One of the United States government’s top counterterrorism officials says Congress must help investigators crack the encrypted communications of terrorists as groups like the so-called Islamic State ramp-up their online recruitment efforts. On Capitol Hill on Wednesday, Michael Steinbach, the assistant director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s counterterrorism division,
State officials in Michigan and Pennsylvania have been awarded roughly $2.4 million in federal funds to test an online ID system that’s been called a “driver’s license for the internet,” and it could soon exist from coast to coast. The “National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace” program has been
The NSA and the UK’s GCHQ spying agencies have collected players’ charts and deployed real-life agents into online World of Warcraft and Second Life games, a new leak by whistleblower Edward Snowden has revealed. An NSA document from 2008, titled “Exploiting Terrorist Use of Games & Virtual Environments,” was published
Over 2 million passwords for popular social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as Google and Yahoo accounts have been stolen and posted online, with Russian social networks VKontakte and Odnoklassniki also featuring on the hitlist. Internet security firm Trustwave exposed the extensive data hoard, saying in
BP is embroiled in a new controversy after accusations that the British corporation hired a public relations firm to harass and intimidate Facebook users who condemned the company for its handling of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The largest environmental disaster in US history began on April 20, 2010
The New Jersey attorney general’s office announced Tuesday a $1 million settlement with an online video gaming company that used malicious software to monitor subscribers’ computer activity and illegally mine bitcoins when users were absent. The settlement with E-Sports Entertainment, LLC, of Commack, New York stems from the creation and
A partnership between police departments and social media sites discussed at a convention in Philadelphia this week could allow law enforcement to keep anything deemed criminal off the Internet—and even stop people from organizing protests. A high-ranking official from the Chicago Police Department told attendees at a law enforcement conference
By Jonathan Benson (NaturalNews) You’ve probably run into them before — those seemingly random antagonizers who always end up diverting the conversation in an online chat room or article comment section away from the issue at hand, and towards a much different agenda. Hot-button issues like illegal immigration, the two-party
The latest top-secret documents leaked to the media by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden reveal that United States and British spy agencies have invested billions of dollars towards efforts to make online privacy obsolete. The New York Times, the Guardian and ProPublica all reported on Thursday that newly released Snowden
In secretive chat rooms and on encrypted Internet message boards, al-Qaida fighters have been planning and coordinating attacks — including a threatened if vague plot that U.S. officials say closed 19 diplomatic posts across Africa and the Middle East for more than a week.