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Content type: News & Analysis
This piece was originally published on Just Security.
Ten years ago, an FBI official impersonated an Associated Press reporter to lure and track a teenager suspected of sending in prank bomb threats to his school. To find him, the FBI agent, posing as a reporter, sent the teenager links to a supposed story he was working on, but the links were infested with malware that once clicked on quickly exposed the teen’s location. More recently, the FBI has seized and modified websites so…
Content type: News & Analysis
In a recent trip to Colombia, Privacy International learned that the Colombian mobile phone network does not use any form of encryption. In this sense, Colombian communications are stuck in the 1990s, where cryptography was not yet widespread, and was still tightly controlled by governments who feared its spread could threaten their capabilities to conduct surveillance.
The issue of encryption on mobile phones though is not unique to Colombia. The Director of the FBI has been on a media blitz…