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The editorial board of The New York Times is urging the Obama administration to grant Edward Snowden clemency. “It is time for the United States to offer Mr. Snowden a plea bargain or some form of clemency that would allow him to return home, face at least substantially reduced punishment in light of his role as a whistle-blower, and have the hope of a life advocating for greater privacy and far stronger oversight of the runaway intelligence community,” an editorial published Wednesday said. The paper argues Snowden blew the whistle on National Security Agency activities that have “exceeded its mandate...

Cody Wilson rattled lawmakers and law-enforcement agencies with a plastic gun created from a 3-D printer, home computer and blueprints he posted online for anyone to download. Now, the 25-year-old law-school dropout is about to launch software aimed at covering the tracks of financial transactions made with bitcoin, the virtual currency that has exploded in popularity among spenders and speculators—and raised concerns among regulators that it might be used for illegal activity. "We need an anonymous cash online," says Mr. Wilson, who oversees from his apartment near the University of Texas at Austin about a dozen self-described antiestablishment techies working...

A special hacking unit of the U.S. National Security Agency intercepts deliveries of new computer equipment en route to plant spyware, according to a report on Sunday from Der Spiegel, a German publication. The method, called “interdiction,” is one of the most successful operations conducted by the NSA’s Office of Tailored Access Operations (TAO), which specializes in infiltrating computers, wrote the publication, citing a top-secret document. ”If a target person, agency or company orders a new computer or related accessories, for example, TAO can divert the shipping delivery to its own secret workshops,” Der Spiegel wrote.

A federal judge in New York on Friday ruled that the National Security Agency’s program that is systematically keeping phone records of all Americans is lawful, creating a conflict among lower courts and increasing the likelihood that the issue will be resolved by the Supreme Court. In the ruling, Judge William H. Pauley III, of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, granted a motion filed by the federal government to dismiss a challenge to the program brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, which had tried to halt the program. Judge Pauley said that...

... Hi, and merry Christmas. I’m honored to have a chance to speak to you and your family this year. Recently, we learned that our governments, working in concert, have created a system of worldwide mass surveillance watching everything we do. Great Britain’s George Orwell warned us of the danger of this kind of information. The types of collection in the book: microphones, video cameras, TVs that watch us —are nothing compared to what we have today. We have sensors in our pockets that track us everywhere we go. Think about what that means for the privacy of the average...

As we reported on Tuesday, NSA leaker Edward Snowden will deliver Channel 4 UK’s “Alternative Christmas Message,” the network’s annual response to the Queen’s address. They aired on Christmas Day at 4:15 p.m. local time in England. Snowden’s remarks were filmed by Glenn Greenwald‘s film collaborator Laura Poitras, from an undisclosed location in Russia. Full remarks transcribed below, followed by the video: Hi and Merry Christmas. I’m honored to have a chance to speak with you and your family this year. Recently we learned that our governments, working in concert, have created a system of worldwide system of mass surveillance...

Snowden reflects on his goals in a wide-ranging interview with the Washington Post Edward Snowden has gloated that by exposing the National Security Agency (NSA) to public scrutiny, his mission was “already accomplished.” In a series of interviews with the Washington Post, Snowden expressed satisfaction with his decision to leak classified documents to the press. He said his only concern in the months leading up to the decision was “public apathy,” but that the reaction he received has since allayed all of his concerns. “I already won,” he said.

If your personal info is filched from the site, the government doesn’t have to tell you. Christmas shoppers were stunned to learn last Thursday that computer hackers had made off with the names and other personal info of some 40 million Target customers. Some of the pilfered information is reportedly being sold on the black market, prompting JP Morgan Chase to limit purchases and cash withdrawals on debit cards owned by recent Target shoppers. But at least Target informed its customers of the security breach, as it is required by federal law to do. HealthCare.gov faces no such requirement; it...

A member of the White House review panel on NSA surveillance said he was “absolutely” surprised when he discovered the agency’s lack of evidence that the bulk collection of telephone call records had thwarted any terrorist attacks. “It was, ‘Huh, hello? What are we doing here?’” said Geoffrey Stone, a University of Chicago law professor, in an interview with NBC News. “The results were very thin.” While Stone said the mass collection of telephone call records was a “logical program” from the NSA’s perspective, one question the White House panel was seeking to answer was whether it had actually stopped...

The president’s hand-picked intelligence review panel has submitted a list of recommendations that would politicize the leadership and the routine operations of the nation’s leading military intelligence agency. The 46 recommendations urge the federal government to treat foreign enemies as courtroom-protected citizens, and to would require the soldiers working at the National Security Agency to negotiate day-to-day decisions with an array of private-sector lawyers. President Barack Obama met Wednesday with his five appointees on the Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies, whose report was released late Wednesday afternoon. Obama is expected to announce his preferred policies next month, but...

Larry Klayman’s long journey in the legal wilderness appears to be over. Klayman, the conservative legal activist well-known in Washington political circles a decade ago for his no-holds-barred court battles against the Clinton administration, was thrust back into the spotlight Monday after he obtained the first major ruling from a federal judge that the National Security Agency’s surveillance program was constitutionally flawed.... “We live in an Orwellian state,” Klayman said, warning that citizens angry about surveillance were about to “rise up.” If litigation fails, “the only alternative is for people to take matters into their own hands,” he told Leon.

Maryland's health care exchange site asking weird, personal questions: ‘Where were you when you had your first kiss?’ Visitors to the Maryland health care exchange site may find themselves being asking some unusual questions, like where they were on Setpember 11, 2001, and what was the name of their first stuffed animal. Local affiliate WBAL was first to report that some residents were complaining of the unusual questions, which appear as part of the sign-up process for coverage under the Affordable Care Act. Yahoo News was able to confirm those reports during a walk-through of the site’s enrollment process. After...

MNSure, the state's health care exchange, is vulnerable to a specific kind of WiFi attack. We discovered this vulnerability during a simulated attack we ran recently. MNSure denies it has a problem and blames users. 5 Eyewitness News wanted to see how MNSure compares with other state-run health care exchanges. It's why we partnered with Mark Lanterman at Computer Forensic Services to test at least a dozen other exchange sites. More than 41% of the sites tested passed, meaning they are not vulnerable to the type of WiFi attack we simulated. Like MNSure, more than 58% failed the test

Microsoft announced a new effort to "[protect] customer data from government snooping." FSF executive director John Sullivan issued the following statement on Thursday, December 5th: "Microsoft has made renewed security promises before. In the end, these promises are meaningless. Proprietary software like Windows is fundamentally insecure not because of Microsoft's privacy policies but because its code is hidden from the very users whose interests it is supposed to secure. A lock on your own house to which you do not have the master key is not a security system, it is a jail. Even on proprietary operating systems like Windows,...

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is drafting regulations that would require all new cars to be equipped with tracking devices that constantly broadcast the car’s location, direction, speed and, possibly, even the number of passengers it is carrying. As NHTSA Administrator David Strickland explains, “we constantly admonish parents to watch their children at all times. Well, this would build on that same principle. How can the Government assure the safety and well-being of Americans if we don’t know where they are or what they’re doing at all times?” Strickland granted that “the proposed new regulation is only a partial...

The UK and US must do more to protect internet users' privacy, the inventor of the world wide web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, has warned as a survey of online freedoms is released. Berners-Lee warned that "a growing tide of surveillance and censorship" posed a threat to the future of democracy, even as more and more people were using the internet to expose wrongdoing. His remarks came before the second annual release of a global league table that classifies countries according to a set of freedoms. Since last year, the US has dropped from second place to fourth, while the UK...

The earlier ObamaCare undercover videos from James O’Keefe and Project Veritas caught “navigators” encouraging people to lie on their applications, in order to score bigger taxpayer subsidies and lower premiums. The third video in the series catches the communications director for Enroll America of Texas – a group required by law to remain non-partisan, in order to receive a 501(c)(3) tax exemption – offering to hand over private and confidential ObamaCare enrollment data to someone he believes is a political activist, who offers to pay for the data.

Council members voted 6-1 to sever ties with the firm it had picked to complete the $10.9 million Domain Awareness Center because it violated a quarter-century old city law restricting Oakland from doing business with companies tied to nuclear weapons. Councilmember Lynette Gibson McElhaney cast the opposition vote based on general concerns about the project. The surveillance center, being developed in partnership with the Port of Oakland, is supposed to help police solve crimes, and help first responders better serve residents during emergencies. But opponents say it will give authorities the ability to stockpile information on city residents and target...

Google says it's facing a rapidly increasing number of data requests from national governments, and particularly the United States government... Google says that, in the six-month period between January and June 2013, the United States government made almost 11,000 requests for information related to Google's users.... Overall, this means Google faced twice as many data requests between January and June 2013 than it did over the same period last year. Google added that this remarkable total "only include[s] the requests we're allowed to publish." Google says that, in most cases where data was requested, it handed over the information. That...

If you're team Microsoft — or just anti-Google in general — you now have your pickings of "Scroogled" gear, a term coined by the Redmond, Calif.-based software company. The products, which range from hats to T-shirts to mugs, poke fun of Google collecting personal data about its users. The items come just in time for the holiday shopping season.