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UK spy agency broke rules when it snooped on civil rights groups
The spies at the UK's Government Communications Headquarters may swear that they're obeying the law, but that doesn't mean that everything they're doing is completely above-board. The Investigatory Powers Tribunal has determined that GCHQ broke data retention rules when it spied on civil rights groups in Egypt and South Africa. The agency legally intercepted the communications of these two targets, according to the ruling, but it either kept that data longer than it should have (in the Egyptian circumstance) or didn't follow policies for studying that data (in South Africa).
Find out if the UK used NSA data to spy on you
While it's sadly likely that your communications have passed through an intelligence agency at some point, it's usually difficult to know just who got your data. However, you now have a rare opportunity to find out. Thanks to a ruling that the UK's GCHQ illegally spied on people using NSA databases, advocacy group Privacy International has posted a simple web form that lets you ask if you were caught in Britain's law-breaking dragnet -- and, as you might expect, petition against mass surveillance. This won't provide the most comprehensive results (you should use the official form if you're really worried), but it should still lead to GCHQ purging the relevant records if there's a match. The only big problem? The request is limited to the past data covered by the ruling, so there's no guarantee that you're truly off the radar. [Image credit: Christopher Furlong - WPA Pool/Getty Images]
Judges rule that UK spying doesn't violate human rights
British spies may be peeking into webcams and modifying internet traffic, but all that is above board -- if you ask the UK's Investigatory Powers Tribunal, anyway. Its judges have ruled that the Government Communications Headquarters' (GCHQ) intelligence gathering practices aren't violating the European Court of Human Rights' safeguards for free speech and privacy. The Tribunal agrees that unchecked mass data collection would be illegal, but contends that the ways GCHQ selects and preserves that data are reasonable. It doesn't have "carte blanche" to do what it likes, according to the ruling.
Intel working with Symantec and Vasco for IPT, hardware-based security measures
Phishers are getting so good and so numerous that even the most technically adept of online bankers should think twice before typing in that password. Even if it's a legit site, databases can be infiltrated and passwords can be cracked. Time for something more, then. Intel is working on it, teaming up with Symantec and Vasco on what's being broadly termed Identity Protection Technology, or IPT. This tech enables a computer to, in hardware, generate a one-time password (OTP) that a compatible site could accept. That computer would have been earlier paired with the site to ensure that only authorized machines sign on. It's similar to the random generating key fobs you might need to sign on to VPN, but built in to Intel's Core i3, i5, and i7 processors. Of course, that won't help if you e-mail your credit card number to a supposed friend who's supposedly stranded in some supposedly far away land, but it's progress.
