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Credit to Author: Emily Dreyfuss| Date: Sat, 17 Nov 2018 15:30:00 +0000<\/strong><\/p>\n The US refused to join a new global cybersecurity agreement<\/a> this week\u2014maybe because it was created by French president Emmanuel Macron, with whom President Trump isn\u2019t on great terms with.<\/p>\n On the same day, internet traffic that was supposed to route through Google\u2019s cloud servers instead went haywire, traveling through unplanned servers based in the likes of Russia and China. Hack? No, as Lily Hay Newman explains<\/a>, though the cause was still worrisome.<\/p>\n We also brought you the lowdown on how Darpa is preparing a Hail Mary plan<\/a> to restart an electric grid in the case of a major infrastructure hack. We showed you how to get rid of old electronics<\/a> without leaving your personal data on them. We explained what a bot really even is<\/a>. And, with Mozilla\u2019s help, we explained how to shop for cyber-secure toys for the holidays<\/a>.<\/p>\n Cryptographer Bruce Schneier explained why surveillance kills freedom<\/a> and experimentation. And Garrett Graff laid out why the Mueller investigation is probably<\/a> going to be just fine\u2014despite Trump firing Jeff Sessions and replacing him with a person who called the investigation a witch hunt.<\/p>\n And there's more! As always, we\u2019ve rounded up all the news we didn\u2019t break or cover in depth this week. Click on the headlines to read the full stories. And stay safe out there.<\/p>\n The most<\/em> cybersecure devices are the ones that aren\u2019t connected to the internet at all. Japan\u2019s minister of cybersecurity Yoshitaka Sakurada appears to have taken that advice a little far, admitting in front of Japanese parliament this week that he has actually never used a computer. At all. The nation of Japan was understandably aghast. When asked whether nuclear power plants in the country allowed USB drives to be used on their computers, Sakurada admitted he didn\u2019t know what a USB drive was. He told parliament if they need to have better answers they should bring in an expert.<\/p>\n Though the story is funny in a \u201cthis is fine\u201d meme kind of way, it\u2019s actually terrifying, and exemplifies a growing trend of nonexperts in governing positions\u2014and not just in Japan. American lawmakers are increasingly without expertise in the areas they\u2019re assigned to oversee. After the midterms, it made headlines<\/a> that a lawmaker with an actual science background would be leading the House science committee. It was news because it was such a rarity. This isn\u2019t really fine, is it?<\/p>\n It happened in 2016<\/a>. And now it\u2019s happened again. A judge in New Hampshire has said that Amazon\u2019s Alexa may have heard the stabbing murder of two women. The judge ruled this week that Amazon should hand over the records to prosecutors in the case against the man accused. Amazon said it will only deliver the recordings with a binding legal order, which it appeared to deny the ruling constituted.<\/p>\n In an apparent error, a US assistant attorney revealed in an unrelated court filing that Julian Assange has been charged \u201cunder seal\u201d in the US. That means no details of the charge, or even the charge itself, are meant to be known by the public. The unrelated filing stated: \u201cDue to the sophistication of the defendant and the publicity surrounding the case, no other procedure is likely to keep confidential the fact that Assange has been charged.\u201d It went on to indicate the US plans to arrest Assange, who is reportedly wearing out his welcome<\/a> at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he\u2019s been hiding for the past six years. A spokesman for the court told The Washington Post<\/em>, \u201cThe court filing was made in error. That was not the intended name for this filing.\u201d The Post<\/em> suggests the filing might relate to the Mueller probe, which has been investigating the role Wikileaks played in Russia\u2019s misinformation attack on the US presidential election in 2016.<\/p>\n Facebook says that US government requests for user data have gone up by 30 percent year over year. Most of these were court-ordered search warrants, which the company prevented from alerting users about. The figures were released in its latest transparency report, which came out a day after The New York Times<\/em> bombshell investigation<\/a> into the company\u2019s mishandling of Russian misinformation on the platform during the presidential election. Facebook\u2019s transparency report also reveals that between 2014 and 2017, Facebook reports the US government served it with 13 national security letters, the secret subpoenas the FBI issues to companies for data without any judicial oversight, and about which companies are often prevented from discussing publicly. Facebook disclosed the information after the government lifted the gag orders on these specific NSLs earlier this year, according to Facebook\u2019s deputy general counsel Chris Sonderby.<\/p>\n As if its traffic being rerouted erroneously through Russia and China wasn\u2019t bad enough, Google\u2019s official G Suite Twitter account was also hacked this week. In a since-deleted tweet, the account promoted a bitcoin scam to its more than 800,000 followers. The Next Web reports the hack was part of a string Bitcoin related scams going around. Earlier that same day Target\u2019s Twitter account had done the same thing.<\/p>\n In good news, internet security company Cloudflare released a mobile version of its 1.1.1.1 public DNS resolver, which works to protect your browsing privacy while on a public internet connection by hiding your IP address. Available for iOS and Android devices, the app is free and early reviews suggest it\u2019s fast.<\/p>\n