government

A Congressional agency has told regulators it is time to review the rules governing cellphone radiation. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) said existing rules might not be doing an effective job of measuring the risk to users. The GAO acts ... as support staff for Congress and also carries out audits to check that government departments are spending money effectively. Three members of Congress recently asked the GAO to look into the way the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulates public safety with respect to cellphones. Cancer, Health Risks Not a GAO Concern The GAO's year- ... (view more)

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) now says it will help bring broadband Internet service to 400,000 Americans who currently don't have access to high-speed Internet. The program to subsidize networks in rural areas will cost $115 ... million in public funds. The aim of the Connect America Fund is to subsidize the installation of high-speed Internet cables in remote places where doing so is not profitable for private firms. The money will come from the Universal Service Fund. In the past, this fund was spent on subsidies to make sure every American home had telephone service, but ... (view more)

Twitter has released new figures showing government requests for information about its users. It's a report similar to the one produced by Google, though with some notable differences. For the past three years, Google has produced these kinds of ... statistics every six months. The idea is to show changes in government demands for specific user information. Twitter openly acknowledges it has copied Google's idea. It says releasing the figures will force governments to be more accountable about the information they demand. (Source: twitter.com ) Twitter's newly-published data covers all government ... (view more)

A new report from Google indicates the US government is currently requesting more information about the online activity of its citizens than ever before. In the second half of 2011, it received 6,321 requests for Internet user data, compared with ... 4,601 in the same period in 2010. That's a 37 per cent increase. The figures were revealed in Google's latest Transparency Report. The US requests cover a total of 12,243 Internet users. (Source: google.com) However, the increase in demands for user data isn't necessarily a sign that the US government is snooping more. Google said the increase could ... (view more)

Iran's government has dismissed reports that it intends to block all Internet access for its citizens, starting in August. Spokespeople claim the shutdown reports stem from an April Fool's joke. Yet at least one part of the story appears to be true. ... The allegations of a coming shutdown are made by Reporters Without Borders, an international media and free speech advocacy group that in recent years has turned its attention to online censorship. Intranet Could Replace Internet According to Reporters Without Borders, Iran plans to simply cut all public access to the global Internet for its ... (view more)

Members of the international hacking group LulzSec ("Lulz Security") have discovered their worst nightmare may have come true. It appears that one of the group's leading figures was working as an undercover FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) ... informer for the past nine months. The news emerged this week with the arrest of five suspects in the United States, the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. All those arrested are said to be members of the LulzSec group, which emerged last summer and quickly made a name for itself as a leading organization of highly proficient hackers ... (view more)

A group of German hacking enthusiasts says the country's government is unlawfully spying on people online. It says officials are secretly using a monitoring tool in a way not authorized by the courts. The accusations come from the Chaos Computer ... Club (CCC), a group of hackers who seek to find creative and unconventional uses for technology rather than merely causing disruption by illegally accessing data. Ironically, that's exactly what they say the German government is doing. The claims involve Bundestrojaner, a government-run application that is effectively a Trojan horse, software that can ... (view more)

The United States Defense Department has openly admitted that it was attacked by a hacker in the spring of 2011, the result being the loss of some 24,000 documents. It remains unclear exactly who was behind the attack, with Deputy Defense Secretary ... William J. Lynn III blaming "foreign intruders". Lynn recently announced the attack during a speech at the National Defense University. It was just one note in a very important discussion of the Defense Department's new strategy for preventing these kinds of attacks in the future. DoD a Perpetual Target for Hackers "The cyber threats we face are ... (view more)

A high-profile hacking group has published what it claims are 90,000 email addresses and password combinations belonging to a government contractor. The group also says it deleted back-up data from the organization's servers. The leak comes from the ... Anonymous group, previously known for its battles with the Scientology movement and the Westboro Baptist Church. Recently, it began a campaign known as "Antisec" (anti-security) alongside members of the previously-disbanded LulzSec group. Anonymous retrieved thee email details from the network of Booz Allen Hamilton, an engineering and ... (view more)

A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) source has confirmed that technology made overseas and imported to the US has been known to contain spy tools. There's also a threat from counterfeit hardware. The confirmation came during a hearing by a House ... of Representatives committee into cyber security. It was discussing ways in which private companies can be encouraged to work alongside the government in tackling security threats. Damage, Spying Both A Threat Greg Schaffer, who works in the National Protections and Programs section of the DHS, did not go into great detail about the spying tools, ... (view more)