Anonymous is not anonymous

A good friend emailed me the other day to ask if I thought using Tor’s network and software is truly as secure as everyone thinks. My immediate reply was no, I don’t think Tor or any other so-called anonymizing service is truly secure. If you want...

The Man Who Rewrote His Credit Card Contract and Beat the Bank

In a case that delighted consumer advocates and frustrated corporate lawyers in equal measure, a Russian man turned the tables on a major bank by rewriting the terms of a credit card agreement — and getting the bank to sign it without reading. The story became an...

NSA Broke Its Own Privacy Rules Thousands of Times Per Year

A classified internal audit revealed that the National Security Agency violated its own privacy rules and overstepped its legal authority thousands of times annually following the expansion of its surveillance powers in 2008. The revelations, which emerged from...

New Company Allows Organizations To Hire Fake Protesters

So, no one supports your cause? No problem. You can hire supporters- even protesters. A company started last October by 22-year-old Adam Swart provides just this service.  In a telephone interview I spoke with Swart about his new found success. “I came up with the...

Why Americans Are Renouncing Citizenship in Record Numbers

A growing number of Americans are making the drastic decision to renounce their citizenship, driven not by political ideology but by the practical consequences of a tax system unlike any other in the developed world. The surge in renunciations — which increased...

Anonymous Inside the Military: Hacktivism Within the Ranks

The intersection of hacktivist movements and military institutions creates one of the more fascinating contradictions in modern information warfare. Anonymous — the decentralized collective known for digital activism, data leaks, and cyber operations against...

Brain-Boosting Foods: What Neuroscience Says You Should Eat

The brain consumes roughly 20 percent of the body’s total energy despite accounting for only about 2 percent of body weight. This disproportionate energy demand means that what you eat has a direct and measurable impact on cognitive performance, memory, mood,...

Chinese Investors Bought Up Bankrupt Detroit: What It Revealed

When Detroit filed for bankruptcy in 2013, it became the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history. With approximately 78,000 abandoned buildings, a population that had plummeted from 1.8 million to roughly 700,000, and home prices that had collapsed to levels...

How Students Hijacked a Superyacht with a GPS Spoofing Device

In a demonstration that exposed critical vulnerabilities in global navigation systems, a team of engineering students from the University of Texas at Austin successfully hijacked the navigation of an 80-million-dollar superyacht using a GPS spoofing device no larger...

Inside the FISA Court: America’s Most Secretive Judicial Body

Hidden behind an unmarked door in a Washington, D.C. federal courthouse, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court operates as one of the most powerful and least visible institutions in the American judicial system. Created in 1978 in the aftermath of revelations...

Female Spies Who Changed History: Espionage Beyond the Stereotype

Throughout the history of espionage, women have served as some of the most effective intelligence operatives ever deployed. Despite being systematically underestimated by the male-dominated institutions they infiltrated, female spies have altered the outcomes of wars,...

Water Powered Cars: The Science, the Claims, and the Reality

For decades, inventors and entrepreneurs have claimed to develop vehicles that run on water alone. These stories captivate the public imagination — the idea that the most abundant substance on Earth could replace expensive, polluting fossil fuels seems almost too good...