Threat Level

From gun-toting, on-the-lam tech giants to flying drones and internet uprisings, these are the privacy and security stories that dominated Threat Level in 2012.

Federal regulators are proposing that new automobiles sold in the United States after September 2014 come equipped with black boxes, so-called “event data recorders” that chronicle everything from how fast a vehicle was traveling, the number of passengers and even …

On November 12, 2012, Belizean police announced that they were seeking John McAfee for questioning in connection with the murder of his neighbor. Six months earlier, I began an in-depth investigation into McAfee’s life. This is the chronicle of that …

The Senate late Thursday forwarded legislation to President Barack Obama granting the public the right to automatically display on their Facebook feeds what they’re watching on Netflix. While lawmakers were caving to special interests, however, they cut from the legislative …

A proposal forbidding internet service providers from turning the data-cap meter off to grant a so-called internet fast lane to preferential online services was introduced Thursday in the Senate. The bill by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) comes a week after …

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-West Virginia) has taken Congress’ first step in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre toward possibly regulating access to violent videogames. Calls for gun control immediately followed the elementary-school shooting Friday, so it was …

It feels a little bit like hacker Groundhog Day. After hijacking a Westboro Baptist Church leader’s Twitter account on Monday, Wired has confirmed that the 15-year-old hacker known as Cosmo the God took over another account belonging to one of …

We reported Friday of a three-hour hearing in San Francisco federal court in which the Justice Department repeatedly invoked the state secrets privilege and demanded U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White dismiss a lawsuit accusing the government of siphoning Americans’ electronic …

The Transportation Security Administration is deciding to determine, once and for all, whether the so-called “nude” body scanners being deployed at airports nationwide are nuking passengers at unacceptable radiation levels. The TSA is commissioning the National Academy of Sciences — …

Federal prosecutors may introduce cell-site data obtained without a warrant in the retrial of a District of Columbia drug dealer who was the subject of one of the Supreme Court’s biggest electronic privacy decisions in decades. The decision is a …

The 15-year-old hacker known as Cosmo the God was behind the takeover of a Westboro Baptist Church member’s Twitter feed, a source with direct knowledge of the attack confirmed to Wired on Monday. Cosmo gained access to the @DearShirley Twitter account …

A Florida man was sentenced Monday to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to charges in connection to hacking the e-mail accounts of actress Scarlett Johansson and dozens of other celebrities. Christopher Chaney, 35, of Jacksonville, Florida, had hijacked …

Claiming a major threat to its business model, broadcasters are urging a federal appeals court to order Dish Network to shutter its DVR service because it allows the automatic skipping of commercials, breaching copyright law and retransmission agreements.

A federal judge said Friday the Obama administration has pinned him in an inescapable, paradoxical situation when it comes to whether he should dismiss a lawsuit accusing the government of siphoning Americans’ electronic communications from telecoms and funneling them to …

The doomsday predictions that the internet would become a centralized, globalized tool for governments to suppress and eavesdrop on speech didn’t come to fruition Friday, after a two-week secret meeting between world governments failed to reach a consensus.

In its zeal to restrict free speech online for some, Prop. 35 actually restricts free speech for all. The harder battle is convincing the hearts and minds of those who aren’t on the California sex offender registry to understand the …

A petition demanding the President Barack Obama administration build a Death Star like the one in Star Wars reached 25,000-plus signatures Thursday, a threshold requiring the government to respond whether it will build the fictional weapon capable of annihilating planets …

A federal judge on Friday is to hold the first hearing following an appellate court’s decision reinstating allegations the government is siphoning Americans’ communications from telecoms to the National Security Agency without warrants. The new judge on the case, U.S. …

Hackers broke into the industrial control system of a New Jersey air conditioning company earlier this year, using a backdoor vulnerability in the system, according to an FBI memo made public this week.

A federal appeals court is nullifying a Mississippi law that forbids phone spoofing of any type, ruling that Congress has authorized so-called “non-harmful” spoofing.