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The presence of this data on your iPhone, your iPad, and your backups has security and privacy implications. We've contacted Apple's Product Security team, but we haven't heard back.

What makes this issue worse is that the file is unencrypted and unprotected, and it's on any machine you've synched with your iOS device. It can also be easily accessed on the device itself if it falls into the wrong hands. Anybody with access to this file knows where you've been over the last year, since iOS 4 was released.

Because computers are incapable of being truly random, any encryption system that relies on random numbers to generate keys (like RSA and SSL)become vulnerable to an attacker being able to duplicate the public and private key pair and compromise your security.

A “Memorandum of Agreement” struck last week between the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the National Security Agency (NSA) promises to increase Pentagon control over America’s telecommunications and electronic infrastructure.

Warrantless wiretaps intimidate several organizations and cast a chill over lawyers, journalists and human rights researchers - Are you, a US citizen, calling cousin Ivor in Budapest, or reaching out to your old pen pal Yasmeen in Sydney? The National Security Agency (NSA) can listen in on your personal cellphone or read what you might be emailing him or her from your personal computer without telling you. The Feds can listen in to you now, "whenever government deems it necessary for foreign intelligence reasons" Jaffer explained to me.

The federal government is launching an expansive program dubbed "Perfect Citizen" to detect cyber assaults on private companies and government agencies running such critical infrastructure as the electricity grid and nuclear-power plants, according to people familiar with the program.

basically the encription of the blackberrys make it harder for people to get information from your phone. including our friend Big Brother. they are saying that since the government cannot monitor our use of these blackberrys they are a threat to national security. so they are restricting data plans in the US

United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) - the federal agency in charge of protecting other agencies from computer intruder - was found riddled with hundreds of high-risk security holes on its own systems, according to the results of an audit released Wednesday. US-CERT, monitors the Einstein intrusion-detection sensors on nonmilitary government networks, and helps other civil agencies respond to hack attacks. It also issues alerts on the latest software security holes, so that everyone from the White House to the FAA can react quickly to install workarounds and patches.

Two researchers announced Wednesday that they had discovered a file stored on those devices that records where they have been, and when. The data in the file, which is found on all devices running Apple's iOS operating system and on computers to which those iOS devices are synced, could be used to plot users' movements.

Part 1: National Security Agency whistleblower William Binney reveals he believes domestic surveillance has become more expansive under President Obama than President George W. Bush. He estimates the NSA has assembled 20 trillion "transactions" — phone calls, emails and other forms of data — from Americans. This likely includes copies of almost all of the emails sent and received from most people living in the United States.