spy

Four things we learned when US spy chiefs testified to Congress US intelligence leaders gave their most recent — and frank — assessment of global cyber threatsCyberattacks, regional conflict, weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, commercial spyware, AI, misinformation, disinformation, deepfakes and TikTok. These are just some of the top perceived threats that the United States faces, according to the U.S. government’s intelligence agency’s latest global risk assessment. Some cybersecurity experts have called on governments to outright ban ransom payments as necessary to stop hackers profiteering from cybercrime. Given how much data we share from our phone apps (which many don’t give a second thought), U.S. spy agencies are simply buying up vast troves of Americans’ commercially available location data and internet traffic from the data brokers. In other words, U.S. spy agencies can keep buying data on Americans that is readily available for purchase until Congress puts a stop to the practice — even if the root of the problem is that data brokers shouldn’t have our data to begin with.