A report compiled by the Republican majority members of the US House Intelligence Committee says that agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation should be required under the law to obtain a “probable cause warrant” before scouring the database of a controversial foreign intelligence surveillance program for information related to …
Read More »Running Signal Will Soon Cost $50 Million a Year
The encrypted messaging and calling app Signal has become a one-of-a-kind phenomenon in the tech world: It has grown from the preferred encrypted messenger for the paranoid privacy elite into a legitimately mainstream service with hundreds of millions of installs worldwide. And it has done this entirely as a nonprofit …
Read More »Asian Americans Raise Alarm Over ‘Chilling Effects’ of Section 702 Surveillance Program
Dozens of prominent Asian American groups are asking United States lawmakers this morning to hold fast in the face of an anticipated campaign by congressional leaders to extend the Section 702 surveillance program by securing it, like a rider, to another “must pass” bill. Sixty-three groups across the country representing …
Read More »US Privacy Groups Urge Senate Not to Ram Through NSA Spying Powers
Some of the United States’ largest civil liberties groups are urging Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer not to pursue a short-term extension of the Section 702 surveillance program slated to sunset on December 31. The more than 20 groups—Demand Progress, the Brennan Center for Justice, American Civil Liberties Union, and …
Read More »Senate Leaders Plan to Prolong NSA Surveillance Using a Must-Pass Bill
Leaders in the United States Senate have been discussing plans to extend Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) beyond its December 31 deadline by amending must-pass legislation this month. A senior congressional aide tells WIRED that leadership offices and judiciary sources have both disclosed that discussions are …
Read More »Sweeping New Powers Could Let the UK Block Big Tech Platforms
The UK’s communications regulator, Ofcom, says it is prepared to “disrupt” tech platforms that don’t comply with the country’s controversial new Online Safety Act, including cutting them off from payment systems or even blocking them from the UK. The act—a sprawling piece of legislation that covers a spectrum of issues, …
Read More »Police Use of Face Recognition Is Sweeping the UK
A Beyoncé gig, the coronation of King Charles, and the British Formula One Grand Prix all have one thing in common: Thousands of people at the events, which all took place earlier this year, had their faces scanned by police-operated face recognition tech. Backed by the Conservative government, police forces …
Read More »New Jersey Keeps Newborn DNA for 23 Years. Parents Are Suing
When Hannah Lovaglio’s children were born, she didn’t think twice about the newborn health screening they received in the hospital. The routine test uses a few drops of blood from a heel prick to test for dozens of potentially fatal or disabling genetic diseases. “I assumed that this was for …
Read More »What a Bloody San Francisco Street Brawl Tells Us About the Age of Citizen Surveillance
Just when the people of San Francisco thought they’d seen every video—the sidewalk drug runners, the Louis Vuitton mob heisters, the men selling stolen laptops, the smash-and-grabbers snatching a camera from a Prius in traffic, the porch pirates porch pirates porch pirates into infinity, all indexed in the “Lawless San …
Read More »A New US Privacy Bill Seeks to End Warrantless Police and FBI Spying
In 1763, the radical journalist and colonial sympathizer John Wilkes published issue no. 45 of North Briton, a periodical of anonymous essays known for its virulent anti-Scottish drivel—and for viciously satirizing a British prime minister until he quit his job. The fallout from the subsequent plan of the British king, …
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