The government(s) must keep lots of judges very busy.

https://www.microsoft.com/about/corporatecitizenship/en-us/reporting/transparency/

Microsoft’s Law Enforcement Requests Report for the first six months of 2013

Microsoft (including Skype) received 37,196 requests from law enforcement agencies potentially impacting 66,539 accounts in the first six months of this year. This compares to 75,378 requests and 137,424 potential accounts in the whole of 2012.

What a surprise. Big Brother (and his American cousin) don't like restrictions.

Britain accused of trying to impede EU data protection law

Phillip Oltermann reports:

Britain has been accused of trying to impede data protection reforms that would make it more difficult for spy agencies to get hold of material online.

The European parliament is planning to vote on a new, unified law for EU member states in the next few weeks, but activists fear Britain is deliberately obstructing the path to new legislation.

Speaking at an international conference on data protection in Warsaw on Thursday, the UK information commissioner, Christopher Graham, said the first draft of the proposed regulation was “too dirigiste”. Britain was “not interested in regulation that is a to-do list”.

Read more in The Guardian.

...and that creates a really large basket of valuable data. Something for my Ethical Hackers to protect.

Facebook wants to auto-fill your credit card details – would you trust it?

Lisa Vaas writes:

On Monday night, a very hush-hush Facebook tiptoed into testing an “Autofill with Facebook” feature – autofill your credit card information, that is – that it will begin rolling out to some users this week, according to The Verge.

According to sources familiar with the company’s plans, the new payments product will allow online shoppers to make purchases on mobile apps using their Facebook login, AllThingsD reports.

Read more on Naked Security.