WASHINGTON DC - A US federal privacy watchdog deemed that a National Security Agency program that snoops on foreign citizens on foreign soil was "valuable and effective," claiming it helps protect national security and produces useful foreign intelligence. The 191-page report, disclosed Tuesday night by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, was in sharp
ANN ARBOR - Merit Network, Inc. announced today that members of the West Michigan Cyber Security Consortium and the newly formed Michigan Cyber Civilian Corps will participate in a cybersecurity incident response exercise using Alphaville and the Michigan Cyber Range. The day-long exercise, to take place July 23 on the campus of Davenport University in
BIRMINGHAM - According to one of the founders of ProtonMail, a secure email startup, PayPal had suspended their account. A PayPal representative reportedly questioned the legality of an encrypted email solution. ProtonMail is hosted in Switzerland specifically to provide assurances to users that there is no legal jurisdiction for the US to interfere with it,
BIRMINGHAM - Congressman Alan Grayson made waves last week when he sent letters to the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, the Consumer Bankers Association, and the Financial Services Roundtable assailing former head of the NSA, Keith Alexander. In each letter Grayson cited a Bloomberg article that revealed that Alexander?s new consulting firm was commanding
SAN FRANCISCO - A team of anti-surveillance activists from Greenpeace, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Tenth Amendment Center came together to protest the US government's mass surveillance programs on Friday by flying an airship over a National Security Agency data center in Utah. The 135-foot-long thermal airship emblazoned with the words "NSA illegal spying
REDMOND - Microsoft has finally fixed an Exchange Online outage that left affected users without access to email for almost nine hours on Tuesday, prompting many to vent their frustration online as they struggled to get their work done. The company hasn?t said how many customers were impacted, but judging by the volume of complaints
WASHINGTON DC - The US House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved a measure late Thursday to disarm two of the National Security Agency's surveillance tactics. The House voted 293-123 in favor of an amendment to the Department of Defense Appropriations Act 2015 that would cut off funding for programs engineering security vulnerabilities in US-made tech products,
SAN FRANCISCO - Restaurant chain P.F. Chang's confirmed that customer data and debit card information was stolen in a data breach at its store locations. The Asian-food chain, which announced earlier this week it was investigating a possible theft of customer data, offered few details of the intrusion but said in a statement it was
SAN FRANCISCO - Twitter has flown off with the highest score in a new report measuring the trustworthiness of websites. On Wednesday, the Online Trust Alliance -- whose members include security firm Symantec, network-infrastructure company VeriSign, tech giant Microsoft, and Twitter itself -- released its annual Online Trust Audit and Honor Roll. The audit ranks
SAN FRANCISCO - Facebook users who don't understand why they're seeing a certain ad on the site may soon be able to solve the mystery. Starting in the US, the popular social network will unveil a new ad preferences feature that can shed more light on the ads you see, CNET News.Com reported on Thursday.