law enforcement

The head of controversial messaging app Telegram says it will now comply with some legal requests for information about users. Russian business owner Pavel Durov announced the policy change just weeks after being arrested in France and charged with ... enabling criminal activity. Telegram is a messaging app similar to WhatsApp in that the content of messages is encrypted, to the point that even the operators of the app can't read private messages. It has a couple of significant differences that likely affect the type of people that use it, however. One is that unlike WhatsApp's limit of 1,000 ... (view more)

Canadian privacy regulators say a company that used online photos to train artificial intelligence tools breached privacy rules. They said Clearview had used "the mass collection of biometric information from billions of people, without express ... consent." US company Clearview offers services to law enforcement agencies and private businesses trying to identify people from a photo. It maintains a database of more than three billion images which it uses to try to find a match using artificial intelligence. Clearview gathered most of these pictures by "scraping" online sites such as Flickr. That ... (view more)

Zoom is to completely encrypt video calls at all times for most users. It will mean neither Zoom itself nor law enforcement agents or security services can access the content of calls. At the moment, Zoom encrypts the data that flows between ... individual participants on a call. However, it's Zoom's own servers which generate the encryption key issued to each participant. That means it's technically possible for Zoom to decrypt calls. While Zoom insists it's never had any intention of doing so, it does leave it open to pressure or legal threats from law enforcement officials to get access to ... (view more)

Reports suggest that Apple has been pressured by the FBI to drop plans to improve the security of its customer backups. The plan was to better encrypt backups on the iCloud service. iCloud serves two purposes: it's a way for Apple users to store ... data and documents online and access them from anywhere (from any Apple device) with a password; it's also a way to automatically backup the contents of iPads and iPhones. Data from the iCloud is stored on Apple servers in an encrypted format, which means that if somebody gained access to the files (either through a remote hack, or a physical breach ... (view more)

A company accused of selling social media data to the police has been blocked from accessing some or all content from three major sites. Facebook, Instagram and Twitter made the move after complaints from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU.) ... According to the ACLU, Geofeedia markets its social media monitoring product to police forces as a way to monitor people who may be involved in protests. In one marketing message, a company representative specifically cited the use of the service during the high-profile unrest that followed the shooting of a man by police officers in Ferguson, ... (view more)

Some of the largest tech firms are urging President Obama to drop plans to make it easier for law enforcement and security agencies to access Internet communications. They say the President should resist any idea for such firms to implement ... mandatory "backdoors." The proposal means that firms are only allowed to use encryption if they also build in a way that makes it possible for law enforcement groups to access the data in an unencrypted form. The "key" to unlock the data would effectively be split into two parts: one held by the Internet firm, and the other by the ... (view more)

The Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) director believes encrypting information on smartphones makes Americans less safe from violent criminals. In fact, James Comey suggests that smartphone companies may be marketing the feature in a way that ... actually encourages criminal behavior. Largely in response to the scandal involving the National Security Agency (NSA) and Edward Snowden , the world's largest mobile phone technology companies have introduced encryption systems designed to help users protect their data against government snooping. Last week Google announced it would enable ... (view more)