Author: Blog

Intelligence Analysts Use US Smartphone Location Data Without Warrants, Memo Says

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: A military arm of the intelligence community buys commercially available databases containing location data from smartphone apps and searches it for Americans’ past movements without a warrant, according to an unclassified memo obtained by The New York Times. Defense Intelligence Agency analysts have searched for the movements of Americans within a commercial database in five investigations over the past two and a half years, agency officials disclosed in a memo they wrote for Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon.

The disclosure sheds light on an emerging loophole in privacy law during the digital age: In a landmark 2018 ruling known as the Carpenter decision, the Supreme Court held that the Constitution requires the government to obtain a warrant to compel phone companies to turn over location data about their customers. But the government can instead buy similar data from a broker — and does not believe it needs a warrant to do so. “D.I.A. does not construe the Carpenter decision to require a judicial warrant endorsing purchase or use of commercially available data for intelligence purposes,” the agency memo said.

In the Pandemic Era, Proof Digital Identity with Continuous Authentication & Behavioral Biometrics

This past November at the 2020 ISMG Virtual Cybersecurity & Fraud Summit in Washington D.C., I presented on how organizations can make digital identity both user-friendly and near-impenetrable. My session, Proofing Digital Identity with Continuous Authentication & Behavioral Biometrics considered how behavioral biometrics offers a better balancing-act between security, privacy, compliance, and user experience.

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In a makeshift SOC in the corner of his home, Matt starts his day with an alarm going off on his computer. There are four monitors ganged together, multiple consoles on each one of them, and numerous empty coffee mugs. This probably draws a snapshot of what’s been real for many of us. On top of the never-ending list of alerts in his inbox every morning, he is building playbooks, threat hunting, scanning news for the latest attack updates, and investigating alerts. Coffee stopped working a couple of hours ago. Matt wished he had more time in the day.… and it’s only 9 AM. 

Nobody — And We Mean Nobody — Was Consistently Great Like Hank Aaron

Henry “Hank” Aaron, who died Friday at the age of 86, was a Hall of Famer’s Hall of Famer. He reached international renown in 1974 by breaking Babe Ruth’s all-time home run mark, which had stood unchallenged for four decades, but that was just the crowning achievement of a career that spanned 23 years and saw Aaron set all manner of records. Along the way, few players have ever garnered more respect from their peers: “Aaron is the best ball player of my era,” Mickey Mantle once said.