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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I wrote Friday about the legal threats by Cisco and ISS against researcher Mike Lynn, relating to Lynn’s presentation at Black Hat about a Cisco security vulnerability. The complaint Cisco…
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Entertainment Industry Pretending to Have Won Grokster Case
Most independent analysts agree that the entertainment industry didn’t get what it wanted from the Supreme Court’s Grokster ruling. Things look grim for the Grokster defendants themselves; but what the…
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WiFi Freeloading Now a Crime in U.K.
A British man has been fined and given a suspended prison sentence for connecting to a stranger’s WiFi access point without permission, according to a BBC story. There is no…
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ISS Caught in the Middle in Cisco Security Flap
The cybersecurity world is buzzing with news about Cisco’s attempt to silence Michael Lynn’s discussion of a serious security flaw in the company’s product. Here’s the chronology, which I have…
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U.S. Computer Science Malaise
There’s a debate going on now among U.S. computer science researchers and educators, about whether the U.S. as a nation is serious about maintaining its lead in computer science. We…
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Privacy, Price Discrimination, and Identification
Recently it was reported that Disney World is fingerprinting its customers. This raised obvious privacy concerns. People wondered why Disney would need that information, and what they were going to…
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Thee and Ay
It’s not often that you learn something about yourself from a stranger’s blog. But that’s what happened to me on Friday. I was sifting through a list of new links…
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Harry Potter and the Half-Baked Plan
Despite J.K. Rowling’s decision not to offer the new Harry Potter book in e-book format, it took less than a day for fans to scan the book and assemble an…
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Who'll Stop the Spam-Bots?
The FTC has initiated Operation Spam Zombies, a program that asks ISPs to work harder to detect and isolate spam-bots on their customers’ computers. Randy Picker has a good discussion…
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What is Spyware?
Recently the Anti-Spyware Coalition released a document defining spyware and related terms. This is an impressive-sounding group, convened by CDT and including companies like HP, Microsoft, and Yahoo. Here is…