Author: Mihir Kshirsagar
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A Multi-pronged Strategy for Securing Internet Routing
By Henry Birge-Lee, Nick Feamster, Mihir Kshirsagar, Prateek Mittal, Jennifer Rexford The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is conducting an inquiry into how it can help protect against security vulnerabilities in the internet routing infrastructure. A number of large communication companies have weighed in on the approach the FCC should take. CITP’s Tech Policy Clinic convened…
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Holding Purveyors of “Dark Patterns” for Online Travel Bookings Accountable
Last week, my former colleagues at the New York Attorney General’s Office (NYAG), scored a $2.6 million settlement with Fareportal – a large online travel agency that used deceptive practices, known as “dark patterns,” to manipulate consumers to book online travel. The investigation exposes how Fareportal, which operates under several brands, including CheapOair and OneTravel…
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Calling for Investing in Equitable AI Research in Nation’s Strategic Plan
By Solon Barocas, Sayash Kapoor, Mihir Kshirsagar, and Arvind Narayanan In response to the Request for Information to the Update of the National Artificial Intelligence Research and Development Strategic Plan (“Strategic Plan”) we submitted comments providing suggestions for how the Strategic Plan for government funding priorities should focus resources to address societal issues such as…
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T’Mobile: Deleting Stale Data Reduces Liability
T-Mobile’s data breach in August 2021 exposed the social security numbers and drivers license numbers for over 40 million former or prospective customers. I recently discovered that I was one such victim because of an alert that popped up on my phone this weekend from my credit monitoring service. I was surprised because I have…
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National AI Research Infrastructure Needs to Support Independent Evaluation of Performance Claims
By Sayash Kapoor, Mihir Kshirsagar, and Arvind Narayanan Our response to the National AI Research Resource RFI highlights the significance of supporting a research infrastructure that is designed to independently test the validity of the claims of AI performance. In particular, we draw attention to the widespread phenomenon of the industry peddling what we call…
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Facebook’s Illusory Promise of Transparency
By Orestis Papakyriakopoulos, Ashley Gorham, Eli Lucherini, Mihir Kshirsagar, and Arvind Narayanan. Facebook’s latest move to obstruct academic research about its platform by disabling NYU’s Ad Observatory is deeply troubling. While Facebook claims to offer researchers access to its FORT Researcher Platform as an alternative, that is an illusory offer as we have recently learned…
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CITP’s Summer Fellowship Program for Training Public Interest Technologists
In 2020, CITP launched the Public Interest Technology Summer Fellowship (PIT-SF) program aimed at rising juniors and seniors interested in getting first-hand experience working on technology policy at the federal, state and local level. The program is supported by the PIT-UN network and accepts students from member universities. We pay students a stipend and cover…
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New Research on Privacy and Security Risks of Remote Learning Software
This post and the paper is jointly authored by Shaanan Cohney, Ross Teixeira, Anne Kohlbrenner, Arvind Narayanan, Mihir Kshirsagar, Yan Shvartzshnaider, and Madelyn Sanfilippo. It emerged from a case study at CITP’s tech policy clinic. As universities rely on remote educational technology to facilitate the rapid shift to online learning, they expose themselves to new…
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Improving Protections for Children’s Privacy Online
CITP’s Tech Policy Clinic submitted a Comment to the Federal Trade Commission in connection with its review of the COPPA Rule to protect children’s privacy online. Our Comment explains why it is important to update the COPPA Rule to keep it current with new privacy risks, especially as children spend increasing amounts of time online…