Privacy

The U.S. Supreme Court's sweeping decision requiring police to obtain search warrants to plant GPS tracking devices on automobiles will broadly enhance Americans' electronic privacy rights, legal experts predicted today.

This morning's unanimous ruling (PDF) says the customary law enforcement practice of installing GPS trackers without judicial approval--which has become more common as prices have fallen--violates Americans' Fourth Amendment rights to be free from warrantless searches.

That reasoning suggests police also need to obtain warrants before tracking the locations of cell phones and mobile devices, another contentious topic currently before the courts, said Greg Nojeim, an … Read more

Internal Homeland Security documents describing specifications for border-crossing scanners, which emit gamma or X-ray radiation to probe vehicles and their occupants, are raising new health and privacy concerns, CNET has learned.

Even though a public outcry has prompted Homeland Security to move away from adding X-ray machines to airports--it purchased 300 body scanners last year that used alternative technology instead--it appears to be embracing them at U.S.-Mexico land border crossings as an efficient way to detect drugs, currency, and explosives.

A 63-page set of specifications (PDF), heavily redacted, obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center through the Freedom … Read more

The Internet's most popular destinations, including eBay, Google, Facebook, and Twitter, seem to view Hollywood-backed copyright legislation as an existential threat.

It was Google co-founder Sergey Brin who warned that the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act "would put us on a par with the most oppressive nations in the world." Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, Twitter co-founders Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone, and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman argue that the bills give the Feds unacceptable "power to censor the Web."

But these companies have yet to roll out the heavy artillery.

When … Read more

Rep. Lamar Smith, whose congressional district in Texas encompasses the cropland and grazing land stretching between Austin and San Antonio, might seem an unlikely ally for Hollywood on Internet piracy.

Smith, a Republican member of the Tea Party Caucus, is from an old South Texas ranching family and proudly subscribed to Field and Stream magazine as a college freshman. He earned a perfect "A+" rating from the National Rifle Association and, in a move not calculated to endear him to coastal elites, tried to increase fines for "indecent" broadcasts.

The self-described former ranch manager has become … Read more

Sen. Al Franken, who heads a Senate privacy panel, is asking wireless companies and hardware makers exactly how they're using Carrier IQ and what data they're collecting.

A Sprint spokesman confirmed to CNET this morning that the company received a letter from Franken, the Minnesota Democrat who wrote a similar letter to Carrier IQ last week.

Franken also sent letters to AT&T, HTC, Samsung, and Sprint Nextel, according to a report over the weekend in the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Carrier IQ is software created by an eponymous startup in Mountain View, Calif., that's used by … Read more

A Linux kernel hacker who completed an in-depth analysis of Carrier IQ's controversial software has determined that it's incapable of recording keystrokes or perusing SMS messages and e-mail correspondence.

Dan Rosenberg, who has discovered more than 100 vulnerabilities in the Linux kernel, FreeBSD, and GNU utilities, published a blog post last night that analyzed the data Carrier IQ collects and transmits on a Samsung Epic 4G Touch. He found that contrary to what a slew of initial -- and erroneous -- reports claimed, the Carrier IQ software is not a keylogger and "cannot" be configured as … Read more

It's been a tumultuous few weeks for Carrier IQ, the Mountain View, Calif.-based startup at the center of an Internet-wide privacy flap over what its software, which carriers place on mobile phones, actually does.

By now it seems abundantly clear that, contrary to earlier reports, the Carrier IQ technology is not actually a "rootkit keylogger."

But the company has not yet published technical details on how its software works--it says more information will be forthcoming soon--so CNET readers and others have continued to raise questions. In addition, carriers can configure Carrier IQ's software to record … Read more

In just a handful of days, a startup company named Carrier IQ has been subjected to extraordinary public vilification, with reports accusing it of making a "rootkit keylogger" that "creeps out everyone" or is the "rootkit of all evil."

The only problem, which is always a risk when a public lynching takes place, is that Carrier IQ appears to be not guilty of the charges lodged against it.

The most serious charge against Carrier IQ, a venture capital-funded startup in Mountain View, Calif., that makes diagnostic software for carriers, has been that it records … Read more

President Eisenhower, in his 1961 farewell address, warned that the military-industrial complex could "endanger our liberties or democratic processes." Today WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange is warning that the surveillance-industrial complex is even more dangerous.

A set of nearly 300 documents that the document-leaking Web site published today reveals how extensive and privacy-invasive the secretive multi-billion dollar industry devoted to surveillance technology has become.

"We are in a world now where not only is it theoretically possible to record nearly all telecommunications traffic out of a country, all telephone calls, but where there is an international industry selling … Read more