Josh Gerstein over at Politico sent Threat Level his piece underscoring once again President Barack Obama is not the civil-liberties Knight In Shining Armor many were expecting. Gerstein posts a televised interview of Obama and John Walsh of America’s Most Wanted . The nation’s chief executive extols the virtues of mandatory DNA testing of Americans upon arrest, even absent charges or a conviction. Obama said, “It’s the... 

The U.S. Supreme Court is agreeing to decide how much personal information the federal bureaucracy may acquire on its workers. The justices, without comment, decided Monday to review a lower-court decision surrounding the concept of so-called “ informational privacy .” The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco struck down intrusive background checks last year on nearly three dozen National Aeronautics and Space Administration... 

The CEO of Lifelock, Todd Davis, became famous for advertising his Social Security number on television ads and billboards promising his $10 monthly service would protect consumers from identity theft. The company also offered a $1 million guarantee to compensate customers for losses incurred if they became a victim of identity theft after signing up for the service. But the Federal Trade Commission said Tuesday that the claims were bogus (.pdf)... 

Citing anti-competitive concerns, the Justice Department sued Election Systems & Software in order to force the company to divest itself of the voting machine assets it obtained from Premier Election Solutions last year. The department’s antitrust division, along with nine state attorneys general, filed the civil antitrust lawsuit (.pdf) in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., charging that the acquisition threatened competition.... 

The Supreme Court agreed Monday to delve into the sensitive question of whether the First Amendment protects anti-gay protesters carrying placards outside military funerals, bearing “America is Doomed,” “Thank God for 9/11″ and other volatile slogans, like “Thank God for dead soldiers.” The messages and picketing are part of a Kansas church’s belief that the United States’ tolerance for homosexuality... 

Transportation officials announced Friday 11 more United States airports will begin receiving full-body imaging machines “By accelerating the deployment of this technology , we are enhancing our capability to detect and disrupt threats of terrorism across the nation,” Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said in a statement. Despite concerns of privacy and their effectiveness, the 11 airports are to get the 150 machines beginning... 

Howard Schmidt, the new cybersecurity czar for the Obama administration, has a short answer for the drumbeat of rhetoric claiming the United States is caught up in a cyberwar that it is losing. “There is no cyberwar,” Schmidt told Wired.com in a sit-down interview Wednesday at the RSA Security Conference in San Francisco. “I think that is a terrible metaphor and I think that is a terrible concept,” Schmidt said. “There... 

The country’s swift deployment of smart-grid technology has security professionals concerned that utilities and smart-meter vendors are repeating the mistakes made in the rollout of the public internet, when security became a priority only after malicious attacks had reached mass levels. But when it comes to the power grid, the costs of remote hack attacks are potentially more dramatic. “The cost factor here is what’s turned... 

Those awaiting a legitimate method to duplicate DVDs for personal use will likely have to wait even longer, perhaps forever, after RealNetworks tossed in the white towel and abandoned its litigation on the matter. RealNetworks spent almost two years in a legal battle with the Motion Picture Association of America, which sued the Seattle company to block the sale of its DVD-copying software and hardware –- generally known as…  Read More →

The hackers who targeted Google and other companies in January targeted the source code management systems of companies, allowing them to siphon source code as well as modify it, according to a new report. More importantly, systems that the companies used to develop and manage their source code have numerous security flaws that would allow easy compromise of a company’s intellectual property. The same systems …  Read More →

BOSTON (Reuters) – Spanish police have shut down a ring of computer hackers who infected more than 13 million PCs with a virus that stole credit card numbers and other valuable data in what may be the biggest cyber-raid to date. Spain’s Civil Guard said on Tuesday that it arrested three men suspected of running the so-called Mariposa botnet, named after the Spanish word for butterfly. A press conference to give more details is scheduled... 

Flipping the bird, or sticking out the middle finger, is perhaps the oldest insulting gesture on earth. The move dates back to ancient Greece and was adopted by the Romans as digitus impudicus — the impudent finger. A zillion middle fingers later, an Oregon man is suing suburban Portland cops (.pdf) over his use of the gesture, claiming civil rights violations. Twice he flipped them off for no apparent reason while driving and was pulled... 

The Obama administration declassified part of the government’s cybersecurity plan Tuesday, publishing parts of it that discuss intrusion detection systems for federal computer networks and the government’s role in securing critical infrastructure. The declassification announcement was made by Howard A. Schmidt, a former Microsoft security executive who in December was appointed cybersecurity coordinator by President Barack Obama.... 

The biggest threat to the open internet is not Chinese government hackers or greedy anti-net-neutrality ISPs, it’s Michael McConnell, the former director of national intelligence. McConnell’s not dangerous because he knows anything about SQL injection hacks, but because he knows about social engineering. He’s the nice-seeming guy who’s willing and able to use fear-mongering to manipulate the federal bureaucracy for his... 

Congress is sending President Barack Obama legislation that extends three provisions of the Patriot Act — despite heated debate among lawmakers that the surveillance measure goes too far. The act, hastily adopted six weeks after the 2001 terror attacks, greatly expands the government’s ability to spy on Americans in the name of national security. Three measures of the act were set to expire at the end of 2009, but in December lawmakers...