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The US Department of Defense has taken the unusual step of singling out China’s cyber-spying activities in its annual report. Though the government has tacitly chided such deeds before and even threatened sanctions, yesterday’s document marks the DoD’s first direct allegation of Chinese espionage. It said that hacks directed toward government and business “appear to be attributable directly to the Chinese government and military” for the purpose of “exfiltrating information” to benefit its defense and industry. The paper also highlighted China’s “lack of transparency” with regard to its military, saying that expenditures on cyber-military operations and other defense spending were likely far in excess of the $114 billion it reported. Meanwhile, China denied the accusations, saying it was equally the victim of similar breaches, and suggested that the two nations work together to resolve the problem.

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Via: BBC

Source: US Department of Defense

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An anonymous reader writes “A Methusen, Mass. high schooler, who goes by the rapper name ‘Cammy Dee’ has been arrested after posting lyrics that police felt were ‘communicating terrorist threats.’ This wouldn’t be the first time rap lyrics were investigated, but if formally charged for ‘communicating terrorist threats’ this would a set a chilling low bar for terrorist investigations.”

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New submitter davesays writes “CNN anchors Erin Burnett and Carol Costello have interviewed Former FBI Counterterrorisim specialist Tim Clemente. In the interviews he asserts that all digital communications are recorded and stored. Clemente: ‘No, welcome to America. All of that stuff is being captured as we speak whether we know it or like it or not.’ ‘All of that stuff’ — meaning every telephone conversation Americans have with one another on U.S. soil, with or without a search warrant — ‘is being captured as we speak.’ ‘No digital communication is secure,’ by which he means not that any communication is susceptible to government interception as it happens (although that is true), but far beyond that: all digital communications — meaning telephone calls, emails, online chats and the like — are automatically recorded and stored and accessible to the government after the fact. To describe that is to define what a ubiquitous, limitless Surveillance State is.”

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We’ve all done it at some point – hit the wrong key or two while going to a common website, such as Google or Facebook, only to be sent to a knock-off website on a similar URL, some of which are phishing attempts, others featuring their own content or service. Regardless, it is annoying and many of them now have their days numbered, with Facebook winning a legal victory over domain squatters in court today.

Over 100 different variations of Facebook.com were registered, and each of them were hit with a lawsuit from the social network giant. Although it is common practice, domain squatting is in violation of 1999′s U.S. Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, which makes it illegal for someone to piggyback off a successful trademark, which domains like Dacebook.com were doing.

Facebook was awarded $3 million in damages by the District Court for Northern California, a figure that will probably never be paid and that the social network, in all likelihood, won’t go after. Nonetheless, it is a victory for Facebook, and a quick look shows that many of the domains have already either pulled their content or such completely down.

The folks over at TechCrunch got a statement from the social network’s Associate General Counsel Craig Clark: “We are pleased with the court’s recommendation. We will continue to use all the tools at our disposal to enforce against those who attempt to take advantage of the people who use our service.” Facebook is not the only big-name company that has gone after domain squatters, with Google having taken the legal hammer to its myriad of trademark leeches, as well.

[via Business Week]

Facebook wins legal victory over domain squatters is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
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An international team of disease detectives are in China to investigate an outbreak of a new strain of bird flu, H7N9. The biggest puzzle right now is where these infections are coming from, as testing poultry has turned up very few infected birds.

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You may not be familiar with a service called Tor. Tor is a web service that allows users to surf the Internet, use IM, and other services while keeping themselves completely anonymous. Tor is a free and open-source that is available for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android.

The National Police Agency in Japan is now asking ISPs to begin blocking Tor for customers if the customers are found to have abused Tor online. The push by Japanese authorities is because they’re worried about an inability to tackle cyber crime enabled in part by anonymizing services such as Tor. Clearly, the indication from the NPA is that there is some guilt associated with people who heavily use Tor.

The push to curb the usage of Tor in Japan stems from a case last year where a number of death threats were posted online from compromised computers. Several arrests were made in the case, but those arrested turned out to have had nothing to do with the posted messages. Once police finally caught up with the real perpetrator of the crimes, it was discovered that he frequently used Tor to cover up his cyber crimes.

The NPA also claims that Tor makes it easier for criminals to conduct financial fraud, child abuse, and to leak confidential police information. Whether or not ISPs in Japan go along with a request to block Tor remains to be seen. Privacy advocates will likely fight the request.

[via Wired]

Japanese National Police Agency wants ISPs to block Tor is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

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While there is still conflicting reports about how easily the new strain can be transmitted between humans, the CDC says early intervention is key.

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The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), which passed the House of Representatives this week, has drawn a lot of criticism from activist groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation for potentially undermining users’ online privacy. In particular, the EFF has said that the bill gives Internet companies the right “to monitor user actions and share data – including potentially sensitive user data – with the government without a warrant” and also “overrides existing privacy law, and grants broad immunities to participating companies.”

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It’s no secret that Apple hangs onto your Siri data for some length of time (as other companies so with search data and the like), but it hasn’t been clear exactly how long it keeps that data sitting on its servers. Wired has now cleared that up somewhat, though, hearing from Apple spokesperson Trudy Muller that the company “may keep anonymized Siri data for up to two years.” That word follows another report from Wired yesterday that raised concerns about the issue. As Muller notes, the data is immediately deleted if a user turns Siri off at any time, and it’s anonymized from the start; neither your Apple ID or email address are stored with a data, but rather a randomly generated number that represents the user and becomes associated with the voice files. That number then gets disassociated from voice clips after six months, but Apple still hangs onto the files for another 18 months for what’s described as testing and product improvement purposes.

Update: The Financial Times has confirmed with Google that it, too, keeps your voice search data for up to two years. Google itself has previously detailed how it handles that data, including the added measures put in place when a user opts-in for personalized voice recognition; in that case, electronic keys linked to your account are generated that Google says are “designed to be accessed by machines, not people.”

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Source: Wired

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It’s baaaaaack: Last year we started paying attention to the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, otherwise known as CISPA, for its perceived similarities to the reviled SOPA and PIPA bills. Despite getting killed off last year, CISPA has now been approved by the U.S. House of Representatives by a huge margin.

The House adopted CISPA by a 288-127 vote today, reports CNET, which is an improvement over the response it received the last time it was in the House. But the White House already threatened to veto it if it goes any further, and since the Democrats control Senate, it’s unlikely to survive a vote there.

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich) is CISPA’s stalwart sponsor, and says the bill is “so important to our national security” that it’s gotta get adopted. He also heads the House Intelligence Committee, it’s worth noting, but he says CISPA is “not a surveillance bill.”

So what is it? At its most basic, CISPA would allow Internet entities and businesses to share email and other confidential information on users with the federal government. Proponents say this is important in order to protect the country from a cyber attack. The sharing would be voluntary.

“Notwithstanding any other provision of law, a self-protected entity may, for cybersecurity purposes — (i) use cybersecurity systems to identify and obtain cyber threat information to protect the rights and property of such self-protected entity; and (ii) share such cyber threat information with any other entity, including the Federal Government…The term ‘self-protected entity’ means an entity, other than an individual, that provides goods or services for cybersecurity purposes to itself.”

In other words, social media site, Internet service providers, email services and more could, if they wanted to, hand over information to the government in the name of protecting national security.

While the Senate probably won’t pass the bill, it could set the stage for some kind of future bipartisan effort to further shore up cybersecurity. As it stands now, Democrats and opponents of CISPA say it doesn’t do enough to protect the privacy of individuals, with amendments scrapped that would have made sure companies had to abide by their own privacy policies and terms of use when sharing data with the government.

CISPA plan to let feds receive confidential data wins big House vote [CNET]

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