Category: Privacy & Security
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Netflix Cancels the Netflix Prize 2
Today, Netflix announced it is canceling its plans for a second Netflix Prize contest, one that reportedly would have involved the release of more information than the first. As I argued earlier, I feared that the new contest would have put the supposedly private movie viewing and rating habits of Netflix customers at great risk,…
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Web Security Trust Models
[This is part of a series of posts on this topic: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.] Last week, Ed described the current debate over whether Mozilla should allow an organization that is allegedly controlled by the Chinese government to be a default trusted certificate authority. The post prompted some very insightful feedback,…
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Mozilla Debates Whether to Trust Chinese CA
[Note our follow-up posts on this topic: Web Security Trust Models, and Web Certification Fail: Bad Assumptions Lead to Bad Technology] Sometimes geeky technical details matter only to engineers. But sometimes a seemingly arcane technical decision exposes deep social or political divisions. A classic example is being debated within the Mozilla project now, as designers…
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The Traceability of an Anonymous Online Comment
Yesterday, I described a simple scenario where a plaintiff, who is having difficulty identifying an alleged online defamer, could benefit from subpoenaing data held by a third party web service provider. Some third parties—like Facebook in yesterday’s example—know exactly who I am and know whenever I visit or post on other sites. But even when…
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What Third Parties Know About John Doe
As David mentioned in his previous post, plaintiffs’ lawyers in online defamation suits will typically issue a sequence of two “John Doe” subpoenas to try to unmask the identity of anonymous online speakers. The first subpoena goes to the website or content provider where the allegedly defamatory remarks were posted, and the second subpoena is…
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Identifying John Doe: It might be easier than you think
Imagine that you want to sue someone for what they wrote, anonymously, in a web-based online forum. To succeed, you’ll first have to figure out who they really are. How hard is that task? It’s a question that Harlan Yu, Ed Felten, and I have been kicking around for several months. We’ve come to some…
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A Free Internet, If We Can Keep It
“We stand for a single internet where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas. And we recognize that the world’s information infrastructure will become what we and others make of it. ” These two sentences, from Secretary of State Clinton’s groundbreaking speech on Internet freedom, sum up beautifully the challenge facing our…
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No Warrant Necessary to Seize Your Laptop
The U.S. Customs may search your laptop and copy your hard drive when you cross the border, according to their policy. They may do this even if they have no particularized suspicion of wrongdoing on your part. They claim that the Fourth Amendment protection against warrantless search and seizure does not apply. The Customs justifies…
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Google Attacks Highlight the Importance of Surveillance Transparency
Ed posted yesterday about Google’s bombshell announcement that it is considering pulling out of China in the wake of a sophisticated attack on its infrastructure. People more knowledgeable than me about China have weighed in on the announcement’s implications for the future of US-Sino relations and the evolution of the Chinese Internet. Rebecca MacKinnon, a…
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Google Threatens to Leave China
The big news today is Google’s carefully worded statement changing its policy toward China. Up to now, Google has run a China-specific site, google.cn, which censors results consistent with the demands of the Chinese government. Google now says it plans to offer only unfiltered service to Chinese customers. Presumably the Chinese government will not allow…