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After months of deliberation, the Obama administration has made a long-awaited decision on the thorny issue of how to deal with encrypted communications: It will not — for now — call for legislation requiring companies to decode messages for law enforcement. Rather, the administration will continue trying to persuade companies that have moved to encrypt their customers’ data to create a way for the government to still peer into people’s data when needed for criminal or terrorism investigations. “The administration has decided not to seek a legislative remedy now, but it makes sense to continue the conversations with industry,” FBI Director James B. Comey said at a Senate hearing Thursday of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

To Amie Stepanovich, the U.S. policy manager for Access, one of the groups signing the petition, the status quo isn’t good enough. “It’s really crucial that even if the government is not pursuing legislation, it’s also not pursuing policies that will weaken security through other methods,” she said. The FBI and Justice Department have been talking with tech companies for months. On Thursday, Comey said the conversations have been “increasingly productive.” He added: “People have stripped out a lot of the venom.” He said the tech executives “are all people who care about the safety of America and also care about privacy and civil liberties.” Comey said the issue afflicts not just federal law enforcement but also state and local agencies investigating child kidnappings and car crashes — “cops and sheriffs . . . [who are] increasingly encountering devices they can’t open with a search warrant.”

The decision was made at a Cabinet meeting Oct. 1. “As the president has said, the United States will work to ensure that malicious actors can be held to account — without weakening our commitment to strong encryption,” National Security Council spokesman Mark Stroh said. “As part of those efforts, we are actively engaged with private companies to ensure they understand the public safety and national security risks that result from malicious actors’ use of their encrypted products and services.” But privacy advocates are concerned that the administration’s definition of strong encryption also could include a system in which a company holds a decryption key or can retrieve unencrypted communications from its servers for law enforcement. “The government should not erode the security of our devices or applications, pressure companies to keep and allow government access to our data, mandate implementation of vulnerabilities or backdoors into products, or have disproportionate access to the keys to private data,” said Savecrypto.org, a coalition of industry and privacy groups that has launched a campaign to petition the Obama administration.

The digital privacy world was rocked late Thursday evening when The New York Times reported on Securus, a prison telecom company that has a service enabling law enforcement officers to locate most American cell phones within seconds. The company does this via a basic Web interface leveraging a location API—creating a way to effectively access a massive real-time database of cell-site records. Securus’ location ability relies on other data brokers and location aggregators that obtain that information directly from mobile providers, usually for the purposes of providing some commercial service like an opt-in product discount triggered by being near a certain location. ("You’re near a Carl’s Jr.! Stop in now for a free order of fries with purchase!") The Texas-based Securus reportedly gets its data from 3CInteractive, which in turn buys data from LocationSmart. Ars reached 3CInteractive's general counsel, Scott Elk, who referred us to a spokesperson. The spokesperson did not immediately respond to our query. But currently, anyone can get a sense of the power of a location API by trying out a demo from LocationSmart itself. Currently, the Supreme Court is set to rule on the case of Carpenter v. United States, which asks whether police can obtain more than 120 days' worth of cell-site location information of a criminal suspect without a warrant. In that case, as is common in many investigations, law enforcement presented a cell provider with a court order to obtain such historical data. But the ability to obtain real-time location data that Securus reportedly offers skips that entire process, and it's potentially far more invasive. Securus’ location service as used by law enforcement is also currently being scrutinized. The service is at the heart of an ongoing federal prosecution of a former Missouri sheriff’s deputy who allegedly used it at least 11 times against a judge and other law enforcement officers. On Friday, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) publicly released his formal letters to AT&T and also to the Federal Communications Commission demanding detailed answers regarding these Securus revelations.

A bipartisan pair of lawmakers is expressing alarm at reported changes at the National Security Agency that would allow the intelligence service’s information to be used for policing efforts in the United States.“If media accounts are true, this radical policy shift by the NSA would be unconstitutional, and dangerous,” Reps. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) and Blake FarentholdBlake FarentholdLawmakers warn of 'radical' move by NSA to share information Overnight Tech: Netflix scores win over Postal Service Lawmakers go green for St. Patrick's Day MORE (R-Texas) wrote in a letter to the spy agency this week. “The proposed shift in the relationship between our intelligence agencies and the American people should not be done in secret.ADVERTISEMENT“NSA’s mission has never been, and should never be, domestic policing or domestic spying.”The NSA has yet to publicly announce the change, but The New York Times reported last month that the administration was poised to expand the agency's ability to share information that it picks up about people’s communications with other intelligence agencies.The modification would open the door for the NSA to give the FBI and other federal agencies uncensored communications of foreigners and Americans picked up incidentally — but without a warrant — during sweeps.  

Robert Litt, the general counsel at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, told the Times that it was finalizing a 21-page draft of procedures to allow the expanded sharing.  Separately, the Guardian reported earlier this month that the FBI had quietly changed its internal privacy rules to allow direct access to the NSA’s massive storehouse of communication data picked up on Internet service providers and websites.The revelations unnerved civil liberties advocates, who encouraged lawmakers to demand answers of the spy agency.“Under a policy like this, information collected by the NSA would be available to a host of federal agencies that may use it to investigate and prosecute domestic crimes,” said Neema Singh Guliani, legislative counsel and the American Civil Liberties Union. “Making such a change without authorization from Congress or the opportunity for debate would ignore public demands for greater transparency and oversight over intelligence activities.”In their letter this week, Lieu and Farenthold warned that the NSA’s changes would undermine Congress and unconstitutionally violate people’s privacy rights.   

“The executive branch would be violating the separation of powers by unilaterally transferring warrantless data collected under the NSA’s extraordinary authority to domestic agencies, which do not have such authority,” they wrote.“Domestic law enforcement agencies — which need a warrant supported by probable cause to search or seize — cannot do an end run around the Fourth Amendment by searching warrantless information collected by the NSA.”

The Federal Communications Commission is poised to ruin the free Internet on a technicality. The group is expected to introduce new net neutrality laws that would allow companies to pay for better access to consumers through deals similar to the one struck by Netflix and Comcast earlier this year. The argument is that those deals don’t technically fall under the net neutrality umbrella, so these new rules won’t apply to them even though they directly affect the Internet. At least the commission is being upfront about its disinterest in protecting the free Internet.

The Verge notes that the proposed rules will offer some protections to consumers: The Federal Communication Commission’s proposal for new net neutrality rules will allow internet service providers to charge companies for preferential treatment, effectively undermining the concept of net neutrality, according to The Wall Street Journal. The rules will reportedly allow providers to charge for preferential treatment so long as they offer that treatment to all interested parties on “commercially reasonable” terms, with the FCC will deciding whether the terms are reasonable on a case-by-case basis. Providers will not be able to block individual websites, however. The goal of net neutrality rules is to prevent service providers from discriminating between different content, allowing all types of data and all companies’ data to be treated equally. While it appears that outright blocking of individual services won’t be allowed, the Journal reports that some forms of discrimination will be allowed, though that will apparently not include slowing down websites.

Re/code summarizes the discontent with these proposed rules: Consumer groups have complained about that plan because they’re worried that Wheeler’s rules may not hold up in court either. A federal appeals court rejected two previous versions of net neutrality rules after finding fault in the FCC’s legal reasoning. During the latest smackdown, however, the court suggested that the FCC had some authority to impose net neutrality rules under a section of the law that gives the agency the ability to regulate the deployment of broadband lines. Internet activists would prefer that the FCC just re-regulate Internet lines under old rules designed for telephone networks, which they say would give the agency clear authority to police Internet lines. Wheeler has rejected that approach for now. Phone and cable companies, including Comcast, AT&T and Verizon, have vociferously fought that idea over the past few years.

UK's High Court found the rushed Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act (DRIPA) to be illegal under the European Convention on Human Rights and EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, both of which require respect for private and family life, as well as protection of personal data in the case of the latter. DRIPA was challenged by two members of Parliament (MPs), Labor's Tom Watson and the Conservative David Davis, who argued that the surveillance of communications wasn't limited to serious crimes, that individual notices for data collection were kept secret, and that no provision existed to protect those who need professional confidentiality, such as lawyers and journalists. DRIPA was pushed through in three days last year after the European Court of Justice ruled that the EU data retention powers were disproportionate, which invalidated the previous data retention law in the UK. The UK High Court also ruled that sections 1 and 2 of DRIPA were unlawful based on the fact that they fail to provide precise policies to ensure that data is only accessed for the purpose of investigating serious crimes. Another major point against DRIPA was that it didn't require judicial approval, which could limit access to only the data that is strictly necessary for investigations.

DRIPA passed in only three days, but the Court allowed it to continue for another nine months, to give the UK government enough time to draft new legislation. Although this almost doubles the time in which this law will exist, it might be better in the long term, as it gives the members of Parliament enough time to debate its successor, without having to rush yet another law fearing that the government's surveillance powers will expire. This court ruling arrived at the right time, as the UK government is currently preparing the draft for the Investigative Powers Bill (also called Snooper's Charter by many), which further expands the government's surveillance powers and may even request encryption backdoors. It also joins other recent reviews of the government's surveillance laws that called for much stricter oversight done by judges rather than the government's own members. "Campaigners, MPs across the political spectrum, the Government's own reviewer of terrorism legislation are all calling for judicial oversight and clearer safeguards," said James Welch, Legal Director for Liberty, a human rights organization.

In a Chicago court, several Facebook users filed a class-action lawsuit against the social media giant for allegedly violating its users’ privacy rights to acquire the largest privately held stash of biometric face-recognition data in the world. The court documents reveal claims that “Facebook began violating the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (IBIPA) of 2008 in 2010, in a purported attempt to make the process of tagging friends easier.”

This was accomplished through the “tag suggestions” feature provided by Facebook which “scans all pictures uploaded by users and identifies any Facebook friends they may want to tag.” The Facebook users maintain that this feature is a “form of data mining [that] violates user’s privacy”. One plaintiff said this is a “brazen disregard for its users’ privacy rights,” through which Facebook has “secretly amassed the world’s largest privately held database of consumer biometrics data.” Because “Facebook actively conceals” their protocol using “faceprint databases” to identify Facebook users in photos, and “doesn’t disclose its wholesale biometrics data collection practices in its privacy policies, nor does it even ask users to acknowledge them.”

This would be a violation of the IBIPA which states it is “unlawful to collect biometric data without written notice to the subject stating the purpose and length of the data collection, and without obtaining the subject’s written release.” Because all users are automatically part of the “faceprint’ facial recognition program, this is an illegal act in the state of Illinois, according to the complaint. Jay Edelson, attorney for the plaintiffs, asserts the opt-out ability to prevent other Facebook users from tagging them in photos is “insufficient”.

California has passed a digital privacy law granting consumers more control over and insight into the spread of their personal information online, creating one of the most significant regulations overseeing the data-collection practices of technology companies in the United States.The bill raced through the State Legislature without opposition on Thursday and was signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown, just hours before a deadline to pull from the November ballot an initiative seeking even tougher oversight over technology companies.The new law grants consumers the right to know what information companies are collecting about them, why they are collecting that data and with whom they are sharing it. It gives consumers the right to tell companies to delete their information as well as to not sell or share their data. Businesses must still give consumers who opt out the same quality of service.It also makes it more difficult to share or sell data on children younger than 16.The legislation, which goes into effect in January 2020, makes it easier for consumers to sue companies after a data breach. And it gives the state’s attorney general more authority to fine companies that don’t adhere to the new regulations.

The California law is not as expansive as Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation, or G.D.P.R., a new set of laws restricting how tech companies collect, store and use personal data.But Aleecia M. McDonald, an incoming assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University who specializes in privacy policy, said California’s privacy measure was one of the most comprehensive in the United States, since most existing laws — and there are not many — do little to limit what companies can do with consumer information.

That didn't take long. Securus -- you know, that company that lets cops track phones in real time with what amounts to a "pinky promise," according to US Sen. Ron Wyden -- has reportedly been hacked.The hacker, according to Motherboard, was able to get away with, at a minimum, a spreadsheet containing 2,800 logins and poorly encrypted passwords, some of which had already been cracked. Motherboard says it tested a number of logins to corroborate the hacker's story.Securus on Friday confirmed in a statement that "a subset of certain non-consumer administrative user account information (e.g., usernames, email addresses, and phone numbers) had been unlawfully accessed" and said it's launched an investigation into the breach. It's found no evidence that the breach is related to its location-based services, but it's disabled location-based data in the meantime "in an abundance of caution."Last Thursday, The New York Times revealed that Securus Technologies, which monitors calls to US prison inmates, has been used by a former Missouri sheriff to monitor people's phones and track their location. Wyden has called on federal authorities to investigate the company and its practices as they relate to people's privacy.

The 28 House members who lobbied the Federal Communications Commission to drop net neutrality this week have received more than twice the amount in campaign contributions from the broadband sector than the average for all House members. These lawmakers, including the top House leadership, warned the FCC that regulating broadband like a public utility "harms" providers, would be "fatal to the Internet," and could "limit economic freedom."​ According to research provided Friday by Maplight, the 28 House members received, on average, $26,832 from the "cable & satellite TV production & distribution" sector over a two-year period ending in December. According to the data, that's 2.3 times more than the House average of $11,651. What's more, one of the lawmakers who told the FCC that he had "grave concern" (PDF) about the proposed regulation took more money from that sector than any other member of the House. Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR) was the top sector recipient, netting more than $109,000 over the two-year period, the Maplight data shows.

Dan Newman, cofounder and president of Maplight, the California research group that reveals money in politics, said the figures show that "it's hard to take seriously politicians' claims that they are acting in the public interest when their campaigns are funded by companies seeking huge financial benefits for themselves." Signing a letter to the FCC along with Walden, who chairs the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, were three other key members of the same committee: Reps. Fred Upton (R-MI), Robert Latta (R-OH), and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN). Over the two-year period, Upton took in $65,000, Latta took $51,000, and Blackburn took $32,500. In a letter (PDF) those representatives sent to the FCC two days before Thursday's raucous FCC net neutrality hearing, the four wrote that they had "grave concern" over the FCC's consideration of "reclassifying Internet broadband service as an old-fashioned 'Title II common carrier service.'" The letter added that a switchover "harms broadband providers, the American economy, and ultimately broadband consumers, actually doing so would be fatal to the Internet as we know it."

Not every one of the 28 members who publicly lobbied the FCC against net neutrality in advance of Thursday's FCC public hearing received campaign financing from the industry. One representative took no money: Rep. Nick Rahall (D-WV). In all, the FCC received at least three letters from House lawmakers with 28 signatures urging caution on classifying broadband as a telecommunications service, which would open up the sector to stricter "common carrier" rules, according to letters the members made publicly available. The US has long applied common carrier status to the telephone network, providing justification for universal service obligations that guarantee affordable phone service to all Americans and other rules that promote competition and consumer choice. Some consumer advocates say that common carrier status is needed for the FCC to impose strong network neutrality rules that would force ISPs to treat all traffic equally, not degrading competing services or speeding up Web services in exchange for payment. ISPs have argued that common carrier rules would saddle them with too much regulation and would force them to spend less on network upgrades and be less innovative.

Moscow has warned Twitter that it must store Russian users' personal data in Russia, under a new law, the national communications watchdog told AFP on Wednesday. Legislation that came into force on September 1 requires both Russian and foreign social media sites, messenger services and search engines to store the data held on Russian users on servers located inside the country. The controversial law was adopted amid Internet users' growing concerns about the storage of their data, but also as Russia has moved to tighten security on social media and online news sites that are crucial outlets for the political opposition. Non-compliance could lead Russia's communications watchdog Roskomnadzor to block the sites and services. Roskomnadzor spokesman Vadim Ampelonsky confirmed to AFP that Russia had changed its initial position on US-based Twitter, which it had previously said did not fall under the law. Twitter must comply because it now asks users to supply their personal data, Ampelonsky said, confirming earlier comments by the head of Roskomnadzor Alexander Zharov to Russian media.

Chinese telecom giant Huawei, which has been caught in the crossfires of the Washington-Beijing trade war, on Saturday unveiled a new smart television, the first product to use its own operating system.The television will be available from Thursday in China and marks the first use of HarmonyOS, chief executive George Zhao said, adding that it will be marketed by its mid-range brand, Honor.Huawei revealed its highly-anticipated HarmonyOS on Friday as an alternative operating system for phones and other smart devices in the event that looming US sanctions prevent the firm from using Android technology.American companies are theoretically no longer allowed to sell technology products to Huawei, but a three-month exemption period -- which ends next week -- was granted by Washington before the measure came into force.That ban could stop the tech giant from getting hold of key hardware and software, including smartphone chips and elements of the Google Android operating system, which runs the vast majority of smartphones in the world, including Huawei's.Huawei -- considered the world leader in fast fifth-generation or 5G equipment and the world's number two smartphone producer -- has been blacklisted by US President Donald Trump amid suspicions it provides a backdoor for Chinese intelligence services, which the firm denies.

A few recent legal developments affecting U.S. online privacy have rightfully troubled privacy advocates and civil libertarians on American soil. In addition to the Patriot Act's relaxed regulation of law enforcement's access to private data, recent court rulings have made it clear that U.S. authorities can secretly request data from tech companies without the user ever knowing. If this seems objectionable from the standpoint of U.S. citizens, imagine how it looks to outsiders who are storing their data there. Some European companies who do business with U.S. technology companies are concerned enough to start looking elsewhere for infrastructure

In the UK earlier this month, human rights groups Liberty and Privacy International were cheered by a tribunal decision that declared GCHQ’s access to NSA spies’ data illegal. Though it was a hollow victory, as the tribunal also declared all current activities, including all those blanket surveillance projects much derided by free speech activists, entirely legal. The practices previously broke the law because the public was unaware of what safeguards were in place for the UK’s access to data from NSA programs like Prism; as soon as Snowden blew everything wide open the snoops had to explain themselves, and that was enough for the tribunal to confirm the legality of GCHQ’s operations. But the case has had one significant effect: anyone can now figure out if their data was illegally shared by the agencies. Privacy International has set up a simple webpage that anyone in the world can sign up to. You can visit the page here.

Once the UK Investigatory Powers Tribunal has determined whom was affected, it has to inform them. Though participants should find out whether their data were unlawfully obtained by GCHQ from the millions of private communications hoovered up by the NSA up until December 2014, it won’t be anytime soon. Privacy International warned in its FAQs: “Count on it being many months, and likely years before this action is completed.” And somewhat ironically Privacy International has to collect participant’s information, including their name and email address, to supply the service. They may ask for more information from willing participants once the group has determined if more is required from the IPT. Anyone who wants to submit directly to the tribunal can do so here.

The ideal customer is one with an IT organization that is tasked with supporting a heterogeneous set of user groups (each with its own technology needs, business logic, policies, etc.) using infrastructure that it must maintain across different phases of the technology lifecycle. There are two prevalent usage models that we observe regularly. The first is as a development and testing platform for applications that, ultimately, will be deployed in a public cloud. It is often easier, faster, and cheaper to use locally sited resources to develop and debug an application (particularly one that is designed to operate at scale) prior to its operational deployment in an externally hosted environment. The virtualization of machines makes cross-platform configuration easier to achieve and Eucalyptus' API compatibility makes the transition between on-premise resources and the public clouds simple. The second model is as an operational hybrid. It is possible to run the same image simultaneously both on-premise using Eucalyptus and in a public cloud thereby providing a way to augment local resources with those rented from a provider without modification to the application. For whom is this relevant technology today? Who are your customers? Wolski: We are seeing tremendous interest in several verticals. Banking/finance, big pharma, manufacturing, gaming, and the service provider market have been the early adopters to deploy and experiment with the Eucalyptus technology.

Eucalyptus is designed to be able to compose multiple technology platforms into a single "universal" cloud platform that exposes a common API, but that can at the same time support separate APIs for the individual technologies. Moreover, it is possible to export some of the specific and unique features of each technology through the common API as "quality-of-service" attributes.