Tag Archives: Encryption

One of the less surprising outcomes of the Paris Attacks last week, was governments and intelligence agencies around the world citing it as a prime example of why they need more resources and better access to civilian communications and browsing histories. While in the U.K. the government has discussed bringing …

It was bound to happen sooner or later. Whenever a tragedy on the scale of the Paris attacks last week occurs, the finger pointing and blame placing usually follows along shortly after. In the wake of the tragedy investigating authorities have found evidence that the attackers used encrypted messaging channels …

Last week a draft of the Investigatory Powers Bill was released by the British government, showing that it had roped in some of the Snooper's Charter Clauses into the new piece of anti-terror legislature. While it would have ISPs keep records on every customer's internet history for over a year, …

One of the big issues privacy campaigners and some ministers had with the ‘Snooper's Charter' or as it was officially termed, the Draft Communications Data Bill, was that it would have made it mandatory for ISPs to record their customer's online actions for up to 12 months. While that was shot …

Encryption might be something the Germans are big fans of, but the British government and its intelligence agencies continue to paint it as a tool of evil, used to hide criminal activity from the authorities. However as opposition to this view point grows, it's attempted to mollify concerns that it …

Along with a push for legislation like TTIP and TPP, British and American governments have all but declared a brand new ‘war' against encryption. They've both made efforts to paint the technology as a tool for terrorists and a serious security threat to all nations, as well as pushing for …

One of the more obvious disagreements between politicians and security services, and technology leaders and journalists in recent years, has been the topic of encryption. Law makers and law enforcement have painted it as a dangerous weapon of terrorists and paedophiles, whilst many others consider it an important tool to avoid …

Despite having his file locker website seized along with most of his personal assets back in early 2012, Kim Dotcom has been an active entrepreneur ever since, launching several services and a political party. One of those entities was encrypted cloud storage platform Mega, which he was a big proponent …

To say Kim Dotcom has been part of some protracted legal battles is a serious understatement. He's been fighting his own extradition – or at least dodging the trial – since January 2012 and has been similarly fighting to have seized Megaupload servers and his own personal hard drives sent …

Another day, another leading public figure who's calling for the breaking of encryption so that it can effectively track terrorist organisations. This time it's the head of the FBI, James Comey, who said that his policing agency needed a “backdoor” to encryption standards so that the FBI could track the …

In the aftermath of the Edward Snowden revelations, the US tech industry took a big hit in consumer confidence, as it came to light that many of the biggest companies had been feeding the NSA and GCHQ customer data. While arguably not their fault as they were legally required to …

Even though much of the world still seems rather complacent about the Edward Snowden revelations, there's no denying that the two years since then have seen a surge of interest in encryption and other message obfuscating technologies. Proponents of governments spying on their own citizens, don't like that at all, …

Even if the US' attorney general might be spending plenty of time attacking the idea of encrypting the public's information, the United Nation's Office of the High Commissioner sees things differently. In a new report released Thursday, it stated that encryption was “necessary for the exercise of the right to freedom,” …

Despite the British Parliamentary Office urging against it, prime minister David Cameron has repeatedly attacked the idea of being able to hide what you're saying from the government, but he's not the only one. The Obama administration in the US is also spinning up its fear mongering wheel when it …

MEGA, the encrypted file locker site launched by former MegaUpload owner, Kim Dotcom, has failed in its bid to become listed on the New Zealand stock exchange through a reverse takeover, which saw it absorb TRS Investments, a company already listed. However while TRS then went ahead with attempting to change …

Facebook is opening up its free Internet.org platform to developers, allowing them to create services to be delivered through the social network's curated and stripped down version of the internet. However, the platform is set to face yet another round of heavy criticism, as it seemingly neglects user security and …

Despite current British Prime Minister David Cameron's insistence that he wants to see more Chinese filters affecting the UK's internet and his announcement that if re-elected he would ban effective encryption, the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology has published a report which suggests that doing so would be “not …

With continued reveals of more government spying no matter where you are in the world, many organisations have been clamouring for software that makes our communications so obfuscated through encryption and other measures, that it becomes a waste of time to try and decipher even the most banal conversations. One …

The MEGA filelocker site was never designed to please US regulators. In-fact, if anything it was designed as a real middle finger to the establishment, after its predecessor, MegaUpload, was torn down in early 2012 and its founder, Kim Dotcom arrested in a raid on his New Zealand home. With …

Samsung's Smart TVs have come under fire recently thanks to a poorly worded privacy policy and an advert insertion bug affecting users in Australia. However, things just seem to keep getting worse as now it turns out that some Smart TV models are uploading user voices to the internet in …

As of late, it's become apparent that specific rights to privacy and freedom of expression are being clamped down on by the world's intelligence agencies, as they collect data on the public, often without their knowledge. This makes the job of the The Electronic Frontier Foundation, very difficult, as it's main …

David Cameron has had a hard on for banning things online for years now. His big focus in 2013-14 was certain types of pornography, which ultimately led to mandatory filters on new broadband accounts and the banning of such innocuous actions in British porn production as face-sitting and female ejaculation. But …

The US government is attempting to fight back against the new encryption technologies used on smartphones. An official at the US Department of Justice stated that tragedy would ensue if the authorities did not have unwarranted access to devices such as a suspect's phone. The Wall Street Journal reports that …

WhatsApp has revealed that going forward, it will be encrypting every chat message sent via the service by default, signalling another step in the right direction for privacy online. The rollout was announced today and is described by the App maker as the “largest deployment of end-to-end encryption ever”. There …

The developers for the decentralised torrent client, Tribler, have released a new update to help improve the digital security and privacy of its user base, by making them all anonymous and untrackable thanks to an implementation of the Tor browser network into the client. Traditionally, and with almost all other …

Kickasstorrents, one of the world's largest torrent search sites, has announced that it is now forcing SSL encryption for all visitors, meaning that it's now much, much harder for internet service providers, copyright lobby groups and any government agencies to snoop on the downloading habits of visitors. There are other …

It looks like Kim Dotcom might get access to some of his seized data after all, as the police are finally going to give it to him. However, one stumbling block on the road to data freedom was that if Dotcom unlocked the encrypted data, those passwords would be sent to …

More than 300,000 servers are still vulnerable to the Heartbleed bug as websites aren't bothering to patch it up. So far, only 9000 servers were patched last month, leaving behind plenty of vulnerable servers. We've known about Heartbleed for a while now, since security researcher, Robert David Graham, warned the Internet …

Google might often be painted as the big, corporate version of the NSA, gathering up huge amounts of data on its users and then selling that on to advertisers, but it got hit pretty hard by the PRISM revelations too, just like Facebook, Yahoo and many others. To help show …

With the revelations of PRISM and Tempora surveillance that came about last year thanks to the leaks of ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden, the world at large is aware more than ever that governments are spying on them. One way to make that much harder for them though, is to encrypt …