encryption

NSA scandal has exploded fears of being watched on the Internet, but a new website lists ways to escape the Panopticon Read More »

[...] In the wake of the disclosures about the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs, considerable attention has been focused on the agency’s collaboration with companies like Microsoft, Apple and Google, which according to leaked documents appear to have programmed “back door” encryption weaknesses into popular consumer products and services like Hotmail, iPhones and Android phones. Read More »

Microsoft is tired of getting pummeled in the press over reports that it hands over emails and Skype conversations to the National Security Agency. [...] Read More »

Revelations from documents obtained by whistleblower Edward Snowden that GCHQ essentially downloads the entire Internet as it enters and leaves the UK, and stores big chunks of it, was bad enough. But last week we learned that the NSA has intentionally weakened just about every aspect of online encryption [...]. Read More »

Andy Oram

The previous part of this article laid down a basic premise that the purpose of security isto protect people, not computer systems or data. Let’s continue our exploration of internal threats. This is a policy issue that calls for involvement by a wide range of actors throughout society, of course. Policy-makers have apparently already decided that it is socially beneficial–or at least the most feasible course economically–for clinicians to share data with partners helping them with treatment, operations, or payment. There are even rules now requiring those partners to protect the data. Policy-makers have further decided that de-identified data sharing is beneficial to help researchers and even companies using it to sell more treatments. 

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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. Read More »

Everyone is worried about the wrong things. Since Edward Snowden exposed the incipient NSA panopticon, the civil libertarians are worried that their Internet conversations and phone metadata are being tracked; the national-security conservatives claim to be worried that terrorists will start hiding their tracks; but both sides should really be worried about different things entirely. Read More »