. The expectations of making some progress in the bilateral talks have been set to the next month as the German leader visits Washington.
According to the classified information, provided last October by the whistleblower Edward Snowden, US intelligence agents were able "to bug” Ms. Merkel’s mobile phone from a listening post on the US Embassy roof. This caused outrage in Germany, where any surveillance actions are particularly sensitive because of the link to the East German Stasi secret police and the Nazis.
Read moreRasmussen Reports published results of a national telephone survey which indicate that more than 24% of the American people support amnesty for Edward Snowden.
Majority of the voters prefer to be informed about the NSA’s domestic surveillance programs, however, most still think that disclosing details of sensitive information is bad for the country’s reputation and national security. Every forth voter supports amnesty for former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden in exchange for the information he still has in his “archives”.
Read moreAs businessmen tend to choose more secure data protection and storage software in light of Edward Snowden's revelations, researchers are wondering about the potentially dramatic consequences this may have for the future of the Internet.
A survey of more than 1,000 businessmen across the world shows that most of them favor more secure forms of data storage as the whistleblower's disclosures continue to reverberate. Governments are responding to the trend by encouraging efforts to reroute regional online traffic locally, rather than through the United States. Paradoxically, US high-tech giants, including Facebook and Google, may be hit hard in the coming years by a global backlash against technology "made in the USA".
Read moreAxarhöfði 14,
110 Reykjavik, Iceland