This Is Investigative Reporting? News Corp. Allegedly Hacked Into Phones, Paid Off People To Silence Them

from the hmm... dept

We keep being told that only newspapers can do "real" investigative reporting, even though we've seen plenty of evidence of others doing quite impressive investigative reporting without having a background in journalism. And, now, we find out that some investigative reporting by those "real" journalists apparently involved breaking the law, violating individuals' privacy... and then paying people off to keep quiet about it. At least that's the charge from The Guardian against Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. According to the Guardian's report (and, yes, the Guardian is a real newspaper and appears to have done a nice investigative job here -- we're not saying newspapers can't do good investigative reporting), there's growing evidence that a lot of folks involved in Murdoch's News Group Newspapers were involved in hiring people to hack into thousands of mobile phones to record and transcribe phone calls between various politicians and celebrities, and also involved tricking "government agencies, banks, phone companies and others... into handing over confidential information." And? When that evidence started to come out, they apparently paid up a bunch of hush money and convinced a court to seal the files. Again, this isn't to implicate all newspapers (the fact that another newspaper figured this out is great). But the idea that newspaper investigative reporting is somehow "pure" once again seems to be in question.

33 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Finland Agrees To Let Companies Spy On Workers

from the who-needs-trust-when-you-have-technology? dept

Last month, we noted the controversy in Finland, as a new law was up for debate concerning whether or not companies there could spy on employee email. Beyond the general controversy, there were rumors that Nokia, who had been caught breaking the existing law by spying on employee emails before, had supposedly threatened to leave Finland if the law wasn't changed to allow such activities. Nokia has vehemently denied this, but hasn't denied that it supported the law. So... it's probably not a huge surprise that the Finnish Parliament has approved the law.

To be honest, the details of the law aren't that extreme. It doesn't let the company even read the emails -- just record who is emailing whom. For company email, that seems perfectly reasonable. Hell, the day this law passed, RIM admitted not only does it track and record all company email, but it does the same thing for all phone calls as well. Perhaps a more important question is whether or not that's a useful way to spend company resources? The companies obviously talk about the importance of "protecting" their IP, but I once worked for a company that recorded all phone calls as well, and all it really did was make all of the employees angry, disgruntled and less interested in working hard. Having your bosses distrust you can do that...

12 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Is The UK Really Looking To Spy On All Browsing Habits, Emails And Phone Calls?

from the seems-a-bit-extreme dept

There's not much in the way of detail, and our UK readers have pointed out in the past that The Times Online is hardly the most reputable of newspapers in the UK, but it's reporting that the UK government is considering spending £12 billion on a system to spy on the internet browsing histories, emails and phone calls of everyone in the UK. That seems almost too ridiculous to be true, so consider us to be skeptical that this is actually what's happening -- but we'll mention it here with the link back to the source to see if some of our readers can fill us in on the details (or lack of details, as the case may be).

16 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Yes, China Is Spying On Skype Conversations

from the end-to-end-to-gov't-encryption dept

Remember how Skype was supposed to be "untappable" due to end-to-end encryption? Well, we've already seen that's not true, thanks to leaks that showed the German government had figured out ways to tap Skype, and it will probably come as no surprise to many that China has been tapping and storing Skype conversations. Some of the findings of this report are not new. Back in 2005, reports came out that various Chinese telecoms were investing in special "filters" for Skype that would block conversations using certain keywords. But, of course, it seemed rather obvious that if they were blocking those keywords, they would also use them to spy on what people were talking about. Besides, if the telecoms didn't filter or record Skype, the Chinese government made it clear that it would block the use of Skype altogether.

The only really surprising part of the new report was the fact that the folks storing the messages did it so poorly that the researchers who discovered it were easily able to go in and read messages from others. It's rather telling to note the responses from the two companies involved. A Skype spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal: "The idea that China's government might be monitoring communications in and out of the country shouldn't surprise anyone." No, it shouldn't surprise anyone, but one might think it's rather troubling that Skype promotes itself as having end-to-end encryption, when that's clearly not true. Even more telling, the only thing about this report that seemed to actually concern representatives from Skype was the fact that the conversations had been readable by outsiders, again, telling the WSJ that the "security issue" had been "remedied" by Skype's partner in China, TOM Group. In other words, Skype isn't so concerned about users being spied on, but it is concerned when people can figure out that users are being spied on.

As for TOM Group, its response is pretty much exactly what you'd expect on this issue: "as a Chinese company, we adhere to rules and regulations in China where we operate our businesses." In other words, the government says they need to spy, so we let them spy. Nothing too surprising, but important for folks to know if they somehow thought that Skype's supposed end-to-end encryption actually kept conversations secret in China.

19 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Internet Traffic Routing Around The US

from the indeed-it-is dept

There's a famous saying by John Gilmore, that "the internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." However, that saying may apply equally to other "damage" beyond censorship -- and that includes spying, slow connections and many other things. In fact, with it being considered somewhat common knowledge that US intelligence agencies frequently tap into internet traffic coming through the US from elsewhere, more and more countries are working hard to make sure their internet traffic need not travel through the US at all. It's not just about the spying -- though, that is a part of it.

It's also about a basic competitive advantage. Since the internet has become such an important infrastructure concern, relying on a separate country to make sure that infrastructure remains solvent (especially when that country has actively promoted policies that seem to hinder investment in that infrastructure) doesn't make much sense. So, while the US gov't argues over side issues like net neutrality, other countries are making sure that whatever the US does with its internet policy doesn't impact their ability to make use of a global information network. One of these days, US politicians are going to wake up and realize that while they were arguing over net neutrality and policies concerning telcos and cable companies, other countries built out much stronger internet infrastructure that will allow their economies to profit, while we start playing catchup.

17 Comments | Leave a Comment..

TorrentSpy Appeals Lawsuit Over MPAA Getting Access To Its Emails

from the not-done-yet dept

While TorrentSpy may have shut down and lost its copyright infringement lawsuit against the MPAA, it's still appealing a separate issue: whether the MPAA broke the law in hiring a guy to break into TorrentSpy's email server and forward emails to the MPAA. The MPAA got away with playing dumb when this issue first came up, claiming it assumed the guy they hired had legitimate access to all of the emails he was handing over -- though, that seems highly questionable.

12 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Deutsche Telekom Pulls An HP: Accused Of Spying On Journalists And Board Members

from the HP-redux dept

Remember the infamous HP "pretexting" situation that involved HP's chair spying on board members and reporters? It probably shouldn't come as a surprise, but it looks like HP was hardly alone in that sort of enterprise. A few readers have sent in the story coming out of Germany that Deutsche Telekom may have been involved in a very similar operation, spying on board members and journalists trying to find the source of "leaks" to the press. In some ways, it sounds like Deutsche Telekom's efforts may have gone even further than HP's efforts -- though, they seem to have taken place roughly around the same time. Still, it appears that Deutsche's spying activities may have gone on even after the HP story was revealed, so the folks involved must have realized what would happen if the news ever got out.

3 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Sen. Arlen Specter Demands Investigation of Spying... In The NFL

from the priorities dept

Sometimes, no amount of snark can top the real world. Threat Level notes that "Arlen Specter, the Republican leader of the Senate Judiciary Committee, on Wednesday demanded an independent investigation into 'Spygate.'" Not the administration's various warrantless eavesdropping programs, but allegations that the New England Patriots have been secretly recording the signals of opposing teams. Because, of course, Congress has nothing more important to worry about than cheating in football. This is particularly galling when juxtaposed with reports that the administration has unveiled (sort of) a "cyber-security" proposal that includes expanded spying on the Internet. That is something that could use more scrutiny from Congress. Indeed, because the Bush administration has shrouded details of its surveillance programs in secrecy, Congress has a unique role in investigating the proposal and exposing any aspects that could violate civil liberties. And the Ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee would be a big help in those efforts. But unfortunately, the threat of expanded spying in the NFL is such a serious problem that Sen. Specter doesn't seem to have much time to investigate spying programs that affect those of us who don't play football for a living.

Timothy Lee is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Timothy Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

30 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Who's More Tech Savvy? Employees Or Employers?

from the depends-on-which-technology dept

I came across two separate stories today at about the same time, which seemed to be saying very different things, but seem worth discussing together. The first is about how big companies are increasingly technology savvy in spying on workers in everything that they do (sent in by reader gonzogirl). It notes that while CIOs used to worry about how employees would react to being spied on, these days it's barely a second thought, as it's become almost standard. The other study involves some research suggesting that employees are becoming a lot more tech savvy than their employers and trying to drag them into the 21st century. The researchers behind that report say that employees understand technology much better than their own CIOs.

At first glance, the two reports may seem to contradict each other, but that may not really be the case. It may actually show a lot more about where the priorities are for CIOs of large companies these days: fearful of what employees are doing, rather than looking for ways to help them get things done. Thus, when employees show up with new tools to make them more productive, the response isn't too embrace them, but to fear them (or figure out how they can be monitored). This wouldn't be particularly surprising, but it should be troublesome for those large companies, who are breeding atmospheres of distrust and trying to hold back the innovation needed to boost productivity and compete with more nimble companies.

11 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Who's More Ethical: TorrentSpy Or The MPAA?

from the just-a-simple-question dept

Wired has an interview with Robert Anderson, the guy who hacked into TorrentSpy's servers and handed over a bunch of internal TorrentSpy info to the MPAA. From the interview, it's quite clear that the MPAA knew that it was getting access to content that had not been legally obtained, but it still pushed Anderson for more such info (including asking him if he could obtain similar info about The Pirate Bay). Yet, because they know how to cover themselves legally, they made Anderson sign a contract saying that all of the info he gave them had been obtained legally. But, still, it's quite clear that the MPAA has no qualms spying on people using questionable means. At the same time, however, we've noted that TorrentSpy is so aghast at the idea of spying on its own users, that it shut off US access to its site to protect its users from court-ordered spying. So, which organization comes across as more ethical here? The MPAA, who's actively trying to get confidential information from various torrent tracker sites? Or TorrentSpy, who's actively trying to protect the privacy of its users? Yet, why is it that people act as if the MPAA has the moral high ground here?

42 Comments | Leave a Comment..