Data Privacy – Page 25 – Computer Security Articles

GPG Suite, an application that brings encrypted email to Mac OS, is now available in public beta for Sierra.

The software package had been compatible up to El Capitan but wasn’t working with Sierra, which was released by Apple in September. The new software can now be downloaded from the GPG Tools website.

It adds support for the OpenPGP encryption standard, which is an open-source version of the PGP encryption package first developed in 1991.

Four software apps are contained in the package:

— GPG Mail is a plugin for Apple Mail that allows users to encrypt, decrypt, sign, and verify mails sent using OpenPGP.

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ComputerWorld Independent

January 25, 2017 admin

Court denies U.S. government appeal in Microsoft overseas email case

A U.S. appeals court will not reconsider its groundbreaking decision denying Department of Justice efforts to force Microsoft to turn over customer emails stored outside the country.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in a 4-4 decision Tuesday, declined to rehear its July decision that denied the DOJ access to the email of a drug trafficking suspect stored on a Microsoft server in Ireland. Microsoft has been fighting DOJ requests for the email since 2013.

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ComputerWorld Independent

January 25, 2017 admin

Pompeo sworn in as CIA chief amid opposition from surveillance critics

Mike Pompeo was sworn in late Monday as the new director of the Central Intelligence Agency amid protests from surveillance critics who worry about his conflicting views on a number of key issues.

The oath of office was administered by Vice President Mike Pence after the Senate voted in favor of his confirmation in a 66-32 vote.

Critics of Pompeo, a Republican representative from Kansas, are concerned that he may weigh in with the government on a rollback of many privacy reforms, including restrictions on the collection of bulk telephone metadata from Americans by the National Security Agency under the USA Freedom Act. There are also concerns that the new director may try to introduce curbs on the use of encryption and bring in measures to monitor the social media accounts.

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ComputerWorld Independent

January 25, 2017 admin

Lavabit developer has a new encrypted, end-to-end email protocol

The developer behind Lavabit, an email service that noted leaker Edward Snowden used, is releasing source code for an open-source, end-to-end encrypted email standard that promises surveillance-proof messaging.

The code for the Dark Internet Mail Environment (DIME) standard will become available on Github, along with an associated mail server program, said its developer, Ladar Levison, on Friday.

DIME will work across different service providers and perhaps crucially will be “flexible enough to allow users to continue using their email without a Ph.D. in cryptology,” said Levison.

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