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Internet Privacy & Hidden Networks

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Global Developments. FBI quietly changes its privacy rules for accessing NSA data on Americans | US news. The FBI has quietly revised its privacy rules for searching data involving Americans’ international communications that was collected by the National Security Agency, US officials have confirmed to the Guardian. The classified revisions were accepted by the secret US court that governs surveillance, during its annual recertification of the agencies’ broad surveillance powers. The new rules affect a set of powers colloquially known as Section 702, the portion of the law that authorizes the NSA’s sweeping “Prism” program to collect internet data. Section 702 falls under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa), and is a provision set to expire later this year.

A government civil liberties watchdog, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Group (PCLOB), alluded to the change in its recent overview of ongoing surveillance practices. As of 2014, the FBI was not even required to make note of when it searched the metadata, which includes the “to” or “from” lines of an email. Investigatory Powers Bill - Published March 2016. David Davis discusses the Investigatory Powers Bill on BBC Radio 5 Live. Snooper's charter to extend police access to phone and internet data | UK news. Powers for the police to access everyone’s web browsing histories and to hack into phones are to be expanded under the latest version of the snooper’s charter legislation.

The extension of police powers contained in the investigatory powers bill published on Tuesday indicates the determination of the home secretary, Theresa May, to get her legislation on to the statute book by the end of this year despite sweeping criticism by three separate parliamentary committees in the past month. The bill is designed to provide the first comprehensive legal framework for state surveillance powers anywhere in the world. It has been developed in response to the disclosure of state mass surveillance programmes by the whistleblower Edward Snowden. The government hopes it will win the backing of MPs by the summer and by the House of Lords this autumn. She has, in particular, made changes to meet concerns within the technology industry that the surveillance law would undermine encryption.

Headline: "Revised bill adds privacy safeguards." Reality: Govt changed one header. #IPBill. Investigatory Powers Bill (HC Bill 143) Apple vs. FBI. The FBI vs. Apple Debate Just Got Less White. The court fight between Apple and the FBI prompted a slew of letters and legal briefs last week from outside parties, including many tech companies and privacy groups. But a particularly powerful letter came from a collection of racial justice activists, including Black Lives Matter. The letter focused on potential civil rights abuses, should the FBI gain the power to conscript a technology company into undermining its own users’ security. “One need only look to the days of J. Edgar Hoover and wiretapping of Rev. Those tactics haven’t ended, they argue. In Washington and Silicon Valley, the debate over unbreakable encryption has an aura of elite, educated, mostly male whiteness — from the government representatives who condemn it to the experts who explain why it’s necessary.

But the main targets of law enforcement surveillance have historically been African-American and Muslim communities. “I’ve been reviewing the Apple vs. Untitled. Apple’s Standoff and Security for All. Contrary to the United States government line, Apple’s resistance to helping it hack the San Bernardino shooter’s phone isn’t about privacy for mass murderers, and isn’t about one phone. It’s about every single technology user’s safety. It’s about your phone and whether you will ever be able to trust any company with your communications, even if you are a law-abiding citizen. On February 16, a US judge ordered Apple to create a way to access information (a “backdoor”) on an iPhone that was used by one of the perpetrators of the deadly attacks in San Bernardino last December. Law enforcement officials believe the phone could contain valuable intelligence about the attack.

However, officials cannot access the data because it is encrypted, and neither can Apple without the user’s passcode. Officials cannot guess the passcode repeatedly because the phone’s security protections will delete all data after too many failed attempts. Customer Letter - Apple. Obama Administration Set to Expand Sharing of Data That N.S.A. Intercepts. Photo WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is on the verge of permitting the National Security Agency to share more of the private communications it intercepts with other American intelligence agencies without first applying any privacy protections to them, according to officials familiar with the deliberations. The change would relax longstanding restrictions on access to the contents of the phone calls and email the security agency vacuums up around the world, including bulk collection of satellite transmissions, communications between foreigners as they cross network switches in the United States, and messages acquired overseas or provided by allies.

The idea is to let more experts across American intelligence gain direct access to unprocessed information, increasing the chances that they will recognize any possible nuggets of value. Civil liberties advocates criticized the change, arguing that it will weaken privacy protections. Robert S. The goal for the final rules, Brian P. Mr. Using Hidden Networks as Online Privacy. "We need more, not less democracy" Jacob Appelbaum, A message from George Orwell to the Internet. 21 tips, tricks and shortcuts to help you stay anonymous online | Technology. If you’re using a popular webmail service, such as Gmail or Yahoo Mail, and you don’t or can’t make the switch to a more secure service, then consider installing Mailvelope. Mailvelope is a browser extension for Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox that brings OpenPGP encryption to your webmail service. Similar extensions exist, such as SecureGmail, which encrypts and decrypts emails you send through Gmail. Using this extension means the unencrypted text should never reach Google servers.

Recipients will need to install the extension in order to decrypt and read the encrypted email. This is perhaps one of the most basic privacy options that just about anyone can take advantage of. The top four most popular browsers - Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Safari - have a private browsing mode, which can be found in their respective settings menus. A large amount of websites track and collect the browsing habits of the users that visit them. Originally developed with the U.S. Edward Snowden: Here's how we take back the Internet. Internet of things: the greatest mass surveillance infrastructure ever? | Technology. The word “thing”, in Old English, means a meeting or assembly. In the epic poem Beowulf, the eponymous hero declares he’ll “alone hold a thing” with the monster Grendel, who is terrorising the Danes in the great hall of Heorot.

Beowulf uses “thing” euphemistically – it is a meeting that immediately descends into a fight. The Icelandic parliament is still called Althing (Alþingi). But over the ages, “things” have gradually evolved from meetings to matter. Today, we primarily use the term “thing” to refer to objects. Even in this sense, however, things are still core to our political and social lives. An appreciation that things have always been about community and politics, whether literally, or through the creation and respect of systems of private property, provides a useful backdrop to the recent book, Pax Technica: How the Internet of Things May Set Us Free or Lock Us Up, by writer and professor of communication, Philip N Howard.

‘The most powerful political tool ever created’ Hidden Networks - How the Dissemination of Anonymous Information Using the Deep Web Has Changed Our Digital Culture. Literature. Untitled. Untitled. Untitled. Untitled. Untitled. Untitled. Untitled. Untitled.