October 2013

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) vowed to battle legislative proposals that would institute only superficial reforms to National Security Agency surveillance. He warned that the goal of senior intelligence officials and their allies in Congress is to ensure that any reforms in the wake of leaks by Edward Snowden are only "skin deep."

"They will pull out all the stops to try to hold off real reforms," Sen. Wyden said. He argued that proposals that would ratify the NSA's programs would actually empower the agency's ability to peer into people's private lives. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court approved the collection of US phone data in secret and has imposed certain restrictions on the NSA's handling of the phone data. For example, analysts must have a “reasonable articulable suspicion” that a phone number is associated with terrorism before searching the database. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein’s (D-CA) bill would codify many of those existing restrictions into law. But Sen. Wyden warned that such legislation would make the "constitutionally-flawed" NSA program more permanent. He argued that the framers intended the Fourth Amendment to prohibit the kind of indiscriminate record collection the NSA is now conducting.

CTI Towers, a wireless tower operator formed by Comcast Ventures in 2011, has secured $30 million in debt financing to fuel future merger and acquisition activity and has wrapped up its first third-party acquisition -- the purchase of five towers from a “major wireless carrier.”

CTI Towers declined to identify the seller, but the newly acquired towers are located in North Carolina, South Carolina, Ohio, Mississippi and Pennsylvania. The company has leased space to all the big names in US cellular -- AT&T, Verizon Wireless , Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile, Leap Wireless, and MetroPCS -- as well as “many broadcasters,” according to the CTI Towers Web site. CTI Towers said it has already received carrier inquiries for leasing the towers since the acquisition. The company noted that it has acquired 230 towers so far, adding that it will use the financing “to accelerate its acquisition pipeline as it continues to enhance its position as one of the top 10 largest wireless tower operators in the US.”

Some shrug off the notion of government data collection as the price we pay for security; others worry about how much we still don’t know about what happens with our data. Thanks to National Security Agency whistleblowers up to and including Edward Snowden and his PRISM revelations, government data mining of personal information is the topic of cocktail party chit chat. And it’s not just the government. Recent research shows that consumers distrust Facebook more than the NSA. Different perp, same problem. So how worried is the public? Well, it’s not panic time, but concern is growing as evidenced by Pew Internet Research and other studies, according to Kate Crawford, principal researcher with Microsoft Research. Ari Gesher, senior engineer with Palantir Technologies, said the upside of all this PRISM drama is it brings the topic to a broader audience.

The Web is a wild place, with more than the National Security Agency potentially out to get you. With the so-called six strikes antipiracy initiative in full effect, you never know if Hollywood is monitoring your peer-to-peer activity. Then there are the malicious hackers trying to reset e-mail, Facebook, and Twitter passwords. No security regimen short of complete hermitage can keep you 100 percent secure. Nevertheless, you can take a few simple precautions to maintain your privacy online and deter all but the most determined bad guys.

1. Secure the line: One of the worst online security mistakes you can make is to connect to an email, bank, or other sensitive account over public Wi-Fi. Use VPN instead.
2. Stop leaving private data in the cloud: You can build one yourself by encrypting data on your PC before sending it to Dropbox, using free software such as BoxCryptor or the open-source TrueCrypt. A far simpler method, though, is to find a file-syncing service that offers built-in storage encryption.
3. Secure your online services with two-factor authentication: requires you to enter a short numeric code in addition to your password before you can gain access to your account. The code usually comes from a physical fob or from a smartphone application. The good news is that you can get most of your two-factor authentication codes from Google's Authenticator app for Android and iOS.