CITP Blog - Formerly Freedom to Tinker

Month: January 2008

  • MySpace Photos Leaked; Payback for Not Fixing Flaw?

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    Last week an anonymous person published a file containing half a million images, many of which had been gathered from private profiles on MySpace. This may be the most serious privacy breach yet at MySpace. Kevin Poulsen’s story at Wired News implies that the leak may have been deliberate payback for MySpace failing to fix…

  • New $2B Dutch Transport Card is Insecure

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    The new Dutch transit card system, on which $2 billion has been spent, was recently shown by researchers to be insecure. Three attacks have been announced by separate research groups. Let’s look at what went wrong and why. The system, known as OV-chipkaart, uses contactless smart cards, a technology that allows small digital cards to…

  • Could Use-Based Broadband Pricing Help the Net Neutrality Debate?

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    Yesterday, thanks to a leaked memo, it came to light that Time Warner Cable intends to try out use-based broadband pricing on a few of its customers. It looks like the plan is for several tiers of use, with the heaviest users possibly paying overage charges on a per-byte basis. In confirming its plans to…

  • Clinton's Digital Policy

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    This is the second in our promised series summing up where the 2008 presidential candidates stand on digital technology issues. (See our first post, about Obama). This time,we’ll take a look at Hillary Clinton Hillary has a platform plank on innovation. Much of it will be welcome news to the research community: She wants to…

  • Second Life Welcomes Bank Regulators

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    Linden Lab, the company that runs the popular virtual world Second Life, announced Tuesday that all in-world “banks” must now be registered with real-world banking regulators: As of January 22, 2008, it will be prohibited to offer interest or any direct return on an investment (whether in L$ or other currency) from any object, such…

  • Scoble/Facebook Incident: It's Not About Data Ownership

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    Last week Facebook canceled, and then reinstated, Robert Scoble’s account because he was using an automated script to export information about his Facebook friends to another service. The incident triggered a vigorous debate about who was in the right. Should Scoble be allowed to export this data from Facebook in the way he did? Should…

  • 2008 Predictions

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    Here are the official Freedom to Tinker predictions for 2008, based on input by Alex Halderman, David Robinson, Dan Wallach, and me. (1) DRM technology will still fail to prevent widespread infringement. In a related development, pigs will still fail to fly. (2) Copyright issues will still be gridlocked in Congress. (3) No patent reform…

  • New York Times Magazine on e-voting

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    This Sunday’s New York Times Magazine has an article by Clive Thompson on electronic voting machines. Freedom to Tinker’s Ed Felten is briefly quoted, as are a small handful of other experts. The article is a reasonable summary of where we are today, with paperless electronic voting systems on a downswing and optical scan paper…

  • 2007 Predictions Scorecard

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    As usual, we’ll start the new year by reviewing the predictions we made for the previous year. Here now, our 2007 predictions, in italics, with hindsight in ordinary type. (1) DRM technology will still fail to prevent widespread infringement. In a related development, pigs will still fail to fly. We predict this every year, and…