Homeland & Cybersecurity
The latest coverage of the Department of Homeland Security and cyber threats around the globe.
Republican lawmakers on Wednesday introduced legislation aimed at fighting what they see as anti-conservative bias on Google and other social media platforms.
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Senate Republicans seek to strip protections shielding Big Tech companies from lawsuits unless the companies change their terms of service to agree to operate in good faith and to pay a $5,000 fine if they fail to live up to the agreement.
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By Joseph Pisani and Matt O'Brien - Associated Press
Amazon on Wednesday banned police use of its face-recognition technology for a year, making it the latest tech giant to step back from law-enforcement use of systems that have been criticized for incorrectly identifying people with darker skin.
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A recent cyberattack hit Honda and affected the automaker’s global operations and U.S. production.
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The protests over perceived racist-policing has caused IBM to do an about-face on facial recognition technology.
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Google has developed new tools for its users to avoid large crowds amid concerns about the spread of the new coronavirus.
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Google said it discovered attempts by an Iran-backed group looking to attack President Trump’s campaign and efforts by a Chinese group targeting the campaign of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joseph R. Biden.
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Facebook’s refusal to police President Trump’s posts on the platform prompted some of its earliest employees to raise concerns with the company’s chief executive officer Wednesday.
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A proposed class-action lawsuit against Google says the internet giant invaded the privacy of millions of users.
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Google tracked the locations of 300 million people and gave the data to a handful of scientists who the company deemed worthy. But exactly who has the data, what data the scientists have, and what they’re doing with it is a bit of a mystery.
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House Democrats have developed new proposals to block online political ads that use demographic or behavioral data to hone in on their intended audience.
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The U.S. National Security Agency issued a new warning on Thursday saying Russian military cyber actors are connected to a new wave of attacks exploiting widely used email software.
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Arizona is accusing Google of tracking users’ movements even after consumers disabled the location tracker.
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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in an interview airing Thursday he doesn’t think his company should be the “arbiter of truth” of what’s said online after Twitter attached fact-checking links to a few of President Trump’s posts for the first time this week.
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President Trump is expected to sign an executive order Thursday aimed at social media companies, saying he wants to ensure fairness on platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.
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Facebook remains in an “arms race” with countries attempting to use its services to interfere in the elections of others, Mark Zuckerberg said in a new interview released Thursday.
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Apple and Google said Wednesday they made their coronavirus contact-tracing technology available to public health officials around the world.
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A Royal Saudi Air Force cadet who killed three U.S. sailors at a Florida Navy base last year had longtime ties to al Qaeda, top Justice Department officials said Monday, while slamming Apple for providing no help in the investigation.
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The Zoom video conferencing company is making plans to hire hundreds of new workers in the U.S. as the company looks to offset the security risks associated with the company’s ties to China.
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WeFightCovid-19.org, the scam site, is one of more than 11,000 websites HSI has knocked off the internet during Operation Stolen Promise, an effort by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to try to prevent fraudsters from taking advantage of unsuspecting consumers during the chaos of coronavirus.
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Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday denounced Chinese hacking of American vaccine research and demanded Beijing halt the cybertheft activity.
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A ransomware attack hit the Texas judiciary, forcing the judicial system to improvise to keep its courts functioning online since social distancing restrictions have eliminated many in-person solutions.
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By Associated Press
The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security’s cyber division warned on Wednesday that hackers backed by the Chinese government may be attempting to steal the work of researchers dealing with the response to the coronavirus outbreak.
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The U.S. Senate on Wednesday rejected a proposed amendment to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that would block the government from spying on Americans’ internet browsing and search history without a warrant.
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The new oversight board charged with policing Facebook’s content enforcement decisions may not start working before the November election, The Washington Times has learned.
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By Associated Press
Oklahoma City University’s virtual graduation ceremony was cut short when someone posted a racial slur and a swastika.
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Facebook revealed the first 20 members of its new oversight board, which will have responsibility for content enforcement and governance on its platforms.
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American and British agencies said Tuesday that sophisticated hackers are actively targeting medical researchers, pharmaceutical companies and other organizations involved in responding to the coronavirus pandemic with the likely goal of stealing information about the outbreak.
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By Matt O'Brien and Christina Larson - Associated Press
As governments around the world consider how to monitor new coronavirus outbreaks while reopening their societies, many are starting to bet on smartphone apps to help stanch the pandemic.
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The dogs that Transportation Security Administration agents use at some airports to screen passengers are cute — and that’s sometimes all they are, an audit of the canine program found.
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Rep. Adam B. Schiff has asked Google, YouTube and Twitter to consider following Facebook protocol in alerting users who interacted on their platforms with misinformation involving the coronavirus pandemic.
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An all-volunteer force of roughly 1,500 technology professionals has teamed up to fight the thousands of cyberattacks on hospitals and the medical sector during the coronavirus pandemic.
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Federal judges expressed skepticism Tuesday for the Justice Department’s bid to keep secret the details of a court order to compel Facebook to wiretap voice calls on its Messenger app.
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A top FBI official said Thursday complaints of cybercrime made to the FBI had approximately tripled amid the outbreak of the coronavirus crisis.
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By Robert Burns - Associated Press
A government watchdog agency said Wednesday the Pentagon’s process for awarding a highly lucrative cloud computing contract to Microsoft was in line with legal and government purchasing standards.
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The Zoom videoconferencing platform is fast becoming the judiciary’s technology of choice to conduct business while following social distancing requirements for the coronavirus pandemic.
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A lawyer for Julian Assange failed Tuesday to convince a British judge to postpone the jailed WikiLeaks publisher’s extradition trial due to the ongoing novel coronavirus pandemic.
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Google said Friday it will begin publishing reports created from Google Maps users’ whereabouts to help governments make policy decisions regarding social distancing measures enacted to fight coronavirus.
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Google announced Thursday the company will spend $6.5 million on various efforts aimed at combating online misinformation involving the deadly ongoing novel coronavirus pandemic.
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A new law in Washington state restricting the use of facial-recognition technology is drawing praise from Microsoft but criticism from civil liberties advocates.
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President Trump on Tuesday signed a new law aimed at preventing China from penetrating American telecommunications networks for electronic spying and data collection.
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Several of the world’s leading Internet companies are proactively fighting the spread of misinformation about coronavirus online with new partnerships, different approaches, and the reorganization of resources.
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By Barbara Ortutay - Associated Press
Facebook and Twitter revealed evidence Thursday suggesting that Russian efforts to interfere in the U.S. presidential election are getting more sophisticated and harder to detect.
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