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Always lawful and subject to strict oversight. Those are the NSA's defenses any time someone leaks something about its surveillance programs or obtains documents indicating abuse of snooping powers. It gets a little old when it's document after document showing the astonishing breadth of the NSA's surveillance programs or the continual abuse and misuse of these powers.

The Hill has dug through some recently-released documents and memos from the NSA which show long-term abuse of surveillance programs. The NSA recently ditched part of its Section 702 collection because it just couldn't stop hoovering up Americans' communications. This was "incidental," according to the NSA, and supposedly impossible to stop. But the incidents detailed in these documents suggest a lot of over-collection happened because no one noticed and, if anyone did, no one cared.

They detail specific violations that the NSA or FBI disclosed to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court or the Justice Department's national security division during President Obamas tenure between 2009 and 2016. The intelligence community isn't due to report on compliance issues for 2017, the first year under the Trump administration, until next spring.

The NSA says that the missteps amount to a small number less than 1 percent when compared to the hundreds of thousands of specific phone numbers and email addresses the agencies intercepted through the so-called Section 702 warrantless spying program created by Congress in late 2008.

This is about the only place where any American can become part of the "one percent:" as the unwitting subject of NSA surveillance. NSA spokesman Michael Halbig says evidence of misuse is a sign the oversight is working. But oversight is also supposed to aid in prevention, not just detection of past misuse. And the NSA's internal oversight isn't nearly as "robust" as Halbig attempts to portray it.

The Hill reviewed the new ACLU documents as well as compliance memos released by the NSA inspector general and identified more than 90 incidents where violations specifically cited an impact on Americans. Many incidents involved multiple persons, multiple violations or extended periods of time.

For instance, the government admitted improperly searching the NSAs foreign intercept data on multiple occasions, including one instance in which an analyst ran the same search query about an American every work day for a period between 2013 and 2014.

The NSA also passed on intel to the FBI and CIA without properly minimizing it and made other dissemination errors. The documents show the NSA was also slow to inform other agencies of its minimization failures. Notification is supposed to made within five days of discovery, but in some cases it took the NSA more than three months to inform intel recipients of the error.

This information has been released at a critical time for the NSA. Section 702 powers are sunsetting this year and could be subject to additional modifications prior to their renewal. The FBI --perhaps even more than the NSA -- is looking for a clean reauthorization of Section 702 programs. This administration favors a clean re-auth, which means complaints about a 1% violation rate aren't likely to change anyone's mind. But 1% of several hundred million yearly searches is still a very large number of violations. If Google or Microsoft suffered a breach affecting the privacy of 1% of its users, it would be a huge problem even if the number of affected accounts amounted to a rounding error.

Former House Intelligence Committee Chair Pete Hoekstra -- a former surveillance state cheerleader -- now worries the NSA's collection powers have increased far past the point of reason. As he points, 1% simply isn't an acceptable failure rate.

One percent or less sounds great, but the truth is 1 percent of my credit card charges dont come back wrong every month. And in my mind one percent is pretty sloppy when it can impact Americans privacy.

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Released Documents Show More Section 702 Violations By The NSA - Techdirt

BEIJING: National security advisor Ajit Doval's meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping did not yield any breakthrough that could end the current standoff in Doklam. Analysts, however, said the cool off in the recent weeks may give leaders enough time to find a solution.

Doval met Chinese President Xi Jinping and other senior officials on Friday at the summit of Brics national security advisers (NSAs) in the Chinese capital.

There has only been a slight improvement of the situation that prevailed after Chinese leaders insisted for weeks that there could be no meaningful dialogue until Indian troops withdraw from their positions at the disputed site in Doklam.

There is little possibility of Xi going back on the demand that Indian troops must withdraw ahead of the celebrations of the 90th anniversary of the People's Liberation Army on August 1, a Chinese analyst said.

"At best, the high level of belligerence can be allowed to taper off, giving leaders enough time to find a solution. But even this is not easy because there are hawkish voices on both sides," a Chinese analyst said, requesting anonymity.

The Chinese leadership got away by imposing an air flight control zone over islands disputed with Japan and creating artificial islands in the disputed South China Sea despite US resistance. This is why it is very is difficult for the government to explain India's refusal to budge an inch in Doklam, he explained.

Doklam row becoming internal crisis for China The Doklam issue is fast becoming a domestic political problem for China's leaders who need to deal with a section of hawkish Communist Party members demanding action to "push back" Indian troops, sources said. This is happening ahead of a crucial party congress that will elect leaders to top positions later this year.

China also faces a risky situation on its border with North Korea and has hugely increased its military presence fearing some dangerous moves from Pyongyang.

In appearances before the media, both Doval and the Chinese leaders stuck to the agenda of the security dialogue of Brics countries that brought together top security officials from the member countries.

Doval also joined other security officials in calling on Xi, who said that Brics should play a bigger role in international affairs.

It was clear that both India and China want to keep the discussion on the Doklam stand-off restricted to the bilateral area instead of making it an issue requiring the attention of Brics. In his speech, Doval said the Brics countries should show "leadership in countering terrorism".

The grouping should also play a key role on "strategic issues of regional and global importance" while focusing on "areas where we have consensus", he said.

The Chinese president said the five countries in Brics were faced with a "complex international political and economic security situation". They should communicate more on financial cooperation, cultural exchanges and security issues.

Originally posted here:
NSA Ajit Doval and Xi Jinping meet but fail to break Doklam logjam - Economic Times

A screen from Bynder Orbit.

This week, digital asset management (DAM) provider Bynder is announcing a free DAM product called Orbit.

Essentially, Orbit is a limited-function version of Bynder for small- and medium-sized businesses. The main Bynder software is directed toward enterprises.

Available in the fall, Orbit lets businesses create, store, search and share images, videos and other creative files in the cloud, with access shared by team members. There are no limits on the number of users.

CEO Chris Hall describes Bynder Orbit as the first free and widely available DAM [built] for enterprise grade performance and security.

The DAM tool, which can be branded with a business look and feel, offers automatic file conversion; automatic extraction of metadata, keywords and other relevant info during upload; and AI-powered auto-tagging for search. Free accounts have up to 100 GB of storage, after which there are premium levels of usage.

Why give away a free version?

Hall told me via email that seventy-five percent of marketers at small and medium sized businesses arent familiar with the term Digital Asset Management, and theyre also unaware there is a solution to their problem.

A free, professional product can finally educate marketers on a much wider scale and solve a real problem, he said, after which businesses can increase their storage or graduate to the full Bynder.

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Bynder announces free version of its Digital Asset Management ... - MarTech Today

After testing a pilot version in Russia, China, and Nordic countries last year, the Russia-based cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Labs said Tuesday it will begin a global rollout of its free antivirus product.

Timed to coincide with the company's 20th anniversary today, the launch of Kaspersky Free will begin this month and next across the U.S., Canada, the Caribbean and a large swath of the Asia-Pacific region. The software will become available in other parts of the world -- including the Middle East, Africa, the UK, Germany, France, Japan and South Korea -- in phases through late October.

By then, "the whole planet" will be covered, founder/CEO Eugene Kaspersky said in a blog post yesterday. However, while the basic version is free to the masses, most individuals and certainly enterprises will be better off running more sophisticated antivirus software.

Although the free version won't compete with the company's paid antivirus products, Kaspersky Free will cover "all the bare essentials," with protections for files, email and the Web, along with automatic updates, Kaspersky said. Users in the U.S. can download the software now from the company's Web site.

Targets any Cyberthreat 'Regardless of Origin'

Kaspersky said the company has been working to develop the free antivirus program "for a good year-and-a-half," with the goal of reaching users who can't afford premium security software. In his blog post, he took at dig at traditional free offerings ("more holes than Swiss cheese for malware to slip through") as well as Microsoft's latest antivirus system, Windows Defender ("ye gods!")

Long a critic of Microsoft, Kaspersky last year accused the tech giant of making it harder for competing antivirus providers to run their software on devices running the Windows 10 operating system. He said he planned to ask regulators in Europe, Russia, and elsewhere to direct Microsoft to cease "anti-competitive" practices.

In yesterday's blog post, Kaspersky also alluded to critics of his own company by noting the free antivirus software will "detect any cyberthreat regardless of its origin or intention -- even if certain folks don't like it."

U.S. government use of Kaspersky Labs' products has come under increased fire recently, with both NASA's SEWP procurement service and the General Services Administration removing the company from their approved vendor lists earlier this month.

"GSA's priorities are to ensure the integrity and security of U.S. government systems and networks and evaluate products and services available on our contracts using supply chain risk management processes," a GSA spokesperson said in a July 12 email to the federal business technology publication FCW.

Wider Adoption To Drive Machine Learning

In addition to basic antivirus protection, Kaspersky Free will also provide self-defense and quarantine capabilities, Kaspersky said. "This arsenal ensures convenient and safe web surfing (is it still surfing? Sounds a bit 90s to me), working with USB sticks and other portable storage media, and protection against both phishing and infected files being run," he said.

Based on Kaspersky Labs' paid products, the free antivirus is "lighter on system resources and quicker than its big brothers," Kaspersky noted, adding that it is also free of "all the usual nonsense like advertising-oriented user-habit tracking and confidentiality infringements -- which free AV normally suffers badly from in order to make it financially worthwhile to its manufacturers."

Finally, thanks to the machine learning capabilities now deployed in antivirus programs, the more users who install Kaspersky Free, the more effective the software can become, "since the big-data-bases will have more numbers to work with," he said.

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Free Anti-Virus for All? Well, Sort of - CIO Today

LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Technavios latest report on the global photo editing software market provides an analysis of the most important trends expected to impact the market outlook from 2017-2021. Technavio defines an emerging trend as a factor that has the potential to significantly impact the market and contribute to its growth or decline.

The global photo editing software market is driven by its use in professional photography, especially in post-production activities. The demand for proprietary software and free software, such as GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP), is high in this market. The rising number of free software is a major challenge to the growth of the global photo editing market.

Ishmeet Kaur, a lead analyst from Technavio, specializing in research on enterprise application sector, says, The increased use of photo content in social media has propelled the demand for photo editing software. Online photo editing software is increasingly becoming a popular solution for editing photos. PicMonkey and Fotor are some of the major players in this market.

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The top three emerging trends driving the global photo editing software market according to Technavio research analysts are:

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Technavios sample reports are free of charge and contain multiple sections of the report including the market size and forecast, drivers, challenges, trends, and more.

Increasing integration of social media platforms with photo editing features

One of the major uses of photo editing software among non-professional users is for uploading them in social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Snapchat, and Instagram. Social networking sites are providing several editing features to make the uploaded photos look better.

Social networking platforms will provide more focus on photo editing features during the forecast period. This will reduce the dependence on a dedicated photo editing software for mobile phones. For instance, Instagram features all the capabilities of a mobile photo editing software and provides saving options, according to Ishmeet.

Growing number of mobile photo editing software

Nowadays, vendors are providing photo editing software for mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. The high processing power of mobile devices is the most important reason for this initiative. For instance, the latest flagship smartphone from Samsung, Galaxy S7, has a Snapdragon 820 chipset by Qualcomm with a 4 GB random access memory.

Snapdragon 820 consists of a 64-bit quad-core CPU and a highly advanced Adreno 530 GPU. It has more clock speed than an Intel Core i3 4005U processor used in a desktop. Another major advantage of mobile devices is that the input method in most of them are through touch screens rather than a mouse, keyboard, or personal computer (PC).

Rising number of face editing software

The growing trend of selfies in social media platforms has increased the demand for face editing software. The number of apps with face editing features, coupled with filters, have increased in the app stores of iOS and Android, two major mobile OS platforms.

The key vendors are as follows:

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About Technavio

Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. Their research and analysis focuses on emerging market trends and provides actionable insights to help businesses identify market opportunities and develop effective strategies to optimize their market positions.

With over 500 specialized analysts, Technavios report library consists of more than 10,000 reports and counting, covering 800 technologies, spanning across 50 countries. Their client base consists of enterprises of all sizes, including more than 100 Fortune 500 companies. This growing client base relies on Technavios comprehensive coverage, extensive research, and actionable market insights to identify opportunities in existing and potential markets and assess their competitive positions within changing market scenarios.

If you are interested in more information, please contact our media team at media@technavio.com.

Originally posted here:
Photo Editing Software Market - Trends and Forecasts by Technavio - Business Wire (press release)