Privacy


Facebook Android Bug Sent Users’ Photos in the Clear

A researcher has discovered a privacy bug in the Facebook Android app that enables an attacker to view and download any images that a user sends to Facebook. The problem derives from the fact that the app, along with the official Facebook Messenger app for Android, don’t send those images over HTTPS, even though the […]

FISC: No Phone Company Ever Challenged Metadata Collection Orders

A newly declassified opinion from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court from this summer shows the court’s interpretation of the controversial Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act that’s used to justify the National Security Agency’s bulk telephone metadata collections, and reveals that none of the companies that have been served with such orders has ever challenged one.


The flood of documents regarding the NSA’s collection methods and capabilities that have been leaked this summer has produced thousands of news stories and several metric tons of speculation about what it all means. But for all of the postulating, analysis and reporting, there are still a lot of questions left unanswered in all of this. Let’s try to address some of them.

The federal government has released hundreds of pages of documents, including orders and opinions from the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, related to the NSA’s surveillance programs, but legislators who have been involved in the process say that there still are significant details of the agency’s email and phone collection activities that remain secret. Senators […]

The IETF is considering a range of options to help reengineer some of the fundamental protocols that underpin the Internet in response to revelations that the NSA and other intelligence agencies are conducting widespread, dragnet-style surveillance online. The group, which is responsible for developing the standards that govern much of the technical workings of the […]