encryption

Google announced Wednesday it has achieved a breakthrough in quantum computing, saying it has developed an experimental processor that took just minutes to complete a calculation that would take the world’s best supercomputer thousands of years. The feat could open the door someday to machines so blazingly fast that they could revolutionize such tasks as finding new medicines, developing vastly...

U.S. Attorney General William Barr and other U.S., U.K. and Australian officials are pressing Facebook to give authorities a way to read encrypted messages sent by ordinary users, re-igniting tensions between tech companies and law enforcement. Facebook’s WhatsApp already uses so-called end-to-end encryption, which locks up messages so that even Facebook can’t read their contents. Facebook plans to extend that...

Get ready for new Apple products. Every fall since 2011, Apple has held a launch event in California where it reveals its annual iPhone update. The goal is to create hype for the products going into the all-important holiday shopping season. Apple usually succeeds. Although other technology companies hold flashy events when they reveal new products, none get the same...

Google released a compilation of in-depth research on vulnerabilities in Apple’s operating system Thursday night. The research is interesting and comprehensive, but the impact of the flaws on most iPhone users may not be huge. Also, Google is using the compiled research to publicly needle Apple, following Apple’s campaign to differentiates its products on privacy and security. Here are some...

When William Montanez was arrested on drug and firearm charges in Tampa, Flordia last June, police threatened him with jail time if he refused to hand over the passcodes to his iPhones. Montanez refused anyway and spent 44 days behind bars before the charged were dropped. While few would choose jail, Montanez’s decision reflects a growing resistance to law enforcement’s...

Federal privacy regulators are under scrutiny in Congress as they negotiate a record fine with Facebook to punish the company for alleged violations of its users’ privacy. The Federal Trade Commission is considering a rare action holding CEO Mark Zuckerberg personally accountable for Facebook’s alleged failure to honor a 2011 agreement over privacy lapses. The agency also may limit how...

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg kicked off the company’s annual F8 developer conference by sharing details about his new “privacy-focused” vision for the social network — including end-to-end encryption for Messenger conversations and secure WhatsApp statuses that only friends can see. Scott Budman reports.

Facebook stored “hundreds of millions” of account passwords without encryption and viewable as plain text to tens of thousands of company employees, according to a report Thursday by cybersecurity journalist Brian Krebs. Facebook confirmed the report in a blog post. The incident could have affected as many as 600 million users, a significant portion of Facebook’s user base of 2.7...

Residents in a North Texas neighborhood say their HOA has gone too far after it installed license plate cameras that store personal data. NBC 5’s Samantha Chatman Responds to their concerns.

Mark Zuckerberg’s abrupt Wednesday declaration of a new “privacy vision ” for social networking was for many people a sort of Rorschach test. Looked at one way, the manifesto read as an apology of sorts for Facebook’s history of privacy transgressions, and suggested that the social network would de-emphasize its huge public social network in favor of private messaging between...

At first glance, Mark Zuckerberg’s new “privacy-focused vision ” for Facebook looks like a transformative mission statement from a CEO under pressure to reverse years of battering over its surveillance practices and privacy failures. But critics say the announcement obscures Facebook’s deeper motivations: To expand lucrative new commercial services, continue monopolizing the attention of users, develop new data sources to...

Facebook, which grew into a colossus by vacuuming up your information in every possible way and using it to target ads back at you, now says its future lies in privacy-oriented messaging that Facebook itself can’t read. Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder and CEO, announced the shift in a Wednesday blog post apparently intended to blunt both criticism of the company’s data...

The Nike Adapt BB — a self-lacing smart shoe that can be controlled by a smartphone — gets released to the public on Sunday, a date that just happens to coincide with the NBA All-Star Game in Charlotte.

Federal employees are turning on office lights and computers and reopening national parks and museums for the first time in weeks, but others employed by government contractors face still more uncertainty over when they’ll resume work or whether they’ll ever be paid for time lost to the stalemate over President Donald Trump’s border wall. For the hundreds of thousands of...

Federal health officials have ordered the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center to pay a $4.3 million fine for failing to secure health records stemming from data breaches.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) announced Wednesday that Texas has been awarded over $13 million in grant funding for the rebuilding of commercial and recreational fishing industries affected by Hurricane Harvey.

Russian troops will remain in Syria as long as Moscow thinks it’s necessary, but Russia isn’t building permanent facilities in the only Middle East country where it has a military foothold, President Vladimir Putin said Thursday in his annual marathon call-in show. The troops “will stay there for as long as it is to Russia’s advantage, and to fulfill our...

Russian troops will remain in Syria as long as Moscow thinks it’s necessary, but Russia isn’t building permanent facilities in the only Middle East country where it has a military foothold, President Vladimir Putin said Thursday in his annual marathon call-in show. The troops “will stay there for as long as it is to Russia’s advantage, and to fulfill our...

Apple will offer more ways for people to limit the time they spend on iPhones while introducing features designed to make its products even more indispensable. The paradox emerged Monday as Apple executives previewed new versions of free software due out this fall. The forthcoming controls are aimed at addressing criticism that devices are becoming increasingly addictive and distracting, especially...

The News4 I-Team found dozens of the potential spy devices while driving around Washington, D.C., Maryland and Northern Virginia.