CITP Blog - Formerly Freedom to Tinker

Year: 2004

  • Rubin and Rescorla on E-Voting

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    There are two interesting new posts on e-voting over on ATAC. In one post, Avi Rubin suggests a “hacking challenge” for e-voting technology: let experts tweak an existing e-voting system to rig it for one candidate, and then inject the tweaked system quietly into the certification pipeline and see if it passes. (All of this…

  • Google Hires Ph.D.'s; Times Surprised

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    Yesterday’s New York Times ran a story by Randall Stross, marveling at the number of Ph.D.’s working at Google. Indeed, the story marveled about Google wanting to hire Ph.D.’s at all. Many other companies shun Ph.D.’s. Deciding whether to hire bachelors-level employees or Ph.D.’s really boils down to whether you want employees who are good…

  • Designed for Spying

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    A Mark Glassman story at the New York Times discusses the didtheyreadit email-tracking software that I wrote about previously. The story quotes the head of didtheyreadit as saying that the purpose of the software is to tell whether an email reached its intended recipient. “I won’t deny that it has a potentially stealth purpose,” he…

  • Wireless Unleashed

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    WirelessUnleashed is a new group blog, dedicated to wireless policy, from Kevin Werbach, Andrew Odlyzko, David Isenberg, and Clay Shirky. Based on the author-list alone, it’s worth our attention.

  • E-Voting Testing Labs Not Independent

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    E-voting vendors often argue that their systems must be secure, because they have been tested by “independent” labs. Elise Ackerman’s story in Sunday’s San Jose Mercury-News explains the depressing truth about how the testing process works. There are only three labs, and they are overseen by a private body that is supported financially by the…

  • The Creation of the Media

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    I just finished reading “The Creation of the Media,” by Paul Starr, a sociology professor here at Princeton. This is an important book and I recommend it highly. Starr traces the history of communications and the media in the U.S., from the 1700s until 1940. The major theme of the book is that the unique…

  • Report from RIAA v. P2P User Courtroom

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    Mary Bridges offers an interesting report from a court hearing yesterday, in one of the RIAA’s lawsuits against end users accused of P2P infringement. She points to an amicus brief filed by folks at Harvard’s Berkman Center, at the Court’s request, that explains some of the factual and legal issues raised in these suits. [link…

  • The Landsburg Amendment

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    Can this be a coincidence? This week, Congress prepares to vote on the Pirate Act, which would impose severe penalties for online copyright infringers and redirect the Department of Justice toward copyright enforcement and away from any other insignificant law enforcement problems facing the U.S. In the same week, Steven Landsburg advocates the death penalty…

  • Landsburg's Modest Proposal

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    Steven E. Landsburg has a somewhat creepy piece over at Slate, calling for the death penalty for computer worm authors. Ernest Miller responds. UPDATE (12:15 AM): James Grimmelmann has some interesting thoughts on Landsburg’s proposal.

  • Word Tracking Bug Demo and Remover

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    Alex Halderman has created a page about the Word tracking bugs I described yesterday. He offers an example Word tracking bug for you to examine, and a scanner program that can find and remove Word tracking bugs on your computer.