Month: January 2013
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Oral arguments in NJ voting-machines lawsuit appeal
The appellate hearing (oral argument) of the New Jersey voting-machines lawsuit (Gusciora v. Christie) has been rescheduled to March 5, 2013 in Trenton, NJ. To learn what this is all about, and why you should attend, click here. To recheck the location, time of day, and date of the hearing before you go down to…
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Are genomes "anonymous data"?
Recently researchers showed that an unknown person’s genome (i.e., the genetic information stored in their DNA) can often be linked to their identity. The researchers used the genome plus some publicly available information to link this information. Just as interesting as the result itself is the way that people talked about it. As an example,…
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Personal Democracy Robots?
A few weeks ago I wrote a post for Slate arguing that it is time to consider developing—and maybe even using—democracy robots on Twitter. Preprogrammed messages released on a strategic schedule could have an impact on public opinion in sensitive moments for an authoritarian regime. The EFF’s eloquent Jillian York retorted “let’s not”. In short,…
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FCC Open Internet Advisory Committee Progress
Earlier this year, I wrote about the launch of the Open Internet Advisory Committee (OIAC). The committee’s mandate is to, “track and evaluate the effect of the FCC’s Open Internet rules, and to provide any recommendations it deems appropriate to the FCC regarding policies and practices related to preserving the open Internet.” I’m chairing the…
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Announcing the Aaron Swartz Memorial Grants
Last week, our community lost Aaron Swartz. We are still reeling. Aaron was a fighter for openness and freedom, and many people have been channeling their grief into positive actions for causes that were close to Aaron’s heart. One of these people is Aaron Greenspan, creator of the open-data site Plainsite and the Think Computer…
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Grieving Aaron Swartz
Aaron took his life yesterday. The world has lost a good soul. Aaron was brilliant, inventive, generous, and passionate. The intense pressure on Aaron was unfair, and it was a direct result of his well-intentioned fight to make the world a better place. I feel sad, angry, and even guilty. Experts will tell you that…
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How the Nokia Browser Decrypts SSL Traffic: A "Man in the Client"
Over the past couple of days there has been some press coverage over security researcher Guarang Pandya’s report that the browser on his Nokia phone was sending all of his traffic to Nokia proxy servers, including his HTTPS traffic. The disturbing part of his report was evidence that Nokia is not just proxying, but actually…
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Predictions for 2013
After a year’s hiatus, our annual predictions post is back! As usual, these predictions reflect the results of brainstorming among many affiliates and friends of the blog, so you should not attribute any prediction to any individual (including me–I’m just the scribe). Without further ado, the tech policy predictions for 2013:
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Turktrust Certificate Authority Errors Demonstrate The Risk of "Subordinate" Certificates
Update: More details have continued to come out, and I think that they generally support the less-paranoid version of events. There continues to be discussion on the mozilla.dev.security.policy list, Turktrust has given more details, and Mozilla has just opened up for public viewing their own detailed internal response documentation (including copies of all of the…
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Report on the NSF "Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace" PI meeting
The National Science Foundation (NSF) Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC) Principal Investigator Meeting (whew!) took place Nov. 27-29, 2012, at the Gaylord Hotel just outside Washington, DC. The SaTC program is NSF’s flagship for cybersecurity research, although it certainly isn’t the only NSF funding in this area. The purpose of this blog posting is to…