Congress took on dual issues of Fourth Amendment and privacy rights in a bill meant to reform the Patriot Act to end the authority of NSA’s phone recording program, as well as, reform the FISA process, addressing the problems revealed by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz last fall. The Safeguarding Americans’ Private Records Act…
A misconfigured Amazon Web Services S3 storage bucket was discovered leaking data that had been collected by a point-of-sale system used by multiple cannabis dispensaries, researchers from vpnMentor reported on Wednesday. The exposed bucket, which was found on Christmas eve and closed by Jan. 14, was found to contain more than 85,000 files. These included…
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai’s decision to back the EU’s proposal to ban the use of face recognition in public spaces for five years drew praise from rights activists. “I think it is important that governments and regulations tackle it sooner rather than later and give a framework for it,” Reuters cited Pichai as saying at Bruegel…
An iPhone belonging to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos likely was hacked by Saudi Arabian prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) or operatives working on his behalf, a technical report indicated. Forensics on the phone showed it “was compromised via tools procured by Saud al Qahtani,” a close confidant of the prince, Motherboard cited a report by…
Journalist Glenn Greenwald has denied he encouraged a source in Brazil to hack cell phones from which he obtained information to use in reporting on widespread government corruption. “When the source first talked to me, he had already obtained all the material that he ended up providing us, making it logically impossible for me to…
A hacker posted a trove of Telnet credentials for more than 515,000 servers, IoT devices and routers on a hacking forum. The leaked lists, dated October and November of last year, were published by someone who runs a DDoS-for-hire service and include usernames, passwords and IP addresses, according to a report by ZDNet. The hacker,…
Betting firms have used information from a U.K. government-run educational database containing the records of 28 million children to bump up the number of youth who gamble online. The companies gained access to Learning Records Service database – which falls under the umbrellas of the U.K. Department of Education – through GB Group, which had…
President Trump weighed in on Apple’s likely impending pitched battle with the government over unlocking a terrorist’s iPhone, encouraging the tech company to help the Justice Department access the contents of two phones associated with the Saudi airman who went on a shooting spree at the Pensacola Naval Station last fall. “We are helping Apple…
An analysis of 10 highly popular Android apps found what researchers are calling the “out of control” sharing of potentially sensitive information with third parties, in some cases in likely violation of Europe’s GDPR privacy regulations. The findings, which were published in a report issued by the Norwegian Consumer Council (NCC), prompted a coalition of…
Declaring a shooting last fall at a Pensacola naval base a terrorist act, Attorney General William Barr struck a familiar chord – pressing Apple for help unlocking iPhones associated with the investigation of the incident. Barr assailed the phone maker for not having “given any substantive assistance” as authorities try to obtain data on two damaged…
