In The News

Quietly, Symbolically, US Control of the Internet Just Ended

Maria Farrell March 16, 2016
Governments and Icann, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, reached an agreement to shift control over the internet from the US government to a global group of stakeholders, explains Maria Farrell, former Icann employee, for the Guardian. The organizers will downplay the shift. “When Icann was founded in 1998, the plan was to keep its anchoring contract with the US National...

Magistrate Orders Apple to Help FBI Hack San Bernardino Shooter’s Phone

Kim Zetter February 17, 2016
The founding fathers of the United States were fierce in protecting civil liberties, and the principles continue to be argued over technology developed more than two centuries later. A US magistrate in California has ordered Apple to provide the FBI software designed to defeat a self-destruct capability in iPhones that goes into effect once multiple incorrect passwords are tried. The county phone...

A Complicated Friendship Between China and Britain

James Richards November 2, 2015
Chinese and westerners enjoy cordial relationships in business, education and tourism. The best of relationships recognize differences and explore values. Yet “Party-controlled media virulently denounce [western] values and traditions” – employing cyber-surveillance and intrusive censorship of ranging from the internet to textbooks, explains former diplomat James Richards in an essay for the...

You've Got Fail: High School Students Claim Hack on CIA Director's AOL Account

Sam Thielman October 20, 2015
Internet users can be swift and harsh with online judgments. US authorities are investigating claims that the CIA director’s email account was hacked with details on 20 employees released. One hacker claims to be a US high school student – “not Muslim” and “motivated by opposition to US foreign policy and support for Palestine.” Violence has spiked in Israel this month: Random, sudden knife and...

How Much Damage Can the US Office of Personnel Management Hackers Do With Millions of Fingerprints?

Dustin Volz September 30, 2015
Hackers stole personal data for 21 million government workers stored by the US Office of Personnel Management, including more than 5 million sets of fingerprints, according to most recent reports. Industries and governments increasingly rely on fingerprint technology for securing access to computers or laboratories or other structures, and the theft disrupts expansion plans. “Part of the worry,...

Should Governments Be Able to Look at Your Data When It’s Abroad?

September 9, 2015
Nation’s legal systems struggle to keep up with the internet’s borderless development – just how, where and when law enforcement agencies should access stored data. An article in the Economist explains that the US Federal Bureau of Investigation expects to access Microsoft messages stored in a data center based in Ireland with US warrants: “at the core of the case is one of the most knotty legal...

The Agency

Adrian Chen June 5, 2015
US companies, journalists and communities are being targeted with hoaxes about false disasters including fake videos and photographs over email and Twitter. Adrian Chen details a fake report of an explosion at a chemicals plant in Louisiana and describes a It was “a highly coordinated disinformation campaign, involving dozens of fake accounts that posted hundreds of tweets “fake screenshots from...