Category: Privacy & Security
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My NYT Op-Ed: "Beware the Smart Campaign"
I just published a new opinion piece in the New York Times, entitled “Beware the Smart Campaign”. I react to the Obama campaign’s successful use of highly quantitative voter targeting that is inspired by “big data” commercial marketing techniques and implemented through state-of-the-art social science knowledge and randomized field experiments. In the op-ed, I wonder…
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Uncertified voting equipment
(Or, why doing the obvious thing to improve voter throughput in Harris County early voting would exacerbate a serious security vulnerability.) I voted today, using one of the many early voting centers in my county. I waited roughly 35 minutes before reaching a voting machine. Roughly 1/3 of the 40 voting machines at the location…
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Zuckerberg Goes to Russia as the Global Network Initiative Turns 4
The Global Network Initiative (GNI) was founded in October 2008 to help technology firms navigate the political implications of their success. Engineers at the world’s leading technology firms have been incredibly innovative, but do not always the global dynamics of their innovation. Moreover, they do not always acknowledge the ways in which politicians get involved…
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My Work at Princeton: Mobile Technology, Community Building and Civic Engagement
I’m excited to spend my year as a Fellow at the Center for Information Technology Policy exploring and testing ideas about how broadband technology – particularly mobile wireless services – can and should be used to build strong local communities. I have always been interested in how seemingly simple improvements to the existing way of…
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Unlocking Hidden Consensus in Legislatures
A legislature is a small group with a big impact. Even for people who will never be part of one, the mechanics of a legislature matter — when they work well, we all benefit, and when they work poorly, we all lose out. At the same time, with several hundred participants, legislatures are large enough…
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Sloppy Reporting on the "University Personal Records" Data Breach by the New York Times Bits Blog
This morning I ran across a distressing headline while perusing my RSS feeds. The New York Times’ Bits Blog proclaimed that, “Hackers Breach 53 Universities and Dump Thousands of Personal Records Online.” I clicked, and was informed that: Hackers published online Monday thousands of personal records from 53 universities, including Harvard, Stanford, Cornell, Princeton, Johns…
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Goodbye, Stanford. Hello, Princeton!
[Editor’s note: The Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP) is delighted to welcome Arvind Narayanan as an Assistant Professor in Computer Science, and an affiliated faculty member in CITP. Narayanan is a leading researcher in digital privacy, data anonymization, and technology policy. His work has been widely published, and includes a paper with CITP co-authors…
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Privacy Threat Model for Mobile
Evaluating privacy vulnerabilities in the mobile space can be a difficult and ad hoc process for developers, publishers, regulators, and researchers. This is due, in significant part, to the absence of a well-developed and widely accepted privacy threat model. With 1 million UDIDs posted on the Internet this past week, there is an urgent need…
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The Decline of DVD-by-Mail, or Further Thoughts on the Digital Death of Copyright's First Sale Doctrine
Netflix reported a second-quarter profit last week as customer demand continues to drive a transition in the company’s primary delivery model from DVD-by-mail to Internet streaming. According to The New York Times, “he company’s net losses among DVD-by-mail subscriptions outpaced its gains in net streaming subscriptions in the United States, reflecting the continued challenge of…
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Open Internet Advisory Committee kick-off
Last Friday, we had the first meeting of the Open Internet Advisory Committee (OIAC), called for by the FCC in the recent Open Internet Order. The members of the OIAC consist of a mix of folks from venture capital firms, ISPs, governance organizations, community organizations, and academics like myself. The OIAC’s mission is to “track and evaluate…