administrator

Law enforcement representatives are planning to endorse a proposed federal law that would require Internet service providers to store logs about their customers for 18 months, CNET has learned.

The National Sheriffs' Association will say it "strongly supports" mandatory data retention during Tuesday's U.S. House of Representatives hearing on the topic.

Michael Brown, sheriff in Bedford County, Va., and a board member and executive committee member of the National Sheriffs' Association, is planning to argue that a new law is necessary because Internet providers do not store customer records long enough.

"The limited data retention … Read more

The U.S. Supreme Court today agreed to hear a lawsuit that will determine whether police need to obtain a judge's approval before installing GPS trackers on Americans' automobiles.

A ruling, which is expected by next year, will establish whether a warrant signed by a judge is required before law enforcement can engage in the practice of tracking a driver's every move on the roads. The Obama administration argues that no warrant is needed.

The case that will be presented to the justices arose out of a criminal prosecution of Antoine Jones and Lawrence Maynard, two suspected cocaine … Read more

WASHINGTON--Patrick Leahy, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee, said today he is optimistic that Congress would update a 1986 law, crafted in the pre-Internet era of telephone modems and the black-and-white Macintosh Plus, to protect the privacy of Americans who use the Internet and mobile phones.

The Vermont Democrat said that in his previous career as a prosecutor he had to obtain search warrants to search someone's house. "I question whether it should be that much different if I'm going to search all your files" in electronic form, he said in a keynote speech at … Read more

news analysis The U.S. Congress has approved a four-year extension of the Patriot Act despite warnings from senators that the Justice Department has twisted the 2001 law into a "secret" surveillance mechanism far broader than Americans realize.

"I believe that when more of my colleagues and the American public come to understand how the Patriot Act has actually been interpreted in secret, they will insist on significant reforms too," said Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat who tried to block the renewal. Sen. Mark Udall, a Colorado Democrat, offered a similar warning.

The cautionary note … Read more

When you install and set up OS X for the first time, the account created will be an administrator account. This is an easy way to allow people to access every aspect of their systems, and perform functions like changing system settings and installing applications if needed. While administrative functions still require a password even when you're logged in as administrator, running in an administrator account does pose more of a security risk than running in an standard account.

As basic directory entries, accounts in OS X are all the same regardless of whether they are admins, guests, managed … Read more

A new classified data dump from WikiLeaks shines new light on the evidence, allegedly sometimes lacking, against the people that the U.S. government has held and is holding at the Guantanamo prison in Cuba.

The documents, provided in advance to news outlets including The New York Times, NPR, The Washington Post, and the U.K. Guardian newspaper, are classified at the "secret" level and include dossiers on individual prisoners, including their risk "assessment" by military evaluators. They were written between 2002 and 2008.

As of Sunday night, only a few dozen of the individual files … Read more

Microsoft has released more details about its Windows Intune product for customers eyeing the cloud-based PC management service.

Responding to customer questions, Microsoft has updated its Windows Intune FAQ page and served up a blog post yesterday to cover several key points.

Officially launched in late March, Windows Intune can take on basic PC administration from companies that don't have the staff to handle it internally. Perhaps best suited to small and midsized businesses but available to larger companies as well, Intune can keep PCs updated with the latest software and security patches. Business owners can also use the … Read more

An emerging dispute over electronic privacy is testing whether President Obama will live up to his promise to protect Americans' online rights.

Earlier this week, the U.S. Department of Justice criticized changes backed by Internet companies and privacy groups that would update a 1986 federal law to extend greater legal protections to cloud-computing and mobile-device users.

Yet strengthening privacy laws is precisely what Obama pledged during the 2008 presidential campaign. He told CNET at the time that: "I will work with leading legislators, privacy advocates, and business leaders to strengthen both voluntary and legally required privacy protections." … Read more

The U.S. Justice Department today offered what amounts to a frontal attack on proposals to amend federal law to better protect Americans' privacy.

James Baker, the associate deputy attorney general, warned that rewriting a 1986 privacy law to grant cloud computing users more privacy protections and to require court approval before tracking Americans' cell phones would hinder police investigations.

This appears the first time that the Justice Department has publicly responded to a set of digital privacy proposals unveiled last year by a coalition of businesses and advocacy groups including AT&T, Google, Microsoft, eBay, the American Civil … Read more