Tag: NSA

Full disclosure before we move forward with this one: I went to the University of Chicago. For days I have been fielding IMs and staring at Facebook posts about this hookup site brouhaha. If I had my way, I'd perform a partial lobotomy to expunge any knowledge of UChicagoHookups.com. UChicago's unofficial tagline is "where fun comes to die." The site's is "where fun comes to thrive." Even ...

A consumer-advocacy group is urging Congress to investigate what it calls a suspiciously "cozy" relationship between Google and the Obama administration. In a letter (PDF) sent to Representative Darrell Issa, Consumer Watchdog asked the Republican to hold a congressional investigation into contracts that governmental agencies have signed with Google, as well as the NSA's "secretive" ...

Share "Perfect Citizen." With a name straight out of a bad spy thriller, the National Security Agency's new surveillance program, recently uncovered by the Wall Street Journal, is designed to detect cyber-attacks on the nation's private companies, government agencies and U.S. infrastructure. It operates primarily through sensors that are deployed across these networks, detect unusual activity, ...

We're sure we don't have to tell you how convenient but dangerous USB thumb drives can be. Sensitive data copied to them can easily be lost, and they've even been used as point of entry for hackers. Even the infamous Confiker virus spread partially with the aid of such storage. The NSA is looking to plug this hole in the government's security systems with a tool called USBDetect. The ...

Among the many controversial policies enacted under the George W. Bush administration, perhaps the most legally nebulous was the National Security Agency's wiretapping program, which authorized federal agents to monitor Americans' phone calls and e-mails in the name of national security. When it was revealed that federal officials had been monitoring the phone calls of the now defunct Islamic ...

Attention, amateur hackers: Uncle Sam wants you to help fight cyber-crime -- and he's getting pretty desperate, too. As cyber-attacks become more complex and virulent, the U.S. government has poured billions of dollars into securing our nation's digital borders. Problem is, it's facing a severe shortage of manpower. Out of the roughly 20,000 "elite" cyber-experts that the U.S. needs, there are ...

Details of the plan are still top secret, but we the American public have gotten our first glimpse of the federal government's cyber-security initiative. A five-page overview of the goals and components of the Comprehensive National Cyber-Security Initiative (CNCI) has been posted on WhiteHouse.gov. The initiative's measures include consolidating government networks and access points, ...

The fact that the government and most of its agencies are still stuck in the technological dark ages is no longer news. Officials in the Obama administration have been shouting it from the hilltops since they rolled into D.C. on their social networking-powered bus. But, while Obama has been pushing the government into the 21st century (though those accomplishments are often overshadowed by ...

2009 was an abysmal year in terms of cybersecurity, as cyberattacks and data breaches doubled from 2008. The most publicized event occurred when Google became embroiled in a heated dispute with China over the nation's involvement in a hack on the search engine. Google even threatened to shutter its Google China service because of the incident, which Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. ...

While the Federal government might throw a hundred million dollars at cyber-attacks, the real solution to the problem is much easier and cheaper -- at least that's what National Security Agency information assurance director Richard Schaeffer told the U.S. Senate Tuesday. According to Wired, Schaeffer says about 80-percent of the attacks could be prevented if network administrators were to ...

digg_url ='http://www.switched.com/2009/07/29/u-s-cyber-challenge-recruits-hackers-and-geeks-into-government/'; Sometimes it's nice to see the government admitting weakness -- and even better when it does something about it. Following President Obama's announcement in May that the U.S. was "not as prepared" as it should be against mass Internet attacks, the Partnership for Public Service ...

When the New York Times revealed in December of 2005 that the U.S. government was eavesdropping on citizens' telephone and e-mail conversations without warrants, a retired AT&T technician named Mark Klein knew he had physical evidence showing how the feds had been stealing information from AT&T's network. Strangely, though, nobody gave him the time of day. According to Klein, even the ...

Remember those pesky little warrant-less wiretaps George W. Bush defended back in the day? Remember how he said that only those guilty of talking to terrorists would be targeted by surveillance? Well, it turns out -- surprise, surprise -- that wasn't exactly the whole truth. In an interview with MSNBC's Keith Olbermann last week, Russell Tice, a former National Security Agency (NSA) analyst, ...

In this week's issue of the New Yorker, there is a profile of the Director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell (pictured), that reveals some interesting information about his desires to "listen in" on Internet communications in order to protect America's cyberspace. According to McConnell, in order to properly protect the United State's electronic interests the government needs to be able to ...