Category: Privacy & Security
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Paper fingerprinting and ballot tracking
In part 1 of this 2-part series I explained: Some election-integrity advocates have suggested that, in addition to good chain-of-custody procedures for ballots between when they’re cast and when they’re counted (or recounted), we should have better control over what paper (and paper ballots) go into the polling place. This way, if fraudulent ballots got…
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Flaky paper won’t secure our elections without a protocol to go with it
Part 1 of a 2-part series. In this part, why just printing ballots on special paper won’t help much. In part 2, how special paper could have a role if the rest of the system were developed to go with it. How can we best ensure that the ballots tallied are the same ones that…
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Meet the Researcher: Mona Wang
Mona Wang is a Princeton Ph.D. student in the Department of Computer Science and the Center for Information Technology Policy. Wang recently sat down with undergraduate student Tsion Kergo ‘26 for an interview where they discussed her research into surveillance technologies, what developed her interest in cryptography, and warns about the security risks of social…
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Fact-checking or Community Notes? Why not both! – TechTakes
On Thursday, February 20, 2025 Elon Musk tweeted that X ’Community Notes” are “increasingly being gamed by governments and legacy media.” But back in January, Mark Zuckerberg said that Meta is dropping fact-checking in favor of community notes: “We’ve seen this approach work on X.” So does it stop disinformation or not? And is it…
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CAC-Vote: Another Insecure Internet Voting System
Philip Stark and I have released this paper with an analysis of a DARPA-sponsored research project to develop an internet voting system. An Internet Voting System Fatally Flawed in Creative New Ways Abstract: The recently published “MERGE” protocol is designed to be used in the prototype CAC-vote system. The voting kiosk and protocol transmit votes…
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How to Conduct AI Oversight: Industry Insiders Make Recommendations to Senators
The Senate Committee on the Judiciary’s Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law hearing titled “Oversight of AI: Insiders’ Perspective” on September 17, 2024 sought to understand how and why the government can and should regulate the burgeoning industry. I attended the hearing and am writing to share my impressions here. Chock-full of analogies that…
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Ninth Circuit Upholds AADC Ban on “Dark Patterns”
On August 16, 2024, the Ninth Circuit ruled in NetChoice v. Bonta to strike significant portions of California’s Age-Appropriate Design Code (AADC) on First Amendment grounds. The Act was designed to enhance privacy and safety provisions for children online. The Ninth Circuit Court upheld the law’s ban on “dark patterns,” finding that the provision regulates conduct rather…
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A Brief History of Multi-Perspective Issuance Corroboration
“Multi-Perspective Issuance Corroboration” (or “MPIC”) is currently under discussion as an industry-wide standard by the CA/Browser Forum Server Certificate Working Group, and possibly by other Forum Working Groups in the future (i.e., the S/MIME Working Group). This is a promising idea that aims to mitigate the risk of equally-specific Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) attacks by…
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Building on Colorado’s Success: All States Need Mandatory Rideshare Transparency Reporting
Colorado has become the first state mandating transparency specifically around platform fees and driver wages from rideshare platforms like Uber and Lyft, whose opaque AI and algorithmic operations have historically evaded legal oversight. On June 5 2024, Governor Jared Polis signed SB24-075, the Transportation Network Company Transparency bill into an act, compelling these platforms to…
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Rows and Columns, the County Line, and the ExpressVote XL
Why did New Jersey counties keep choosing one insecure voting machine after another, for decades? Only this year did I realize what the reason might be. A century ago, New Jersey (like many other states) adopted lever voting machines that listed the offices by row, with the parties (and their candidates) across the columns: The…