Category: Privacy & Security
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Improve Connectivity in Rural Communities – Principle #9 for Fostering Civic Engagement Through Digital Technologies
In my recent blog posts, I have been discussing ways that citizens can communicate with government officials through the Internet, social media, and wireless technology to solve problems in their communities and to effect public policy. Using technology for civic engagement, however, should not be limited to communications with elected or appointed government officials. One…
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Your TV is spying on you, and what you can do about it
A recent UK observer with a packet sniffer noticed that his LG “smart” TV was sending all his viewing habits back to an LG server. This included filenames from an external USB disk. Add this atop observations that Samsung’s 2012-era “smart” TVs were riddled with security holes. (No word yet on the 2013 edition.) What’s…
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Game Theory and Bitcoin
In light of the back-and-forth about the recent Eyal and Sirer (“ES”) paper about Bitcoin mining, I want to take a step back and talk about what a careful analysis of Bitcoin mining dynamics would look like. (Here are some previous posts if you need backstory: 1 2 3 4 5.) The key to a…
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Why the Cornell paper on Bitcoin mining is important
Joint post with Andrew Miller, University of Maryland. Bitcoin is broken, claims a new paper by Cornell researchers Ittay Eyal and Emin Gun Sirer. No it isn’t, respond Bitcoiners. Yes it is, say the authors. Our own Ed Felten weighed in with a detailed analysis, refuting the paper’s claim that a coalition of…
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Bitcoin isn't so broken after all
There has been a lot of noise in the Bitcoin world this week about a new paper by Ittay Eyal and Emin Gun Sirer (“ES” for short) of Cornell, which claims that Bitcoin mining is vulnerable to attack. In a companion blog post, Sirer says unequivocally that “bitcoin is broken.” Let me explain why I…
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Data Surveillance States—US and Europe
Every day that we learn more about various countries’ data surveillance programs, one point keeps coming up: national data surveillance seems to have few privacy boundaries that the law has effectively protected. In a new essay that I just posted on “The Data Surveillance State in the United States and Europe,” I take a look…
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Local Expertise is Exceedingly Valuable- Principle #7 for Fostering Civic Engagement Through Digital Technologies
One of the most rewarding and enjoyable aspects of my research has been my series of conversations with innovators in civic engagement in various cities across the country. These conversations have been enlightening for me as I think about how Washington, DC can maximize its natural advantages to foster civic engagement in its neighborhoods. The…
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The 2008 Liberty Case: An Authoritive Ruling on Snowden's Disclosures
The other day, I was re-reading the 2008 Liberty vs. The United Kingdom ruling of the European Court of Human Rights (‘ECHR’). The case reads like any BREAKING / REVEALED news report on Edward Snowden’s disclosures, and will play a crucial role in the currently pending court cases in Europe on the legality of the…
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When an Ethnographer met Edward Snowden
If you talk about ‘metadata’, ‘big data’ and ‘Big Brother’ just as easily as you order a pizza, ethnography and anthropology are probably not your first points of reference. But the outcome of a recent encounter of ethnographer Tom Boellstorff and Edward Snowden (not IRL but IRP), is that tech policy wonks and researchers should…
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Engineering an insider-attack-resistant email system and why you wouldn't want to use it
Earlier this week, Felten made the observation that the government eavesdropping on Lavabit could be considered as an insider attack against Lavabit users. This leads to the obvious question: how might we design an email system that’s resistant to such an attack? The sad answer is that we’ve had this technology for decades but it…