CITP Blog is hosted by Princeton University’s Center for Information Technology Policy, a research center that studies digital technologies in public life. Here you’ll find comment and analysis from the digital frontier, written by the Center’s faculty, students, and friends.
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One of the standard claims about privacy is that people say they value their privacy but behave as if they don’t value it. The standard example involves people trading away…
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Come Join Us Next Spring
It’s been an exciting summer here at the Center for Information Technology Policy. On Friday, we’ll be moving into a brand new building. We’ll be roughly doubling our level of…
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Cheap CAPTCHA Solving Changes the Security Game
ZDNet’s “Zero Day” blog has an interesting post on the gray-market economy in solving CAPTCHAs. CAPTCHAs are those online tests that ask you to type in a sequence of characters…
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Lenz Ruling Raises Epistemological Questions
Stephanie Lenz’s case will be familiar to many of you: After publishing a 29-second video on YouTube that shows her toddler dancing to the Prince song “Let’s Go Crazy,” Ms.…
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Gymnastics Scores and Grade Inflation
The gymnastics scoring in this year’s Olympics has generated some controversy, as usual. Some of the controversy feel manufactured: NBC tried to create a hubbub over Nastia Liukin losing the…
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How do you compare security across voting systems?
It’s a curious problem: how do you compare two completely unrelated voting systems and say that one is more or less secure than the other? How can you meaningfully compare…
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Is the New York Times a Confused Company?
Over lunch I did something old-fashioned—I picked up and read a print copy of the New York Times. I was startled to find, on the front of the business section,…
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Comcast Gets Slapped, But the FCC Wisely Leaves its Options Open
The FCC’s recent Comcast action—whose full text is unavailable as yet, though it was described in a press release and statements from each comissioner—is a lesson in the importance of…
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iPhone Apps Show Industry the Benefits of Openness
Today’s New York Times reports on the impact of Apple’s decision to allow third-party application software on the iPhone: In the first 10 days after Apple opened its App Store…
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Where are the Technologists on the EAC Advisory Board?
Barbara Simons, an accomplished computer scientist and e-voting expert, was recently appointed to the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) Board of Advisors. (The EAC is the U.S. Federal body responsible for…