When President Barack Obama signed the USA Freedom Act into law in June 2015, his action was widely promoted as the end one of the most controversial aspects of government-run “bulk metadata collection” under Section 215 of the Patriot Act. The Act supposedly curtailed mass interception of U.S. citizens’ call data records, including CDRs for voice and data traffic. But as close … [Read more...]
VSS Monitoring: For Best-in-Class Network Packet Brokers
C5IS reviews VSS Monitoring: pioneer, market leader & arguably the very future of Network Packet Brokers. Network Packet Brokers (NPBs) and TAPs are systems designed to provide visibility into the network. Both have grown in popularity with the rise of software defined networks, virtualized networks, the cloud, and the attendant increase in the volume, bandwidth and … [Read more...]
Is the Clock Really Ticking on NSA Mass Data Collection?
When the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the USA Freedom Act (H.R. 3361) last summer, the future looked grim for the NSA’s mass data collection program. The bill would have gutted Section 215 of the Patriot Act, placing severe restrictions on the terms by which government agencies can use the law to collect evidence. But in the months following the proposed … [Read more...]