Category: Privacy & Security
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Arlington v. FCC: What it Means for Net Neutrality
[Cross-posted on my blog, Managing Miracles] On Monday, the Supreme Court handed down a decision in Arlington v. FCC. At issue was a very abstract legal question: whether the FCC has the right to interpret the scope of its own authority in cases in which congress has left the contours of their jurisdiction ambiguous. In…
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Blocking of Google+ Hangouts Android App
Earlier this week, online news sites started reporting the apparent blocking of Google’s Google+ Hangout video-chat application on Android over AT&T’s cellular network [SlashGear, Time, ArsTechnica]. Several of the articles noted the relationship to an earlier controversy concerning AT&T and Apple’s FaceTime application. Our Mobile Broadband Working Group at the FCC’s Open Internet Advisory Committee…
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Collateral Freedom in China
OpenITP has just released a new report—Collateral Freedom—that studies the state of censorship circumvention tool usage in China today. From the report’s overview: This report documents the experiences of 1,175 Chinese Internet users who are circumventing their country’s Internet censorship—and it carries a powerful message for developers and funders of censorship circumvention tools. We believe…
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Are There Countries Whose Situations Worsened with the Arrival of the Internet?
Are there countries whose situations worsened with the arrival of the internet? I’ve been arguing that there are lots of examples of countries where technology diffusion has helped democratic institutions deepen. And there are several examples of countries where technology diffusion has been part of the story of rapid democratic transition. But there are no…
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Let's stop Nigerian scams once and for good
A personal friend of mine’s Yahoo account was recently hacked by a Nigerian scammer. I know this because the email I got (“I’m stuck in the Philippines and need you to wire money”) had an IP address in a “Received” header that pointed squarely at Lagos, Nigeria. The modus operandi of these scammers is well…
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Drones over Princeton: A Goofy Video About a Serious Issue
Last week, privacy attorney Grayson Barber brought her “drone” to CITP in order to do a demo at her talk, “Drones Are Like Flying Computers.” Grayson discussed the many serious legal issues raised by drones (you can watch the video of her presentation here). But her drone takes great video, so I couldn’t resist making…
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Internet Voting Security: Wishful Thinking Doesn’t Make It True
[The following is a post written at my invitation by Professor Duncan Buell from the University of South Carolina. Curiously, the poll Professor Buell mentions below is no longer listed in the list of past & present polls on the Courier-Journal site, but is available if you kept the link.] On Thursday, March 21, in…
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Security Lessons from the Big DDoS Attacks
Last week saw news of new Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. These may be the largest DDoS attacks ever, peaking at about 300 Gbps (that is, 300 billion bits per second) of traffic aimed at the target but, notwithstanding some of the breathless news coverage, these attacks are not vastly larger than anything before.…
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How the DMCA Chills Research
I have a new piece in Slate, on how the DMCA chills security research. In the piece, I tell three stories of DMCA threats against Alex Halderman and me, and talk about how Congress can fix the problem. “The Chilling Effects of the DMCA: The outdated copyright law doesn’t just hurt consumers—it cripples researchers.” “These…
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Singapore Punishes Net Freedom Advocate
Over the last few days my activist self has come out. I was a tenure reviewer for Dr. Cherian George at Nanyang Technical University, one of Singapore’s most high-profile universities. His tenure case was overturned at the top, where university administration meets the country’s political elites. It is difficult to dismiss George on the basis…