Privacy and data protection

If he was trying to scare the hell out of his listeners about the current state of cybersecurity, consider the newest warning from the nation's top intelligence official a mission accomplished.

In stark testimony delivered today to Congress, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper described a fast-eroding economic and national security landscape that's being rapidly penetrated by foreign agents infiltrating the nation's computer networks. This was the first time Clapper has included cyberattacks in his yearly congressional report on security threats facing the nation -- the Worldwide Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community (PDF) -- … Read more

The long-running Google Street View privacy case was settled today, as the company reached an agreement with 37 states and the District of Columbia to stop unauthorized data collection and train its employees on privacy issues.

Google will also pay a $7 million fine to the states involved. The company will also launch a nationwide consumer education campaign, according to the settlement.

The settlement concerns Google's collection of data from unsecured wireless networks nationwide between 2008 and 2010 as part of its Street View mapping service. Google improperly collected and stored information from consumers including email and text messages, … Read more

Windows users will get the usual round of security patches from Microsoft next Tuesday.

Among the seven fixes due to roll out March 12, four are rated critical, which means they address flaws that could let an attacker execute malware on a remote PC by steering a user to a malicious Web site or e-mail link.

The patch for Internet Explorer is designed to shore up all versions from IE6 to IE10 across all iterations of Windows from XP to Windows 8 and RT. The patch for Microsoft's Silverlight, a browser plug-in that can display online videos and other … Read more

It's no secret that the Chinese government is spying on its own citizens, and censoring what they see and access online. But for major players in the technology industry, such as Microsoft, a foothold in the lucrative Chinese market is worth bowing down to certain ethical considerations that would not ordinarily pass in the Western world.

One U.S. student has shown that, amid rumors that Skype is not as secure or as private as it is believed to be, the Chinese authorities are able to snoop and censor text-based conversations for active censorship and surveillance purposes. 

A … Read more

Just over a year after the European Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding lifted the lid on plans to reform the data protection and privacy laws in the region, Brussels is facing its greatest challenge yet by no other than its own member states.

The Commission may "water down" proposals after a group of EU member states said they were heavily opposed to a number of proposed measures, according to the Financial Times of London. These include measures that could see EU-based firms fined up to 2 percent of a company's global revenue for data breaches.

Due to an … Read more

Google today became the first Internet company to shed light on a highly secret -- and controversial -- warrantless electronic data-gathering technique used by the FBI.

The technique allows FBI officials to send a secret request to Web and telecommunications companies requesting "name, address, length of service," and other information about users as long as it's relevant to a national security investigation. No court approval is necessary, and disclosing the existence of the FBI's request is not permitted.

Because of that legal prohibition, Google was able to disclose only the numerical ranges of requests it receives … Read more

How Google and other American Internet companies operate in Europe could come down to a link that, depending on what side of the Atlantic Ocean you're on, should or should not be deleted.

A case heard Tuesday before the European Court of Justice (ECJ) hinges on a complaint submitted by a Spanish citizen who searched Google for his name and found a news article from several years earlier, saying his property would be auctioned because of failed payments to his social security contributions.

Spanish authorities argued that Google, other search engines, and other Web companies operating in Spain should … Read more

The U.S. is one step closer to bringing Kim Dotcom to its shores.

The New Zealand Court of Appeal today ruled that the U.S. government will not be required to turn over all of their evidence against Kim Dotcom in order to obtain his extradition to the States. A summary of its case, the judges ruled, will do just fine.

The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the ruling.

Dotcom had been hoping to force the U.S. government to present all of its evidence against him before it could move forward with hopes to extradite him from New Zealand. … Read more

It looks like Dropbox may be grappling with some leftover issues from hackers' access into the system last July.

Over the past 24 hours, users have been posting on the file-sharing site's forum, saying that they're being hit with spam e-mails sent to e-mail accounts used only for Dropbox.

"My Dropbox specific email has been receiving spam since the 20th of February," Daniel B. wrote today. Richard F. wrote, "I have an internal to my company email address that I used for Dropbox only and I am getting the same fake paypal scam emails. This … Read more