Author: Andrew Appel
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A clear line between offense and defense
The New York Times, in an editorial today entitled “Arms Control for a Cyberage“, writes, The problem is that unlike conventional weapons, with cyberweapons “there’s no clear line between offense and defense,” as President Obama noted this month in an interview with Re/code, a technology news publication. Defense in cyberwarfare consists of pre-emptively locating the…
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Ed Felten elected to National Academy
The National Academy of Engineering announced today that Edward W. Felten, professor of computer science and public affairs, and director, Center for Information Technology Policy, Princeton University, Princeton, N.J., has been elected to the National Academy “For contributions to security of computer systems, and for impact on public policy.” From the NAE’s announcement: Election to…
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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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Voting machine lawsuit, oral arguments, venue change
For those who were considering attending the oral arguments December 4th of the appeal of the Gusciora lawsuit about New Jersey’s voting machines–which I encourage you to do–the location has been changed from Jersey City to Trenton. Location: 8th Floor, N. Wing, Hughes Justice Complex, Trenton, NJ. Date/time: December 4th, 2012, 10:00 a.m. Postponed until…
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NJ Lt. Governor invites voters to submit invalid ballots
On November 3rd, the Lieutenant Governor of New Jersey issued a directive, well covered in the media, permitting storm-displaced New Jersey voters to vote by e-mail. The voter is to call or e-mail the county clerk to request an absentee ballot by e-mail or fax, then the voter returns the ballot by e-mail or fax:…
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Oral Arguments 12/4 in NJ Voting-Machine Lawsuit
Note new date and time! This election day, New Jersey voters will vote–if electricity is restored and if they can get to the polls after the hurricane–on a model of voting machine that I have personally demonstrated how to hack. My hack is simple: prepare fraudulent vote-stealing software on a memory chip, make thousands of…
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Broken Ballots
A important new book has just been published on the technology and policy of elections. Broken Ballots: Will Your Vote Count by Douglas W. Jones and Barbara Simons, covers voting systems from the 19th century to the present, with particular focus on the last two decades. The authors describe the strengths and weaknesses of the…
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Contract hacking and community organizing
I discussed community discontent with copyright terms of some scholarly publishers, and I proposed an economic analysis. Now let’s consider two other approaches. Contract hacking I have published quite a few scholarly papers, and with each one I am invited to sign a copyright form. This is a contract between author and publisher, which which…
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Modest Proposals for Academic Authors
In the scuffles over copyright policies on scholarly articles, what is the academic author to do? First, inform yourself. Find and read the copyright policy of the journals (or refereed conferences) to which you submit the articles describing research results. Find out the subscription price (dead-tree-edition or online) that the publisher charges individuals and institutions,…
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Copyright in Scholarly Publishing, 2012 Edition
I’ve heard a lot recently about copyright policies of scholarly journals. Over 9000 researchers signed a pledge to boycott Elsevier, on three grounds: (1) high prices for journal subscriptions, (2) bundling practices for institutional subscriptions; (3) lobbying regarding SOPA, PIPA, and the Research Works Act. Meanwhile, other organizations such as the ACM (scholarly/professional society for…