US, EU sign data transfer deal to ease privacy concerns
The European Union and United States made a breakthrough in their yearslong battle over the privacy of data that flows across the Atlantic with a preliminary agreement that paves the way for Europeansโ personal information to be stored in the U.S. President Joe Biden and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced the deal Friday during Bidenโs stop in Brussels while on a European tour amid Russiaโs war in Ukraine.
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Belarus leader seeks Russian support amid showdown with EU
Russiaโs President Vladimir Putin has met in Sochi with his Belarusian counterpart for talks on forging closer ties amid Minsk's bruising showdown with the European Union over the forced diversion of a passenger jet to arrest a dissident journalist.
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Facebook loses court fight over halting EU-US data transfers
Facebook has lost a legal battle with Irelandโs data privacy watchdog over a European Union privacy decision that could result in the social network being forced to stop transferring data to the U.S. The Irish High Court on Friday rejected Facebookโs bid to block a draft decision by the countryโs Data Protection Commission to inquire into, and order the suspension of, the companyโs data flows between the European Union and the U.S. The Irish watchdog had launched its inquiry last year...
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Despite hacks, US not seeking widened domestic surveillance
The Biden administration is not planning to step up government surveillance of the U.S. internet even as state-backed foreign hackers and cybercriminals increasingly use it to evade detection, a senior administration official said Friday. The official said the administration, mindful of the privacy and civil liberties implications that could arise, is not currently seeking additional authority to monitor U.S.-based networks. AdForeign state hackers are increasingly using U.S.-based virtual private networks, or VPNs, to evade detection by U.S. intelligence agencies, who are legally constrained from monitoring domestic infrastructure. Criminal and state-backed hackers seeking to exploit the underlying flaw are apt to cause more havoc, the administration says. When it comes to the pursuit of new surveillance or monitoring authorities, the official described the administrationโs posture as โnot yet, not now."
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Snowden and his wife seek to be Russian-US dual nationals
MOSCOW โ Former U.S. security contractor Edward Snowden said Monday that he and his wife intend to apply for Russian citizenship without renouncing their U.S. citizenship. According to Snowden's lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, the child, a boy, will be born in December and will have Russian citizenship. Thatโs why, in this era of pandemics and closed borders, weโre applying for dual U.S.-Russian citizenship,โ Snowden said in a tweet Monday. Kucherena told the Interfax news agency that the process of preparing the necessary paperwork for getting Snowden a Russian passport will start soon. Previously the law required foreigners to renounce other nationalities in order to get Russian citizenship.
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Facebook may have to stop moving EU user data to US
LONDON Facebook may be forced to stop sending data about its European users to the U.S., in the first major fallout from a recent court ruling that found some trans-Atlantic data transfers don't protect users from American government snooping. The social network said Wednesday that Ireland's Data Protection Commission has started an inquiry into how Facebook shifts data from the European Union to the United States. The news was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, which said Irelands data commission gave Facebook until mid-September to respond to a preliminary order to suspend the transfers. The Irish data commission suggested that a type of legal mechanism governing the data transfers, known as standard contractual clauses, cannot in practice be used for EU-U.S. data transfers," Clegg said. But in cases where there are concerns about data privacy, EU regulators should vet, and if needed block, the transfer of data.
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Ex-FBI agent: Attacks from Trump 'outrageous' and 'cruel'
Strzok, a former FBI agent who was fired because of derogatory text messages about Donald Trump, writes in a new book that he believes the president has been compromised by Russia. Strzok, for his part, expresses measured regret for the texts in Compromised: Counterintelligence and the Threat of Donald J. Trump, due out Tuesday. Special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation revealed significant contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia but found insufficient evidence of a criminal conspiracy. By his own count, Strzok says, Trump has attacked him since then more than 100 times in tweets. After Trump accused Strzok of treason, he appealed to the FBI for a statement condemning the remarks, but got none.
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Bolton critique of Trump could define tell-all book battles
Trump on Thursday called the book a compilation of lies and made up stories intended to make him look bad. But he never got a formal clearance letter, and the Trump administration contends that the book, titled The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir," still contains sensitive material. Ellis began his review of the Bolton book on May 2 at the behest of national security adviser Robert OBrien. It was initially cleared for publication by Army reviewers, but when spy agency reviewers took a look, they claimed it included classified information that could damage national security. Aftergood, the classifications expert, said the Bolton case has turned the governments little-known prepublication review process into national news.
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CIA unit that crafts hacking tools didn't protect itself
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., a senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, obtained the redacted report from the Justice Department after it was introduced as evidence in a court case this year involving stolen CIA hacking tools. The 2017 report was produced one year after the theft of sensitive tools for hacking into adversaries' networks that were developed by the CIA's specialized Center for Cyber Intelligence. The disclosure of the hacking tools featured prominently in the trial this year of Joshua Schulte, a former CIA software engineer accused of stealing a large trove of the agencys hacking tools and handing it to WikiLeaks. He was convicted in March of only minor charges after a jury deadlocked on more serious espionage counts against him, including the theft of the hacking tools. The CIAs cyber tools were gone in an instant.