Don’t Get Too Excited About the Fingerprint Ruling

For some time now, it’s been true that, while people may or may not be required to give their cell phone passwords to law enforcement, they were required to...
Law Enforcement Asking for Google Cellphone Data Near Crimes

Should law enforcement be able to get a search warrant for your phone just based on the fact that you happened to have been near the vicinity of a crime?
So far, the courts are saying yes.
Cellphone location data has been a big deal lately, with cases such as
Another Case of ‘Alexa, How Do I Hide a Body?’

A judge has ordered Amazon to turn over any recordings that an Amazon Echo device may have made during a three-day period when two women appear to have been killed in the home. Timothy Verrill is accused of killing Christine Sullivan and her friend Jenna Pellegrini in Sullivan’s home over...
An Incredibly Gnarly Legal Encryption Discussion

New news in the world of whether you can be forced to decrypt your phone by law enforcement. As I wrote in May 2017: “As you may recall, the whole...
New Zealand border phone searches cause outcry

We’ve had this in the U.S. for a while, but now it’s happening elsewhere: Enter New Zealand, and either be willing to hand over your smartphone and password, or pay a $3200 fine. “New laws that came into...
If Hacked, Should You be Able to Hack Back?

When someone breaks into your system, is it fair to go break into theirs? Sometimes it’s in an “eye for an eye” situation. More often, people want to use hacking techniques to help figure out who hacked them. Either way, it’s called “hacking back” and has been illegal, with sentences...
EU Considers Ending Privacy Shield

Here we go again. The European Union is calling for an end to the so-called Privacy Shield agreement by September 1 if the U.S. doesn’t follow through on its commitments, which could make it really difficult for U.S. computer companies to acquire data from European customers. As you may...
Will the Supreme Court’s ‘Carpenter’ Ruling be Privacy’s Last Hurrah?

“The American Civil Liberties Union deserves congratulations” is not a sentence one is accustomed to read from the Cato Institute, a conservative think tank, but it just goes to show how pervasive the...
Okay, Working at Upguard Must be the Best Job Ever

Configuration is hard. At least, that’s the conclusion to draw from a recent storage security issue where the Los Angeles County hotline number, 211, was storing many of the records regarding its hotline calls in the cloud....
Another Court Rules Against Warrantless Cellphone Border Searches

Yet another court has ruled that U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents have to have some sort of probable cause to search people’s electronics. The Fourth Circuit has now agreed. The Department of Homeland Security has said in the past that it is entitled to broad powers of search within 100...