National security

Photo: Chip Somodevilla (Getty Images)40 privacy and racial justice groups signed an open letter demanding MGM Studios cancel Ring Nation, a dystopian reality television show based on security footage captured from Ring home cameras. The groups warned airing the show risks “normalizing and promoting Amazon Ring’s dangerous network of surveillance cameras,” and could put vulnerable communities at heightened privacy risks. For those who missed it, Amazon announced the show earlier this year, which reportedly revolves around…

Twitter's former security chief Peiter "Mudge" Zatko testified to a Senate panel on Tuesday that his former employer prioritized profits over addressing security concerns that he said put user information at risk of falling into the wrong hands."It's not far-fetched to say that an employee inside the company could take over the accounts of all of the senators in this room," Zatko told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, less than a month after his whistleblower complaint was publicly reported.Zatko testified that…

Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., arrives to Rayburn Building on Thursday, September 15, 2022.Photo: Tom Williams (AP)California Congresswoman Anna Eshoo is urging the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate a Virginia-based company revealed by the Associated Press to provide law enforcement agencies across the U.S. with access to cellphone tracking technology capable of mapping people’s movements “months back in time.”In a letter this week, Eshoo called on Lina Khan, the commission’s chair, to “immediately investigate”…

Photo: Public Domain/NSA/Wikimedia CommonsChina claims that America’s National Security Agency used sophisticated cyber tools to hack into an elite research university on Chinese soil. The attack allegedly targeted the Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xi’an (not to be confused with a California school of the same name), which is highly ranked in the global university index for its science and engineering programs.The U.S. Justice Department has referred to the school as a “Chinese military university that is…

A mural depicting writer George Orwell, in Belgrade, Serbia, Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2022.Photo: Darko Vojinovic (AP) “If we begin to feel that we’re being surveilled all the time, our behavior changes. We begin to do less. We begin to think about things less. We begin to modify how we think.” - Tim CookThe English language, novelist George Orwell once observed, “is in a bad way.”The critic and notoriously “crabby” grammarian likened the destruction of the written word to the spiraling depression of one caught up in thrall of…

Richard Yu, CEO Huawei's consumer business and automotive technology unit, revealed the Huawei Mate 50 series on Tuesday. The Chinese giant's smartphone business has been hurt by U.S. sanctions over the past two years which has cut the firm off from key technology.HuaweiHuawei launched a flagship smartphone that it claims is the first device that's able to connect to China's Beidou global navigation satellite system.It comes as the company seeks to remain relevant in the mobile market after U.S. sanctions crippled its…

Signage is seen at CNN center, Thursday, April 21, 2022, in Atlanta. Photo: Mike Stewart (AP)CNN has announced a new hire: John Miller, the former head of the New York Police Department’s intelligence unit.Miller’s best-known work in media was as a television reporter in the 1990s, when he interviewed the likes of John Gotti and Osama bin Laden. More recently, though, he is remembered as the senior police official who bizarrely claimed there’s “no evidence” that NYPD ever spied on Muslim New Yorkers.But the NYPD did spy…

In this illustration, Elon Musk's Twitter account is displayed on the screen of a mobile phone with the Twitter logo in the background. A whistleblower's complaint that Twitter misled federal regulators about the company's security risks could provide Elon Musk with fresh ammunition in his bid to get out of buying the company for $44 billion.Sheldon Cooper | Lightrocket | Getty ImagesElon Musk's legal team filed another notice on Tuesday to terminate his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter, citing additional reasons.Twitter…

Nvidia on Thursday said the U.S. government will allow it to continue developing its H100 artificial intelligence chip in China. It's a win for the company after it warned Wednesday that new export restrictions could hamper its operations in the country.Nvidia said in an SEC filing Wednesday that the U.S. government is restricting sales of high-performance AI chips for servers, the A100 and H100, to China and Russia. Sales of both chips are still restricted in those markets, though it can still develop the H100 in China.…

Journalists gather outside the Paul S. Rogers Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse in downtown West Palm Beach, Fla., to read a heavily blackout document released by The Justice Department Friday, Aug. 26, 2022.Photo: Jim Rassol (AP)A redacted version of the affidavit justifying the FBI’s extraordinary actions at Mar-a-Lago has been released to the public on the order of a federal magistrate judge. It contains multiple references to suspicion that Trump potentially had information in his residence that is specially…