Back in 2014, civil liberties and privacy advocates were up in arms when the government tried to quietly push through the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, or CISA, a law which would allow federal agencies – including the NSA – to share cybersecurity, and really any information with private corporations “notwithstanding any other provision of law.” The most vocal complaint involved CISA’s... 

France wants to introduce security measures which could outlaw the use of encrypting software for anonymous connections and public Wi-Fi but critics say authorities are using the November 13 Paris attacks to clamp down on internet freedom. The French government is pondering whether to introduce measures which could make the use of Tor, the free anonymizing software, illegal and to make it harder for... 

GOP presidential candidate Rand Paul did not mince words in a campaign stop at George Mason University, Virginia Thursday, labeling a call for increased government surveillance as “Bullsh*t”. “So when they stand up on television and says ‘the tragedy in Paris means you have to give up your liberty. We need more phone surveillance.’ Bullshit.” Paul told a crowd of students who enthusiastically... 

On Friday Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson said: “I think we should have a database on everybody who comes into this country” and added “hopefully, we already have a database on every citizen who is already here. If we don’t, we are doing a very poor job.” Carson made the remark as he filed for the New Hampshire presidential primary in Concord. The question was posed after Donald... 

During an interview with Yahoo News, presidential frontrunner Donald Trump said if elected he will boost the surveillance grid to fight Islamic terrorism. Trump said, “security is going to rule” under his administration. “We’re going to have to do things that we never did before,” he responded when asked if he would permit the use of warrantless searches at the expense of the Fourth Amendment. “And... 

Leading Republican candidate Donald Trump told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” the government needs to conduct surveillance on mosques following the deadly attacks in Paris. “We’re going to have to watch and study the mosques because a lot of talk is going on at the mosques,” Trump said. “And from what I heard, in the old days, meaning a while ago, we had great surveillance going on in and around... 

The British government has abandoned a controversial plan to allow the police and security services full access to people’s Internet browsing history. The Home Office said it removed several contentious proposals from the surveillance bill, as it fears that the plan to snoop on Internet users would be rejected in parliament over civil liberties concerns. Back in May, British ministers claimed the... 

The death of Eric Garner, unarmed African American man, by a white police officer last July led to protests across the US. The civil liberties situation in the United States has worsened due to the erosion of economic freedom, civil rights and other measures of personal liberty, according to a new comprehensive study. The United States fell from 17th in 2008 to 20th place in 2012, the most recent year... 

Windows 10’s pre-installed settings are privacy-intrusive by default, so changing those setting is just a matter of self-respect – and also a message to Microsoft. Following the release of Microsoft’s new Windows 10 operating system, experts pointed out that it has little care for privacy, collecting on factory presets all available information about you, be it your location history, text... 

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has signaled his readiness to help Germany’s parliamentary panel investigate US National Security Agency spying on German politicians, according to his interview with the magazine Der Spiegel. In an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said, among other things, that he is poised and ready to provide assistance to the... 

Department of Justice officials have asked a federal court to restart the NSA spy programs shut down when portions of the Patriot Act expired on June 1. The US government claims the Freedom Act allows surveillance to continue for six more months. In a filing to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), revealed Monday, the Department of Justice (DOJ) requested permission to continue the... 

The United States has devolved into a “soft-core totalitarian dictatorship” and other nations should disassociate from it, activist and radio host Rodney Martin says. The United States has devolved into a “soft-core totalitarian dictatorship” and other nations should begin to disassociate from it, according to an American activist and radio host in California. Rodney Martin, the chairman of... 

The US Senate is poised to pass the USA Freedom Act now that major surveillance powers vested in the USA Patriot Act have expired. The House-passed bill, representing a slightly less intrusive spying law, will come to a vote on Tuesday. The Senate let certain parts of the USA Patriot Act lapse, failing to extend then by the June 1 deadline. Among them is the notorious Section 215, authorizing bulk... 

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden accused Australia of undertaking mass surveillance of its citizens and passing laws on the collection of metadata that he says do not protect society from acts of terrorism. Snowden, addressing the Progress 2015 conference in Melbourne via satellite link, criticized Australia’s new metadata laws, which allow the government and intelligence agencies to keep a... 

Snowden’s documents reveal details of the US National Security Agency’s voice recognition technology. New analysis of documents leaked by former NSA spy Edward Snowden sheds light on sophisticated software used by the agency to turn phone call speech into text. The documents show that “the National Security Agency can now automatically recognize the content within phone calls by creating rough...