Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature currently requires accessing the site using the built-in Safari browser.
The New Digital Age - due for release in April - reportedly brands China "the world's most active and enthusiastic filterer of information". China is "the most sophisticated and prolific" hacker of foreign companies, according to a review obtained by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ). China denies allegations of hacking.
Revolution coming?
Beijing has been accused by several governments, foreign companies and organisations of carrying out extensive cyber espionage for many years, seeking to gather information and to control China's image. The New Digital Age analyses how China is dangerously exploiting an Internet that now permeates politics, business, culture and other aspects of life, the WSJ says. It quotes the book as saying: "The disparity between American and Chinese firms and their tactics will put both the government and the companies of the United States as a distinct disadvantage."
This, it says, is because Washington "will not take the same path of digital corporate espionage, as its laws are much stricter (and better enforced) and because illicit competition violates the American sense of fair play". The book argues that Western governments could do more to follow China's lead and develop stronger relationships between the state and technology companies. States will benefit if they use software and technology made by trusted companies, it suggests. "Where Huawei gains market share, the influence and reach of China grow as well," the WSJ quoted the authors as writing.
The WSJ this week said its computer systems had been hacked by specialists in China who were trying to monitor its China coverage. It was the second reported attack on a major US news outlet in days, as the New York Times reported earlier that Chinese hackers had "persistently" penetrated its systems for the last four months. China's foreign ministry dismissed the New York Times' accusations as "groundless" and "totally irresponsible".
BBC News - Google boss Schmidt labels China an 'IT menace'
A quarter of a million Twitter users have had their accounts hacked in the latest of a string of high-profile internet security breaches. Twitter's information security director Bob Lord said about 250,000 users' passwords had been stolen, as well as usernames, emails and other data. Affected users have had passwords invalidated and have been sent emails informing them. Mr Lord said the attack "was not the work of amateurs". He said it appeared similar to recent attacks on the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. The US newspapers reported that their computer systems had been breached by China-based hackers.
'Not isolated'
Twitter has 200 million active users. Mr Lord said in a blog post Twitter had discovered unauthorised attempts to access data held by the website, including one attack that was identified and stopped moments after it was detected. "This attack was not the work of amateurs, and we do not believe it was an isolated incident," he wrote. Mr Lord did not say who had carried out the attack, but added: "The attackers were extremely sophisticated, and we believe other companies and organisations have also been recently similarly attacked." "For that reason we felt that it was important to publicise this attack while we still gather information, and we are helping government and federal law enforcement in their effort to find and prosecute these attackers to make the internet safer for all users."
Internet security specialist Graham Cluley warned Twitter's announcement that emails would be sent to users may prompt a spate of spam emails "phishing" for sensitive information. He says people should be cautious about opening emails which appear to be from Twitter. "You have to be careful if you get hold of one of these emails because, of course, it could equally be a phishing attack - it could be someone pretending to be Twitter. "So, log into the Twitter site as normal and try and log in to your account and, if there's a problem, that's when you actually have to try and reset your password."
Another expert in online security, Professor Alan Woodward from the University of Surrey, warned users to be wary of messages sent them by the hackers via Twitter itself. "They can then send what's called direct messages," he said. "They can put malicious links in those." "It really looks like it's coming from someone you know and you might respond to it, you'd go to the site and all of a sudden you find that actually you've got some malware on your machine which is then stealing your bank details or whatever." On Thursday the New York Times linked the attack to a story it published alleging relatives of former Premier Wen Jiabao controlled assets worth billions of dollars. China's foreign ministry dismissed the New York Times' accusations as "groundless" and "totally irresponsible".
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21304049
Googles disclosure is an unprecedented win for transparency, privacy experts said Wednesday. But its just one small step forward. Serious concerns and questions remain about the use of NSLs, the Electronic Frontier Foundations Dan Auerbach and Eva Galperin wrote. For one thing, the agency issued 16,511 National Security Letters in 2011, the last year for which data was available. But Google was gagged from saying just how many letters it received -- leaving key questions unanswered. The terrorists apparently would win if Google told you the exact number of times the Federal Bureau of Investigation invoked a secret process to extract data about the media giants customers, Wireds David Kravets wrote. He described the FBI's use of NSLs as a way of "secretly spying" on Google's customers.
Mar. 5, 2013: Google has revealed some information about the FBI's use of National Security Letters to seek information -- an unprecedented win for privacy, experts said.
National Security Letters are a means for the FBI to obtain information on people from telecommunications companies, authorized by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) and expanded under the Patriot Act. It lets the agency seek information on a subscriber to a wire or electronic communications service, although not things like the content of their emails or search queries, Google said. And thanks to secrecy constraints built into NSLs, companies that receive them usually arent even allowed to acknowledge the request for information. Citing such extreme secrecy, privacy experts have decried the use of these letters in the past. Of all the dangerous government surveillance powers that were expanded by the USA PATRIOT Act, the National Security Letter (NSL) power is one of the most frightening and invasive, the EFF wrote. These letters allow the FBI to secretly demand data about ordinary American citizens' private communications and Internet activity without any meaningful oversight or prior judicial review.
Thanks to negotiations with the government, Google finally opened the smallest chink in the armor, allowing the search giant to reveal the fact that it had received these requests for data, as well as some general information about them. Visit our page on user data requests in the U.S. and youll see, in broad strokes, how many NSLs for user data Google receives, as well as the number of accounts in question, Richard Salgado, Googles legal director of law enforcement and information security, wrote in a Tuesday blog post.
A new table posted to Googles Transparency Report site outlines the details; it tabulates how many requests for information the company has received over each of the past four years: some undisclosed number between 0 and 999. With those NSLs, the FBI sought information on somewhere between 1,000 and 1,999 users/accounts. People dont always use our services for good, and its important that law enforcement be able to investigate illegal activity, Salgado wrote. No other technology company presently disclose such basic information about government requests, experts noted.
Read more: FBI 'secretly spying' on Google users, company reveals | Fox News
