Author: Ed Felten
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European authorities fine Google for search tactics
This week the European Commission (EC) announced that it is fining Google $2.7 billion for anti-competitive tactics in the company’s iconic search product. In this post I’ll unpack what’s going on here. I have some background on this topic. In 2011-12, when I was Chief Technologist at the FTC, the agency did a big investigation…
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Lessons of 2016 for U.S. Election Security
The 2016 election was one of the most eventful in U.S. history. We will be debating its consequences for a long time. For those of us who pay attention to the security and reliability of elections, the 2016 election teaches some important lessons. I’ll review some of them in this post. First, though, let’s review…
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What does it mean to ask for an “explainable” algorithm?
One of the standard critiques of using algorithms for decision-making about people, and especially for consequential decisions about access to housing, credit, education, and so on, is that the algorithms don’t provide an “explanation” for their results or the results aren’t “interpretable.” This is a serious issue, but discussions of it are often frustrating. The reason,…
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Multiple Intelligences, and Superintelligence
Superintelligent machines have long been a trope in science fiction. Recent advances in AI have made them a topic for nonfiction debate, and even planning. And that makes sense. Although the Singularity is not imminent–you can go ahead and buy that economy-size container of yogurt–it seems to me almost certain that machine intelligence will surpass ours eventually, and quite…
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Questions for the FBI on Encryption Mandates
I wrote on Monday about how to analyze a proposal to mandate access to encrypted data. FBI Director James Comey, at the University of Texas last week, talked about encryption policy and his hope that some kind of exceptional access for law enforcement will become available. (Here’s a video.) Let’s look at what Director Comey…
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How to Analyze An Encryption Access Proposal
It looks like the idea of requiring law enforcement access to encrypted data is back in the news, with the UK government apparently pushing for access in the wake of the recent London attack. With that in mind, let’s talk about how one can go about analyzing a proposed access mandate. The first thing to…
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How the Politics of Encryption Affects Government Adoption
I wrote yesterday about reports that people in the White House are using encrypted communication apps more often, and why that might be. Today I want to follow up by talking about how the politics of encryption might affect government agencies’ choices about how to secure their information. I’ll do this by telling the stories of…
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On Encryption Apps in the White House
Politico ran a long story today pointing to an increase in the use of encrypted communication apps by people in DC, government, and the White House specifically. Poisonous political divisions have spawned an encryption arms race across the Trump administration, as both the president’s advisers and career civil servants scramble to cover their digital tracks in…
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RIP, SHA-1
Today’s cryptography news is that researchers have discovered a collision in the SHA-1 cryptographic hash function. Though long-expected, this is a notable milestone in the evolution of crypto standards. Kudos to Marc Stevens, Elie Bursztein, Pierre Karpma, Ange Albertine, and Yarik Markov of CWI Amsterdam and Google Research for their result. SHA-1 was standardized by…
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Smart Contracts: Neither Smart nor Contracts?
Karen Levy has an interesting new article critiquing blockchain-based “smart contracts.” The first part of her title, “Book-Smart, not Street-Smart,” sums up her point. Here’s a snippet: Though smart contracts do have some features that might serve the goals of social justice and fairness, I suggest that they are based on a thin conception of…