FBI Director James Comey gave a speech this week about encryption and privacy, repeating his argument that "absolute privacy" hampers law enforcement. But it was an offhand remark during the Q&A session at Kenyon College that caught the attention of privacy activists: The thought of the FBI chief taping over his webcam is an arresting one for many. His comment Wednesday (which is around the 1:34:45 mark in this video) was in...

The Justice Department and Apple spent much of the past few months in a bitter legal battle over whether Apple should help the FBI access data on a phone used by Syed Farook, one of the San Bernardino shooters. Now that the FBI's cracked the phone — without Apple's help — one thing is becoming clear: there wasn't much useful information on it.

With multiple redactions and having survived a declassification review, another FISA court opinion has been released to the public. The opinion dates back to November of last year, but was only recently dumped into the public domain by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. While the five-month delay seems a bit long, the alternative is no public release at all.

For the first time, a judge has thrown out evidence obtained via a piece of FBI malware. The move comes from a cased affected by the FBI's seizure of a dark web child pornography site in February 2015, and the subsequent deployment of a network investigative technique (NIT)—the agency's term for a hacking tool—in order to identify the site's visitors. “Based on the foregoing analysis, the Court concludes that the NIT warrant was issued without jurisdiction...

FBI Director James Comey suggested Thursday that the bureau paid more than $1 million to access an iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino attackers, the first time the agency has offered a possible price tag in the high-profile case. While speaking at a security forum in London hosted by the Aspen Institute, Comey would not offer a precise dollar figure, saying only that it cost “a lot” to get into the phone. He said the cost of the tool was “more than I will...

When Jameel Harrison, a suspected drug dealer, attempted to escape from F.B.I agents trying to arrest him near a Baltimore shopping center two years ago, agents opened fire. Two bullets hit his Infiniti FX37’s left front tire. Six bullets struck him in the head and neck, killing him. After investigating the case, a state prosecutor and the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division declined to prosecute the agents. That left the F.B.I.’s...

In 2010 the FBI planned to raid Scientology's headquarters. Drone aircraft had gathered hi-res images of the site and the tail numbers of Tom Cruise’s airplane were on file in case David Miscavige tried to flee. The raid never occurred due to an alleged halt from the upper ranks of Washington.

The FBI has been in the hacking business for a long time, famously using malware to log suspects' keystrokes as early as the 1990s. But in the high-profile case surrounding a dark web child abuse site called Playpen, the Bureau is arguing that because it was authorized by a warrant, its computer intrusion code shouldn't be called “malware” at all.

Two US senators have warned that a new bill would vastly expand the FBI’s warrantless access to Americans’ online records. Although the text of the 2017 intelligence authorization bill is not yet available to the public, two members of the Senate intelligence committee have said the bill could expand the remit of a nonjudicial subpoena called a National Security Letter (NSLs) to acquire Americans’ email records, chat or messaging accounts, account login records, browser histories and social-media service usage.

FBI officials are warning private industry partners to be on the lookout for highly stealthy keystroke loggers that surreptitiously sniff passwords and other input typed into wireless keyboards. The FBI's Private Industry Notification is dated April 29, more than 15 months after whitehat hacker Samy Kamkar released a KeySweeper, a proof-of-concept attack platform that covertly logged and decrypted keystrokes from many Microsoft-branded wireless keyboards and transmitted the data over cellular networks. To lower the chances that the sniffing device might be discovered by a target...

A debate is brewing inside the Beltway and beyond, pitting some current and retired FBI agents against one another in a fight over the legacy of J. Edgar Hoover and whether the name of the Bureau’s first and most controversial director should grace the FBI’s proposed new $1.8 billion...

The Obama administration is seeking to amend surveillance law to give the FBI explicit authority to access a person’s Internet browser history and other electronic data without a warrant in terrorism and spy cases. The administration made a similar effort six years ago but dropped it after concerns were raised by privacy advocates and the tech industry. FBI Director James B. Comey has characterized the legislation as a fix to “a typo” in the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which he says has led some tech firms to refuse to provide data that Congress intended them to provide.

Since 2011 the FBI has used facial recognition software to identify people during criminal investigations. The agency combs through a database of over 411 million photos, including everything from mugshots to driver’s licenses. Today, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report that’s critical of the technology.

The FBI is using a dubious facial recognition system and a database of hundreds of millions more photographs than previously thought to hunt for criminal suspects, according to a new report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO).The massive database houses roughly 411 million photos amassed from sources such as driver's licenses, visa applications, biometrics data, and passport applications, as well as surveillance camera footage, the GAO found in its report.

As predicted, the FBI is revealed to have approached Orlando shooting suspect Omar Mateen in 2013 with informants posing as terrorists in an attempt to “lure” him into participating in a terrorist attack.

The FBI has access to nearly 412 million photos in its facial recognition system—perhaps including the one on your driver’s license. But according to a new government watchdog report, the bureau doesn’t know how error-prone the system is, or whether it enhances or hinders investigations. Since 2011, the bureau has quietly been using this system to compare new images, such as those taken from surveillance cameras, against a large set of photos to look for a match.

Hawaii's governor signed a bill making it the first state to place its residents who own firearms in a federal criminal record database and monitor them for possible wrongdoing anywhere in the country, his office said. The move by gun control proponents in the liberal state represents an effort to institute some limits on firearms in the face of a bitter national debate over guns that this week saw Democratic lawmakers stage a sit-in at the U.S. House of Representatives.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has arrested three men for allegedly running an “advance fee” scheme that swindled movie investors out of more than $12 million. An indictment unsealed in Manhattan Federal Court charged James David Williams of Calabasas, Calif.; Steven Brown of Santa Monica, Calif.; and Gerald Seppala of Minnesota with wire fraud and wire fraud conspiracy. Williams and Brown are also charged with laundering the proceeds of the fraud.

The US State Department is to restart its investigation into Hillary Clinton's handling of classified material when secretary of state. The likely Democratic presidential nominee learned this week that she will not face criminal charges over her use of private email. The FBI said that although she had sent and received sensitive material there was no evidence of intent. Now that inquiry is over, the State Department will reopen its review. As well as the former secretary of state, it will also include some of her former aides, all of whom have now left the department.

The FBI is facing accusations that malware it deployed while running Operation Playpen, a sting that infiltrated and maintained a dark web child pornography website for two weeks and eventually led to more than 100 arrests, was illegal. But the agency swears that using malware was good because, well, the FBI had good intentions. Some judges have actually ruled to throw out evidence obtained by the malware the FBI used on the basis that it did not have the proper warrants.