You’ve been asked to serve on the jury in the first-ever criminal prosecution of a United States president. What could possibly go wrong? The answer, of course, is everything. A juror in former president Donald Trump’s ongoing criminal trial in New York was excused on Thursday after voicing fears that …
Read More »Big Tech Says Spy Bill Turns Its Workers Into Informants
A trade organization representing some of the world’s largest information technology companies—Google, Amazon, IBM, and Microsoft among them—say its members are voicing strong opposition to ongoing efforts by the Biden administration to dramatically expand a key US government surveillance authority. The US Senate is poised to vote Thursday on legislation …
Read More »Change Healthcare’s New Ransomware Nightmare Goes From Bad to Worse
Change Healthcare is facing a new cybersecurity nightmare after a ransomware group began selling what it claims is Americans’ sensitive medical and financial records stolen from the health care giant. “For most US individuals out there doubting us, we probably have your personal data,” the RansomHub gang said in an …
Read More »US Senate to Vote on a Wiretap Bill That Critics Call ‘Stasi-Like’
The United States Senate is poised to vote on legislation this week that, for the next two years at least, could dramatically expand the number of businesses that the US government can force to eavesdrop on Americans without a warrant. Some of the nation’s top legal experts on a controversial …
Read More »Roku Breach Hits 567,000 Users
After months of delays, the US House of Representatives voted on Friday to extend a controversial warrantless wiretap program for two years. Known as Section 702, the program authorizes the US government to collect the communications of foreigners overseas. But this collection also includes reams of communications from US citizens, …
Read More »House Votes to Extend—and Expand—a Major US Spy Program
A controversial US wiretap program days from expiration cleared a major hurdle on its way to being reauthorized. After months of delays, false starts, and interventions by lawmakers working to preserve and expand the US intelligence community’s spy powers, the House of Representatives voted on Friday to extend Section 702 …
Read More »DuckDuckGo Is Taking Its Privacy Fight to Data Brokers
For more than a decade, DuckDuckGo has rallied against Google’s extensive online tracking. Now the privacy-focused web search and browser company has another target in its sights: the sprawling, messy web of data brokers that collect and sell your data every single day. Today, DuckDuckGo is launching a new browser-based …
Read More »How to Stop Your Data From Being Used to Train AI
If you’ve ever posted something to the internet—a pithy tweet, a 2009 blog post, a scornful review, or a selfie on Instagram—it has most likely been slurped up and used to help train the current wave of generative AI. Large language models, like ChatGPT, and image creators are powered by …
Read More »Trump Loyalists Kill Vote on US Wiretap Program
For the third time since December, House Speaker Mike Johnson has failed to wrangle support for reauthorizing a critical US surveillance program, raising questions about the future of a law that compels certain businesses to wiretap foreigners on the government’s behalf. Johnson lost 19 Republicans on Tuesday in a procedural …
Read More »How to Protect Yourself (and Your Loved Ones) From AI Scam Calls
You answer a random call from a family member, and they breathlessly explain how there’s been a horrible car accident. They need you to send money right now, or they’ll go to jail. You can hear the desperation in their voice as they plead for an immediate cash transfer. While …
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