Parler Gives Feds Data On Capitol Hill Inciters | Signal Down After Taking WhatsApp Crown | Mimecast Hack Warning

Plus: Google Confirms Fitbit Deal: Here’s What It Means For Your Privacy

If the police investigating the Capitol Hill riots are going to ensnare as many trespassers as possible, they're likely going to need the help of the social media platforms on which the mob organized.

Whether they go to Facebook, Twitter or Parler, a site that became a home to many far-right groups who'd used the app to call for violent action on the Hill, the Justice Department is likely issuing warrants for user data across them all. Parler, though it's effectively been taken offline after Amazon dropped it over ethical concerns, has been furnishing the FBI with data on users calling for violence against politicians. Even before the riots, at least one Parler user was being investigated after an account called for a reckoning for all those working for the government, Trump included.

Why weren't federal agencies better prepared then? No doubt questions around the quality of intelligence, and the will to act on that intel, are going to be asked when the inquiries begin in the coming months.

If you have any tips on government surveillance or cybercrime, drop me an email on tbrewster@forbes.com.

The Big Story

The Stories You Have To Read Today

Mimecast, an email security provider, revealed that hackers had acquired one of its certificates used to validate that Microsoft 365 data was encrypted. Though it said 10% of its customers could've been affected, and fewer had emails compromised, it's still a significant event, not least because some have linked it to the huge SolarWinds attacks.

Rob Joyce, a long-time government intelligence leader (and a big fan of insane Christmas light displays), has been named by the Biden transition team as the new chief of the NSA's Cybersecurity Directorate, according to CyberScoop.

WhatsApp has decided to delay the launch of new features because fans feared their arrival meant the Facebook-owned company had watered down its privacy policy. Those fears led many to download rivals' tools like Signal.

Talking of Signal, it became too popular for its servers to handle, with the app not working correctly for many as the messaging app struggled to deal with the new user influx. It had millions of more customers coming on board in recent weeks.

Another privacy-focused tool, DuckDuckGo, was also celebrating new customers this week. The Google search rival surpassed 100 million daily queries for the first time ever, according to ZDNet.

Europol announced the takedown of the largest dark web markets still going. Selling drugs, counterfeit money and malware it was called DarkMarket and had as many as 500,000 users.

Winner Of The Week

It was incredibly sad to hear of the passing of security researcher Yonathan Klijnsma this week. He was always happy to give his time to journalists and other researchers, and had that rare combination of being super-smart and humble. Maybe it's strange to put him as this week's winner, but to me and many, many others, that's what he was. A great loss to the community.

Loser Of The Week

Some of those who stormed Capitol Hill on January 6 didn't seem to care much about their operational security. Take one suspect, Edward Lang, who posted various images of himself at the riots. In one, he appeared to have written, "THIS IS ME," with an emoji hand pointing to himself on the Hill.