My Way News - White House task force urges limit on NSA snooping
My Way News reports: "A presidential advisory panel has recommended sweeping changes to government surveillance programs, including limiting the bulk collection of Americans' phone records by stripping the National Security Agency of its ability to store that data in its own facilities. Court orders would be required before the information could be searched. [...] There's also no guarantee that the most stringent recommendations will be adopted by President Barack Obama, who authorized the panel but is not obligated to implement its findings."

My Way News - Judge: NSA program is likely unconstitutional
My Way News reports: "In a ruling with potentially far-reaching consequences, a federal judge declared Monday that the National Security Agency's bulk collection of millions of Americans' telephone records likely violates the U.S. Constitution's ban on unreasonable search. The ruling, filled with blistering criticism of the Obama administration's arguments, is the first of its kind on the controversial program."

CNN - Embracing big brother: How facial recognition could help fight crime
CNN reports: "From fighting terrorism to processing payments in the blink of an eye, facial recognition is set to change our ideas on privacy. [...] A Finnish company, meanwhile, aims to streamline sales by using facial recognition technology for payments. Helsinki-based Uniqul has patented a system allowing payments to be made without wallets or smartphones."

My Way News - NSA defends global cellphone tracking as legal
My Way News reports: "The National Security Agency on Friday said its tracking of cellphones overseas is legally authorized under a sweeping U.S. presidential order. [...] Documents obtained from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden showed that the NSA gathers as many as 5 billion records every day about the location data for hundreds of millions of cellphones worldwide by tapping into cables that carry international cellphone traffic. The Washington Post said the collection inadvertently scoops up an unknown amount of American data as well."

My Way News - China claims victory in scrubbing Internet clean
My Way News reports: "Beijing launched the campaign this summer, arresting dozens of people for spreading rumors, creating new penalties for people who post libelous information and calling in the country's top bloggers for talks urging them to guard the national interest and uphold social order. At the same time, government agencies at all levels have boosted their online presence to control the message in cyberspace. [...] Observers say the crackdown has noticeably curtailed speech by suppressing voices and triggering self-censorship, with more liberal online voices being more ginger in their criticism and posting significantly less."

My Way News - Techies vs. NSA: Encryption arms race escalates
My Way News reports: "Encrypted email, secure instant messaging and other privacy services are booming in the wake of the National Security Agency's recently revealed surveillance programs. But the flood of new computer security services is of variable quality, and much of it, experts say, can bog down computers and isn't likely to keep out spies."

Comment: Two reports from two different countries that reflect the ease with which governments have succeeded at controlling and monitoring communication on the internet.

My Way News - Biometrics researchers see world without passwords
My Way News reports: "Research into new uses of biometrics is blossoming as universities enlist the technology for tasks ranging from paying for meals to restricting access to high-security facilities. Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh has even studied using sensors in special 'bio-soles' that measure the unique gaits and foot pressure to identify people. Soldiers in Iraq carry handheld devices that allow them to scan fingerprints, retinas and faces and compare them with a database filled with hundreds of thousands of identities."

My Way News - Report: NSA broke into Yahoo, Google data centers
My Way News reports: "The National Security Agency has secretly broken into the main communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data centers around the world, The Washington Post reported Wednesday, citing documents obtained from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden."

My Way News - Growing backlash to government surveillance
My Way News reports: "Policy makers, privacy advocates and political leaders around the world have been outraged at the near weekly disclosures from former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden that expose sweeping U.S. government surveillance programs. [...]  Activists are fighting back with high-tech civil disobedience, entrepreneurs want to cash in on privacy concerns, Internet users want to keep snoops out of their computers and lawmakers want to establish stricter parameters."

My Way News - Groups launch privacy suit against UK spy agency
My Way News reports: "Three organizations in Britain have filed a lawsuit at the European Court of Human Rights, accusing their country's eavesdropping agency of using its online surveillance programs to violate the privacy of millions of citizens. English PEN, Big Brother Watch and the Open Rights Group claim that Britain's Government Communications Headquarters, known as GCHQ, acted illegally by collecting vast amounts of data, including the contents of emails and social media messages."

My Way News - NSA chief admits testing US cellphone tracking
My Way News reports: "National Security Agency chief Gen. Keith Alexander revealed Wednesday that his spy agency once tested whether it could track Americans' cellphone locations, in addition to its practice of sweeping broad information about calls made. [...] Alexander told the committee that his agency once tested, in 2010 and 2011, whether it could track Americans' cellphone locations, but he says the NSA does not use that capability, leaving that to the FBI to build a criminal or foreign intelligence case against a suspect and track him."

My Way News - London police use super recognizers to fight crime
My Way News reports: "Charles Farrier, a spokesman for the U.K. privacy group, No CCTV, called the police's use of super recognizers 'the latest gimmick' being used to promote the widespread use of surveillance cameras. According to the group, Britain has the most surveillance cameras per person in the world."

My Way News - NSA watchdog details surveillance misuse:
My Way News reports: "Some workers at the National Security Agency intentionally misused the government's secret surveillance systems at least 12 times over the past decade, including instances when they spied on spouses, boyfriends or girlfriends, according to embarrassing new details disclosed by the agency's inspector general. In nearly every case, the workers were allowed to retire before they could be punished."

My Way News - Senate pursues law to limit NSA surveillance:
My Way News reports: "Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein says the Senate Intelligence Committee is drafting legislation to limit the National Security Agency's access to U.S. phone and email data in an effort to win back public trust following disclosures about widespread domestic surveillance."

My Way News - Internet blocks return in Iran after brief opening
My Way News reports: "Word of the opening of Iran's blocked social media sites was spread, of course, by social media itself: in celebratory tweets and breathless Facebook posts. Hours later, the same sites Tuesday chewed over the sobering reality that the four-year-old firewalls were back in place. Iran's Internet overseers blamed a 'technical' glitch on the brief window to the Web."

My Way News - Brazil looks to break from US-centric Internet
My Way News reports: "The effort by Latin America's biggest economy to digitally isolate itself from U.S. spying not only could be costly and difficult, it could encourage repressive governments to seek greater technical control over the Internet to crush free expression at home, experts say."

My Way News - PayPal app adds more mobile wallet features
My Way News reports: "PayPal is updating its mobile app, adding features such as the ability to place an order ahead of time and pay with it while at the restaurant table. [...] The free app is available Thursday for iPhones and Android phones. It includes a feature called "Shop." With it, people can find nearby stores and restaurants that take PayPal payments. People can use their phones to pay for things."

My Way News - Study finds online privacy concerns on the rise
My Way News reports: "Americans might be sharing more personal information online than ever through social networking sites and email. But they also want to better control who can see it, according to a study released Thursday by the Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project."

My Way News - NSA reveals more secrets after court order
My Way News reports: "The Obama administration has given up more of its surveillance secrets, acknowledging that it was ordered to stop scooping up thousands of Internet communications from Americans with no connection to terrorism - a practice it says was an unintended consequence when it gathered bundles of Internet traffic connected to terror suspects."

My Way News - China in big push against opinion-leading blogs
My Way News reports: "Many famous Chinese - from pop stars to scholars, journalists to business tycoons - have amassed substantial online followings, and these larger-than-life personalities don't always hew to the Communist Party line. Now Beijing is tightening its grip on China's already heavily restricted Internet by making influential microbloggers uncomfortable when they post material the government doesn't like."

My Way News - Facebook to test mobile payments service
My Way News reports: "Facebook plans to test a mobile payments service that lets users make purchases inside mobile applications using payment information they have added to their account on the social network. [...] The service would use payment information that shoppers store on Facebook to automatically complete checkout forms of certain mobile apps. Then, the app would process the purchase."

My Way News - Report: NSA spying broke privacy rules many times
My Way News reports: "The National Security Agency has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year since Congress granted the agency broad new powers in 2008, The Washington Post reported Thursday. Most of the infractions involve unauthorized surveillance of Americans or foreign intelligence targets in the United States, both of which are restricted by law and executive order."

My Way News - UK bars trash cans from tracking people with Wi-Fi
My Way News reports: "Officials demanded Monday that an advertising firm stop using a network of high-tech trash cans to track people walking through London's financial district. [...] The trash cans join a host of everyday objects from televisions to toilets that are being manufactured with the ability to send and receive data, opening up new potential for interaction - and surveillance."

My Way News - Virtual currency Bitcoin blocked in Thailand
My Way News reports: "Bitcoins are created, distributed, and authenticated independently of any bank or government. The currency's cryptography makes it almost immune from counterfeiting, and its relative anonymity holds out the promise of being able to spend money across the Internet without scrutiny."

My Way News - Leaked docs give new insight into NSA's searches
My Way News reports: "Documents published by the Guardian newspaper are providing new insight into the National Security Agency's surveillance of world data, giving an over-the-shoulder look at the programs and techniques U.S. intelligence analysts use to exploit the hundreds of billions of records they gather each year."

dvice.com - New payment system could let you buy groceries with your face
DVICE reports: "Uniqul, a company based out of Finland, is getting ready to release a new payment system that uses facial recognition. Instead of using a credit card to make purchases, this new facial recognition software, which is linked to a customer's bank account, will allow you to pay for your groceries by gazing into a camera. Not only will this speed up the often unbearably long lines at the supermarket, but it could also be more secure than any other payment system currently available."

My Way News - UK: British spies broke no law by using PRISM data
My Way News reports: "British spies are right to draw on the data gathered by the U.S. National Security Agency's PRISM program, a parliamentary committee said Wednesday, one of the first outside assessments of the surveillance program exposed by leaker Edward Snowden. The U.K.'s Intelligence and Security Committee also said there is nothing to suggest that Britain's eavesdropping agency GCHQ - the Government Communications Headquarters - is using PRISM to get around restrictions on domestic espionage."

Jerusalem Post - Amidst controversy, biometric database is launched
The Jerusalem Post reports: "After years of debate and controversy, the Interior Ministry launched a pilot program of its biometric database, inviting residents to sign up for the new identification card at the ministry office in Rishon Lezion. [...] The biometric database program was first approved by the Knesset in 2009, and in June 2011 the Knesset Science and Technology Committee approved the ordinances needed to establish the database."

My Way News - Coalition sues to halt electronic surveillance
My Way News reports: "Environmental and human rights activists, church leaders and gun rights advocates found common ground on Tuesday, filing a lawsuit against the federal government to halt a vast National Security Agency electronic surveillance program. [...] A legal expert said one challenge that plaintiffs face is proving they have actually been wiretapped or been a victim of surveillance."

My Way News - Driving somewhere? There's a gov't record of that
My Way News reports: "Chances are, your local or state police departments have photographs of your car in their files, noting where you were driving on a particular day, even if you never did anything wrong."

Comment: So we are to assume then that the government is tracking our e-mail, our phone calls, our postal mail, and now our cars? Where's the outra....oh, hey, I have to run, America's Got Talent is on.

My Way News - Microsoft asks Holder to ease gag on NSA program
My Way News reports: "Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder calling on him to personally review a gag order that prevents the company and others from further discussing secret national security requests for customer emails, Skype calls and documents stored on its servers. The letter follows Microsoft's motion in a secret court last month asking for permission to break out which requests were from law enforcement officials and which were from the National Security Agency. It hasn't received a response."

The Cost of Surveillance

My Way News - What the gov't pays industry to snoop
My Way News reports: "How much are your private conversations worth to the government? Turns out, it can be a lot, depending on the technology. In the era of intense government surveillance and secret court orders, a murky multimillion-dollar market has emerged. Paid for by U.S. tax dollars, but with little public scrutiny, surveillance fees charged in secret by technology and phone companies can vary wildly."

Comment: I wonder if the telcos send a monthly statement to the government? Do they get a special 1-800 customer service number to call in case they have questions about their bill? 

Ayatollah Online: You've Got Mail

My Way News - Report: Iran opens national email service
My Way News reports: "Iran has discussed for years having its own domestic email service as the government occasionally has blocked access to foreign email providers like Gmail and Yahoo. The country also has blocked and made illegal virtual private networks that allow Iranians to freely use the Internet and access banned websites like those for opposition groups."

Surveillance News

My Way News - In worldwide surveillance age, US has big edge
My Way News reports: "The saga of Edward Snowden and the NSA makes one thing clear: The United States' central role in developing the Internet and hosting its most powerful players has made it the global leader in the surveillance game."

My Way News - Web giants get broader surveillance revelations:
My Way News reports: "Facebook and Microsoft Corp. representatives said that after negotiations with national security officials their companies have been given permission to make new but still very limited revelations about government orders to turn over user data. [...] Facebook received between 9,000 and 10,000 government requests from all government entities from local to federal in the last six months of 2012, on topics including missing children investigations, fugitive tracking and terrorist threats. The requests involved the accounts of between 18,000 and 19,000 Facebook users. [...] Microsoft received between 6,000 and 7,000 criminal and national security warrants, subpoenas and orders affecting between 31,000 and 32,000 accounts."

My Way News - Secret to Prism program: Even bigger data seizure
My Way News reports: "The revelation of Prism this month by the Washington Post and Guardian newspapers has touched off the latest round in a decade-long debate over what limits to impose on government eavesdropping, which the Obama administration says is essential to keep the nation safe. But interviews with more than a dozen current and former government and technology officials and outside experts show that, while Prism has attracted the recent attention, the program actually is a relatively small part of a much more expansive and intrusive eavesdropping effort."

My Way News - Since 9/11, life _ and surveillance _ made easier
My Way News reports: "Americans' expectations of privacy have diminished remarkably since Sept. 10, 2001 - and only partly because of what happened the next day. Laws were passed to take up the fight against shadowy terrorists by giving authorities access to information that previously was off limits. At the same time, technologies intended to make Americans' everyday lives easier have also made it easier for corporations - and the government - to track their movements and habits."

My Way News - US spy programs raise ire both home and abroad
My Way News reports: "The Obama administration faced fresh anger Monday at home and abroad over U.S. spy programs that track phone and Internet messages around the world in the hope of thwarting terrorist threats. But a senior intelligence official said there are no plans to end the secretive surveillance systems."

My Way News - Monumental phone-records monitoring is laid bare
My Way News reports: "Separately, The Washington Post and The Guardian reported Thursday the existence of another program used by the NSA and FBI that scours the nation's main Internet companies, extracting audio, video, photographs, emails, documents and connection logs to help analysts track a person's movements and contacts. It was not clear whether the program, called PRISM, targets known suspects or broadly collects data from other Americans."

My Way News - Report: Gov't scooping up Verizon phone records
My Way News reports: "The National Security Agency currently is collecting the telephone records of millions of U.S. customers of Verizon under a top secret court order, Britain's Guardian newspaper said Wednesday. [...] The newspaper said the document, a copy of which it had obtained, shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of U.S. citizens were being collected indiscriminately and in bulk, regardless of whether they were suspected of any wrongdoing."

My Way News - Judge orders Google to give customer data to FBI
My Way News reports: "A federal judge has ruled that Google Inc. must comply with the FBI's warrantless demands for customer data, rejecting the company's argument that the government's practice of issuing so-called national security letters to telecommunication companies, Internet service providers, banks and others was unconstitutional and unnecessary. FBI counter-terrorism agents began issuing the secret letters, which don't require a judge's approval, after Congress passed the USA Patriot Act in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks."

Comment: No judicial review, no warrant? Where's the outrage? 

Motorola working on future electronic tattoo authentication | DVICE:
DVICE reports: "Last year, we told you about an electronic tattoo and a consumable sensor pill, two pieces of technology that promise to revolutionize the field of wearable computing. Well, yesterday those technologies took a great leap towards becoming everyday technologies [...] Former DARPA head Regina Dugan, now acting as the head of advanced research for Motorola, pulled back her shirtsleeve to reveal an electronic tattoo. Dugan said, 'What we plan to do is work with [MC10] to advance a tattoo that could be used for authentication.'"

My Way News - Congress gets mixed advice on regulating drones
My Way News reports: "The growing use of unmanned surveillance 'eyes in the sky' aircraft raises a thicket of privacy concerns, but Congress is getting mixed advice on what, if anything, to do about it. A future with domestic drones may be inevitable. While civilian drone use is currently limited to government agencies and some public universities, a law passed by Congress last year requires the Federal Aviation Administration to allow widespread drone flights in the U.S. by 2015. According to FAA estimates, as many as 7,500 civilian drones could be in use within five years."

Rubio to push biometric system in U.S. Senate immigration bill | Reuters
Reuters reports: "Republican U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, who is considered crucial for the success of an immigration law overhaul, on Tuesday vowed to fight for a biometric system to track foreigners leaving the country after a Senate panel rejected the provision, in part because it was too costly."

Dezeen - Biostamp temporary tattoo wearable electronic circuits by MC10
Dezeen.com reports: "Materials scientist John Rogers and his firm MC10 have developed flexible electronic circuits that stick directly to the skin like temporary tattoos and monitor the wearer's health. [...] The team are now working on the integration of wireless power sources and communication systems to relay the information gathered to a smartphone."

My Way News - UK deputy leader: Surveillance bill won't happen
My Way News reports: "A mass Internet monitoring program touted by Britain's government as a terror-fighting tool is unworkable, the country's deputy leader said Thursday, vowing that it would not become law. [...] The proposal would have forced communications service providers to retain for a year a huge amount of personal data - including a record of websites visited, emails sent and Skype calls made - and make it available to law enforcement and other government agencies at the stroke of a key. Authorities would need a warrant to see the content of calls, emails and other communications."

My Way News - Rights group sues UK over exports of spy tech
My Way News reports: "Privacy International said Tuesday it had filed a lawsuit before London's High Court over the government's refusal to say whether it was investigating U.K.-based Gamma International, whose FinFisher software has been linked to use in more than two dozen countries, including Bahrain, Ethiopia, Turkmenistan, and Vietnam. [...] The export of Western surveillance software to repressive regimes has drawn increasing attention in the wake of the pro-democracy uprisings in the Arab world that laid bare the high-tech methods used by state spy agencies to stifle dissent."

My Way News - Judge rules secret FBI letters unconstitutional:
My Way News reports: "They're called national security letters and the FBI issues thousands of them a year to banks, phone companies and other businesses demanding customer information. They're sent without judicial review and recipients are barred from disclosing them. On Friday, a federal judge in San Francisco declared the letters unconstitutional, saying the secretive demands for customer data violate the First Amendment."

My Way News - Companies struggle to popularize mobile money
My Way News reports: "Mobile money may seem like a hot concept, but consumers aren't warming to it [...] Companies are building chips antennas into phones that let the gadgets interact with "tap to pay" terminals and other devices equipped with short-range sensors, like subway turnstiles. But getting the technology to do something useful and convincing people to adopt it is a slow process."

Comment: Not really the MOTB, of course, but mobile-commerce news is always interesting because it always seems just about to take off but never quite gets there. Of course, I'm talking about Western markets, there are many places in the world where paying with cell phones is common, but so far, the U.S. consumer and even many Europeans can't pay now the way they do in parts of Asia. 

My Way News - Banks see an opportunity in Africa
My Way News reports: "The spread of mobile phones has made it easier for the poor of the continent to maintain bank accounts. Africa's middle class is growing, too, and millions of people need a way to amass and maintain their money."

My Way News - UK: Surveillance devices to monitor Web traffic
My Way News reports: "The U.K. plans to install an unspecified number of spy devices along the country's telecommunications network to monitor Britons' use of overseas services such as Facebook and Twitter, according to a report published Tuesday by Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee. The devices - referred to as 'probes' in the report - are meant to underpin a nationwide surveillance regime aimed at logging nearly everything Britons do online, from Skype calls with family members to visits to pornographic websites. The government argues that swift access to communications data is critical to the fight against terrorism and other high-level crime."

Comment: This shows you what can happen in a country without a written constitution or a bill of rights. 

My Way News - SD college tests fingerprint purchasing technology
My Way News reports: "Two shops on the School of Mines and Technology campus are performing one of the world's first experiments in Biocryptology - a mix of biometrics (using physical traits for identification) and cryptology (the study of encoding private information). Students at the Rapid City school can buy a bag of potato chips with a machine that non-intrusively detects their hemoglobin to make sure the transaction is legitimate."

Wired - Obama OKs Netflix-to-Facebook Sharing as E-Mail Privacy Reform Falters
Wired.com reports: "Left in the dust were reforms to the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act. The reform package, introduced by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), would have nullified a provision that allows the government to acquire a suspect’s e-mail or other stored content from an internet service provider without showing probable cause that a crime was committed. Currently, the government can obtain e-mail or other cloud documents without a warrant as long as the content has been stored on a third-party server for 180 days or more."

Wired.com - Student Suspended for Refusing to Wear RFID Tracker Loses Lawsuit:
Wired reports: "A Texas high school student who claimed her student identification was the 'Mark of the Beast' because it was implanted with a radio-frequency identification chip has lost her federal court bid Tuesday challenging her suspension for refusing to wear the card around her neck."

My Way News - Iran building software to control networking sites
My Way News reports: "Iran's police chief says the Islamic Republic is developing new software to control social networking sites. Gen. Esmail Ahmadi Moghadam was quoted in Iranian newspapers Saturday as saying the new software will prevent Iranians from being exposed to malicious content online while allowing users to enjoy the benefits of the Internet. He did not say when the software would be introduced."

My Way News - India launches new system for handling welfare
My Way News reports: "India will send billions of dollars in social welfare money directly to its poor under a new program inaugurated Tuesday, aiming to cut out the middlemen blamed for the massive fraud that plagues the system [...] The program will eliminate middlemen and transfer cash directly into bank accounts using data from Aadhar, a government project working to give every Indian identification numbers linked to fingerprints and retina scans. Currently hundreds of millions of Indians have no identity documents."

My Way News - China requires Internet users to register names
My Way News reports: "Beijing encourages Web use for business and education but tries to block material deemed subversive or obscene. It has steadily stepped up censorship, especially after social media played a role in protests that brought down governments in Egypt and Tunisia. The latest measure requires users to provide their real names and other identifying information when they register with access providers or post information publicly."